The ObservatoryWhen parenting runs you dry
Exhaustion as a parent has a name, and it is not about loving your child too little. About the signs, and about what has helped.
There is a tiredness that sleep does not fix. You get up, do what needs to be done and feel nothing. The children become something to get through, and you no longer recognise yourself as a parent. Researchers call it parental burnout.
It is not about loving your children too little. The risk actually seems greater for those who demand a lot of themselves as parents. What grows is an imbalance: for a long time, the demands have outnumbered what gives strength back. Illness, a child with special needs, being a single parent, money worries or a job that also takes everything can tip the scale.
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Why does it work?
The concept of parental burnout and its four features (exhaustion in the parental role, emotional distancing from the children, being fed up with the role, and the contrast with the parent one used to be) come from the research group around Roskam, Brianda and Mikolajczak, who also describe the imbalance between demands and resources and perfectionism as a risk factor. Bayot, Brianda et al. (2024), Treating Parental Burnout: Impact and Particularities of a Mindfulness- and Compassion-Based Approach, Children 11(2), 168: an eight-week mindfulness and self-compassion group programme compared with the Parenting in Balance programme. Burnout decreased clearly in both, but the study has no untreated control group. No diagnosis is made here.
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