A Combined Exploration of Romantic and Child Attachment Associations with Parental Burnout: Preliminary Findings Across Insecure Patterns

Parental burnout (PB) is a chronic stress syndrome related to one’s parental role that affects around 10% of parents in Belgium. PB also has harmful consequences for parents and children (e.g., suicide ideation or violent parenting behaviors). Despite evidence that family relational factors play a substantial role in PB, attachment has received little attention in this literature. To date, few studies have examined PB associations with parents' attachment, and none, to our knowledge, have considered child attachment. Yet parental psychopathology has been shown to affect child attachment security and to play a role in the intergenerational transmission of attachment patterns.
This talk will present preliminary findings from a study that aimed to (a) examine the associations between PB and the anxiety and avoidance dimensions of romantic attachment, (b) explore the link between PB and child attachment, and (c) investigate whether PB accounts for part of the association between parents' romantic attachment and child attachment.
French-speaking parents (N=310) completed online self-report measures of PB (the Parental Burnout Assessment) and romantic attachment (the Experience in Close Relationships-Revised). A subsample of parents of children aged 2 to 5 (N=152) also completed a measure of child disorganization, avoidance and ambivalence (the Attachment Insecurity Screening Inventory). Correlations analysis and prediction models were conducted to achieve our objectives.
Our results suggest that not all dimensions of insecure attachment are equally associated with PB. Specifically, romantic attachment anxiety, and child avoidance and disorganization appear particularly relevant. Moreover, PB appears to partially account for the association between romantic attachment and child attachment.
These findings suggest that attachment may be a relevant factor in both understanding and treating PB. They also call for further investigation of PB as a possible intervening factor in the intergenerational transmission of attachment.