Browsing by Subject "Vanhemmuuden uupumus"

Parental burnout is relatively new phenomenon in this area of research. Parental burnout arises from chronic exposure to stress and it encompasses emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing and ineffectiveness in one’s parental role. Parental burnout has negative consequences to the child and the parent that are specific only to parental burnout. It is although not completely clear yet what makes parents to burn out. Many possible risk factors have been linked to parental burnout but the problem is the cross-sectional design of these studies. This review addresses the possible risk factors for parental burnout and how they together affect the development of parental burnout. These risk factors are in this review categorized to four categories: parent’s stable traits, family-related factors, factors related to wider social environment and sociodemographics. Parental burnout seems to be multi-determined syndrome. Parent’s stable traits, parenting and family functioning have the strongest correlations to parental burnout. Whereas sociodemographics and wider social environment –factors have weaker correlations to parental burnout. Because parent-related risk factors are correlated also to other risk factors (family related), there will be introduced a theory how parent-related factors are main risk factors for developing parental burnout syndrome.