Parental burnout: what to do if you feel that parenting has become a chore with no joy anymore

Feeling intense exhaustion, emotionally distanced from your children and a loss of pleasure in your role as a parent? It’s essential you reach out to a group and don’t suffer alone

Remember, you are not alone if you are suffering from parental burnout. Photo: Picture posed/Getty Images

Dr David Coleman

March 01 2023 02:30 AM

Parental burnout is a thing. Psychologists have begun to study it with greater intensity in the last few years.

According to one of the leading researchers in the field, parental burnout is characterised by an “intense exhaustion related to parenting, emotional distancing from one’s children, a loss of pleasure and efficacy in one’s parental role, and a contrast between previous and current parental self”.

Unpacking that, it seems that parents have got into a mindset in the last couple of decades where they feel they must be all things to their children. Parents perceive they must have more intense relationships with them, be more involved and protect them more than ever before.

Consequently, parents feel more anxious and stressed, becoming more and more exhausted by the demands of parenting, while feeling they don’t have the emotional resources to meet those demands.

Research shows that this exhaustion is often the first stage of impending burnout and is what leads to emotional distancing from their children; parents just don’t feel able to keep responding.

Parents may then feel guilt, but also that parenting is just a chore, without any joy, or any upside.

They may often compare their exhausted selves negatively to a time when they felt fulfilled by their parenting role.

This mindset adds to the sense of stress and dissatisfaction, and increases their exhaustion, rounding out a spiralling negative cycle in which parents can doubt their ability to adequately look after their child.

One study that examined the prevalence of parental burnout on a global scale, with over 17,000 parents in 42 countries, found that rates of parental burnout vary widely.

Countries and cultures with greater parental isolation (compared to cultures with intergenerational extended families all taking a role in childrearing) had higher rates of parental burnout — five to six per cent, or about one in every 20.

Here in Ireland, more families are stretched and isolated as parents have had to move out to the suburbs or into cities from the countryside, away from their families, without social support.

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Parental burnout can have very serious consequences for both parents and children.

It is associated with poor physical health and increased suicidal ideation for parents, with increased levels of neglect of, and violence towards, children.

One very interesting study from 2020 did show that group intervention makes a big difference to parents who are struggling with burnout.

That study looked at any change in parental burnout in the two months prior to two different kinds of parent support groups and then subsequent to those group interventions.

There was no reduction in perceived burnout prior to getting help, but both group interventions led to very significant reduction in perceived burnout, as well as an increase in positive feelings.

Measurements of the stress hormone cortisol were down by 52pc in the parents after the group interventions.

So what did the groups do? One group aimed to offer parents a space where they could share their difficulties.

This intervention was led by psychologists who offered a setting of active, empathetic, caring and authentic listening in which participants could share and perceive themselves as worthy of consideration and believe in their capacity to find their own path and resources.

The second group was much more direct and aimed to restore the balance between parental stressors and their internal emotional resources.

This intervention helped parents to actively work on the main parental stressors (e.g. societal pressure, parental perfectionism, lack of co-parental support) and resources (e.g. emotional competences, stress-managing abilities and effective childrearing practices) by providing them with psychoeducation and targeted exercises.

Interestingly, neither intervention was more effective than the other, which leads me to think that the main thing that was supportive for the parents involved was having other parents around.

The social support of knowing that you are not alone with your struggles may have been the most significant factor in allowing parents to acknowledge they are not bad parents, but are simply overwhelmed at this point in their parenting journey.

If you are struggling with exhaustion, feeling disconnected from your family and feel like the joy has been sucked out of life with your children, then the message is clear — don’t struggle on alone. Reach out for help.

Perhaps look to join a parenting group somewhere like your local family resource centre. One thing is for sure, you are not the only parent feeling that way.