RESUMO
High levels of stress in the parenting domain can lead to parental burnout, a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children. It is not yet clear, however, whether parental burnout varies by culture, and if so, why it might do so. In this study, we examined the prevalence of parental burnout in 42 countries (17,409 parents; 71% mothers; Mage = 39.20) and showed that the prevalence of parental burnout varies dramatically across countries. Analyses of cultural values revealed that individualistic cultures, in particular, displayed a noticeably higher prevalence and mean level of parental burnout. Indeed, individualism plays a larger role in parental burnout than either economic inequalities across countries, or any other individual and family characteristic examined so far, including the number and age of children and the number of hours spent with them. These results suggest that cultural values in Western countries may put parents under heightened levels of stress. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-020-00028-4.
RESUMO
A recent initiative known as the International Investigation of Parental Burnout, sought to study the prevalence of parental burnout in over 40 countries globally using the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA) instrument. Four countries investigated here provide a first insight into parental burnout in Africa, based on a pooled dataset of 738 parents (48.8% mothers) sampled from Burundi (n = 187; 25.3%), Cameroon (n = 208; 28.2%), Rwanda (n = 240; 32.5%), and Togo (n = 103; 14%). As a first step, we tested the content validity of the PBA that was developed and validated in Western countries. Second, we tested the relations between the PBA and several sociodemographic characteristics such as age, gender, and level of education. The results provide evidence that the concept of parental burnout makes sense for African parents, and that the PBA can be considered as a psychometrically sound instrument to measure it. However, the results also point to the need for further exploration of the nature of parental burnout in Africa. As in previous studies, low correlations between parental burnout and the sociodemographic characteristics were found. Finally, the current results suggest the existence of parenting subcultures across the four participating countries that would be interesting to document.