Longitudinal assessment of maternal parenting stress and its association with parental burnout during the COVID-19 pandemic

Children are a source of happiness, but they can also cause a lot of stress for parents (Nelson et al., 2014). Parenting stress can be understood through a broader set of theories that describe the interplay between stressors, resources and individual factors (e.g., Hill, 1949; Kemeny, 2003; Lin & Ensel, 1989). One of these theories is the double ABCX model of adjustment and adaptation (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983) that is based on the family stress theory (Hill, 1949). According to this model, parenting stress is a result of a complex interplay between a stressor, family resources, and the way the family sees the stressful situation (i.e., definitions, meanings), while adaption or maladaptation in a stressful situation influences the family’s ability to cope with future stressors. The current COVID-19 pandemic is a stressor that undoubtedly impacts all families around the globe. The pandemic has a potential of multiplying the parenting demands, as many parents are, for instance, combining their own work with homeschooling of their children (Griffith, 2020; Guo et al., 2021). Chronic (i.e., trait) parenting stress may increase the risk for parental burnout, as the latter is caused by a long-lasting imbalance between risks (i.e., stress-enhancing factors) and resources (i.e., stress-alleviating factors) (Mikolajczak & Roskam, 2018). Also the COVID-19 pandemic, in and of itself, may increase the risk for parental burnout (Griffith, 2020; Marchetti et al., 2020). Although acute crises are usually not linked to burnout, a crisis like COVID-19 may increase parents’ allostatic load, especially those who have already been exposed to the wear and tear of chronic stress (El Haj et al., 2020; Peng et al., 2020; Wade et al., 2021). According to the double ABCX model, family’s resources impact a family’s ability to cope with stress. One of the most important resources is social support (McCubbin & Patterson, 1983). Previous research has found that lower social support, for instance from one’s partner, is related to higher levels of parenting stress (Durtschi et al., 2017; Hughes et al., 2020; Kanter & Proulx, 2019; Östberg & Hagekull, 2000) and parental burnout (Mikolajczak et al., 2018). The current study uses longitudinal cohort data and latent trait-state occasion modeling (Cole et al., 2005) to investigate whether mothers’ chronic parenting stress is predictive of parental burnout symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, we will also investigate whether mother-reported social support received during the COVID-19 pandemic is related to parental burnout symptoms, and whether social support moderates the association between the chronic parenting stress and parental burnout. The conceptual model of the current study is presented under the heading "Variables".