Abstract
Parenting is recognized as a complex and stressful activity, which in recent years has been linked to the potential development of parental burnout among mothers and fathers. With the spread of COVID-19 around the globe, not only have situations of health emergency and economic difficulty emerged, but also tremendous impacts on individual lives and family role divisions, which continue to be experienced today. As lockdown measures have affected unemployment rates, financial insecurity levels, social support, amount of leisure time, and the number of caring responsibilities, parents are expected to be at higher risk for developing parental burnout. Co-parenting is presented as a factor which can mitigate the effect between COVID-19 lockdown measures and the levels of experienced parental burnout. Nevertheless, we argue that the role of co-parenting in association with the implications of COVID-19 on parental stress differs between men and women. As parenthood remains an activity that is largely gender-based, co-parenting is hypothesized to be of more crucial importance in attenuating the effect between COVID-19 lockdown measures and parental burnout for fathers in comparison to mothers. Our results confirm previous findings that COVID-19 has increased levels of parental burnout. The relationship between state-imposed COVID-19 lockdown measures and levels of parental burnout was not found to be significantly affected by co-parenting. However, when assessing this two-way interaction separately for men and women, we saw that this mitigating effect was significant for fathers and non-significant for mothers.
Highlights
The spread of COVID-19 around the globe has led to situations of health emergency and economic difficulties, but has had tremendous implications for individuals’ personal lives and family role divisions
Recent studies show that experiences of parental burnout increased due to the COVID19 pandemic, and the lockdown measures that have been taken by the government
Factors that have been shown to increase the risk of parental burnout include having a child with special needs, a lack of stable traits among parents, a deficiency in family functioning, as well as unemployment statuses among parents, financial insecurity, low levels of social support from family and friends, a lack of leisure time (Norberg and Green 2007; Basaran et al 2013; Mikolajczak et al 2017; Griffith 2020)
Summary
The spread of COVID-19 around the globe has led to situations of health emergency and economic difficulties, but has had tremendous implications for individuals’ personal lives and family role divisions. State-implemented measures were taken to combat the spread of the virus, known as the various forms of “lockdown” with implications for public events, (social) gatherings, restrictions on movement and travelling, and the closing of workplaces, schools, and day-care facilities. Even though these changes are essential in the battle against COVID-19, people’s daily lives have been drastically impacted. Factors that are associated with higher risks of parental burnout, and which the COVID-19 put pressure on, are parental unemployment, financial insecurity, low levels of social support from family and friends, and a lack of leisure time (Griffith 2020; Mikolajczak et al 2017). The COVID-19 pandemic has put a lot of pressure on those latter factors, and parents might be at higher risk for developing parental burnout during times of crisis
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