Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA)

Abstract

The Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA) is a 23-item questionnaire measuring the four dimensions of parental burnout, i.e., emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing, feelings of being fed up, and contrast with the previous parental self. Parental burnout results from chronic imbalance between factors that increase parenting stress and resources that alleviate it. It is a serious condition as it affects 5–8% of parents in Western countries and results in parental neglect and violence toward the offspring. The PBA was developed on the basis of testimonies of distressed parents. Evidence for its content, construct, and predictive validity was found and replicated across samples. The PBA has been translated and validated in 21 languages. Clinical cutoff as well as a brief 5-item version of the PBA is also available. The PBA can be administrated online with automatic feedback or as a paper-and-pencil version. The PBA is relevant to mindfulness research that has been successfully applied to parenting, but has yet to consider parental burnout as the most severe experience of parenting.KeywordsStressExhaustionNeglectViolenceParenting