[Music] parents are often typecast as people who never tire out from feeding kids all hours of the night to being at every Little League game or band concert they're often cast as superhuman but is obvious as it sounds parents aren't magical limitless beings and they can get burned
out just like anyone else well maybe not just like anyone else research is starting to show that their brand of burnout seems to be unique and by learning to identify it fast we can help avoid it psychologists define burnout as a state of emotional physical and mental exhaustion
caused by excessive and prolonged stress we often associate it with school or work and until somewhat recently this was the main way psychologists thought about it too but lately they found that Parenthood leads to similar effects a study published in 2014 used testimonies from nine hundred and one
parents and it identified four main factors to parental burnout first people felt exhausted while parenting though not necessarily while doing other things like being at work they also felt like they were losing pleasure and fulfillment in their parental role and finally burned out parents emotionally distanced themselves from
their children and were prone to contrasting Parenthood with their lives before kids those first two traits are pretty similar to career burnout but this study showed that the last two are unique workers don't tend to dwell on their pre job lives and they're also prone to dehumanizing the
people they work with in a way burned-out parents don't seem to dehumanize their kids which is reassuring actually using these four traits as a starting point you can measure parental burnout with surveys that ask parents to rate how true statements feel things like I sometimes feel as though
I'm taking care of my children on autopilot and these surveys place the frequency of parental burnout at anywhere between 2 and 12 percent that's a whole lot of tired parents but this research was done on parents in Europe so the numbers could vary by culture Wilner Morris studies
continued still considering parental burnout can impact the level of care parents provide to their kids and themselves it's important we learn how to identify and reduce it so how do you figure out when someone is at risk there seem to be a few ways for example researchers have
looked at the well-tested Big Five personality traits and they suggest that high levels of neuroticism and low levels of agreeableness or conscientiousness might make parents prone to burnout these are traits associated with having a hard time maintaining positive emotional relationships responding to other people's needs and keeping a
well structured home environment things that could make existing parental stress worse but on the flip side aiming for perfection can cause burnout too as one 20:18 study on Japanese parents pointed out as any motivational speaker will tell you no one's perfect and chasing that impossible goal can set
someone up to expend a lot of physical and mental effort to that exertion along with the eventual realization that there's no way to be the perfect parent can be demoralizing and send someone into burnout finally and more generally some researchers believe the balance between parenting risks and resources
is a big player and burn out too when the resources at hand including money support or time aren't enough to meet the demands of parenting that leads to more stress and if that stress is sustained burnout becomes more and more likely thankfully spotting this stress early can help
avert disaster if you notice a parent constantly striving to meet unrealistic goals it might be time to check if they're doing all right helping them avoid burnout could be a case of providing more resources to tip the balance like offering to take their kids to Little League practice
every other week for parents taking time to decompress can also be a great option hiring a babysitter or sending the kids to a relative's place for the night might provide enough room to rest and recalibrate but those options can be costly or impractical and might not be an
option for everyone so an upcoming 2020 papers suggest a more accessible option talk it out talking about struggling as a parent can feel shameful there's a lot of pressure to be the world's number one parent like it says on all those coffee mugs but engaging with people or
groups that acknowledge that parenting is hard can lighten the load research in other areas of psychology has shown the power of expressing yourself in a non-judgmental atmosphere and psychologists believe it could be just as effective with until burnouts so yes science is endorsing getting it all out on
parental Facebook groups share all the memes just be sure you're not yelling into the void talking to other people rather than just talking is key at the end of the day burnout is probably not what people hope for when they became parents but progress is being made about
how to identify and avoid it I mean baby sitters and rides to baseball practice aren't magical cures but the more we recognize burnout for what it is a real thing the better off we'll be thanks for watching this episode of scishow psyche if you want to learn more
about psychology of parenting you might enjoy our video about what having a baby does to your brain it's interesting stuff and you can watch it after this [Music]
