Participants
A sample of 16,059 parents, composed of 4,419 fathers (Mage = 42.38, SDage = 9.83, range: 18–89) and 11,640 mothers (Mage = 38.03, SDage = 7.97, range: 18–88) from 36 countries, was drawn from the IIPB database collected between December 2017 and December 2019 (see Procedure below). Among the 42 countries that participated in the IIPB data collection, 36 countries were retained in the present sample because individualism at the country level was not available for Algeria, Burundi, Cameroun, Cuba, Rwanda, and Togo. Parents were eligible to participate if they had at least one child still living at home and were at least 18 years old. The sociodemographic characteristics of the pooled sample and of the sample in each country are detailed in Table 1.
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Procedure
The data used in this study came from the IIPB, a large international research consortium on parental burnout set up in 2017. This aimed to include the widest possible range of countries in terms of geographical location, cultural values and socio-economic level. These countries were invited to use a common protocol which was translated into 21 different languages using translation/back-translation procedures conducted by the consortium members and coordinated by the first author [for more information about the IIPB Consortium, see 1]. The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board both at UCLouvain and in each country. Ethics approvals in each country are presented in Table S1.
The IIPB data collection was carried out between January 2018 and March 2020. To avoid (self-)selection bias, the survey was presented as a study designed to improve understanding of parental satisfaction and exhaustion around the world, rather than as a study on parental burnout. Participants who gave their informed consent were asked to complete the survey anonymously, but could withdraw at any moment without providing any justification. The presentation of the survey (i.e., paper and pencil, or online) and the data collection procedure (newspaper advertisement, word of mouth, social networks, door-to-door, etc.) differed from country to country according to local practices. The data collection procedure in each country has been summarized in Table S2.
Measures
The common IIPB protocol included several measures addressing different research questions (e.g., comparing the prevalence of parental burnout across countries; exploring parenting cultures and the model of the child around the globe; investigating the relations between maternal burnout and gender egalitarian values at both country and individual levels). Because these questions are too different to be addressed in the same article, only the measures considered in the current study are presented below. The full IIPB protocol is available on Open Science Framework (OSF) at https://osf.io/94w7u/?view_only=a6cf12803887476cb5e7f17cfb8b5ca2.
Individual Level
Sociodemographic characteristics. Participants were first asked about: their gender; their age; their educational level (number of successfully completed school years from the age of 6); their working status (in paid work or not); the family type (two-parent family; single-parent family, step-family; others (e.g. polygamous family, two same-sex parents, multigenerational family)) the number of children living in the household; the age of the youngest and the oldest child; the number of women (e.g. co-wife, grandmother, nanny, helper, etc.) living in the household/direct entourage and caring for the children on a daily basis (including the participant); the number of men (e.g. grandfather, uncle, etc.) living in the household/direct entourage and caring for the children on a daily basis; the number of hours the participant spent with the children per day (excluding nighttime hours); and the neighborhood profile (disadvantaged; average; prosperous).
Parental burnout. Parental burnout was assessed with the Parental Burnout Assessment [PBA, 40], a 23-item questionnaire assessing the four core symptoms of parental burnout: emotional exhaustion (9 items) (e.g., I feel completely run down by my role as a parent), contrast with previous parental self (6 items) (e.g., I tell myself I’m no longer the parent I used to be), loss of pleasure in one’s parental role (5 items) (e.g., I don’t enjoy being with my children) and emotional distancing from one’s children (3 items) (e.g., I am no longer able to show my children that I love them), on a 7-point frequency scale (never (0), a few times a year (1), once a month or less (2), a few times a month (3), once a week (4), a few times a week (5), every day (6)). The parental burnout score was calculated by summing the scores on the 23 items. The higher the score, the more severe the parental burnout symptoms.
Parental task-sharing. Parental task-sharing was measured with 23 items specifically created for the IIPB. They were based on LeVine’s conceptual framework of universal parental function [41], encompassing 6 items on task-sharing regarding basic needs (e.g. Being present during the child(ren)'s meals), 5 items on task-sharing regarding material subsistence (e.g. Earning money to pay for food), and 11 items on task-sharing regarding childrearing (e.g. Teaching children what is and is not allowed). The items were briefly introduced as follows: “Being a parent encompasses a set of tasks and responsibilities. These can be shared among several adults who raise the child(ren) together. For the following tasks and responsibilities, indicate whether you take care of it on your own or together with someone else (e.g. the other parent, grandparents, relatives, brothers and sisters, people you trust in your community, …).” Parents answered the items on a 5-point-scale (me exclusively (0), mainly me (1), half me and half someone else (2), mainly someone else (3), someone else exclusively (4)). The parental task-sharing score was obtained by summing the scores on the 23 items. The higher the score, the more the parent shared his/her parental tasks and responsibilities.
Agency and self-directed socialization goals. Agency socialization goals were measured with the 12 items of the agency and self-direction subscales of the Goals and Values in Adulthood Questionnaire [GVAQ, 42]. A list of long-term goals and values that can be transmitted to child(ren) by parents was provided (e.g. Thinking for yourself: having your own views even if they differ from those of the others). Parents were asked to indicate how important they felt it was for their child(ren) to acquire or have each of these values as adults. Parents answered the items on a 6-point-scale (not important (0), somewhat important (1), important (2), very important (3), extremely important (4), the most important (5)). The agency score was obtained by averaging the scores on the 12 items. The higher the score, the more pronounced the agency and self-directed socialization goals.
Parental self-discrepancies. The discrepancy between parental selves was measured using a variation of the S-DS [43]. In the current study, the respondents were first invited to freely name five characteristics that the society in which they were raising their child(ren) considered that an ideal parent should possess (Indicate in the following boxes five features that an ideal mother/father should have in the view of the society in which you live). Second, they evaluated the actual/socially prescribed discrepancy through the following item: As a parent, do you behave the way society expects you to?, rated on a scale from 0 to 100% ranging from “I don’t behave in this way at all” to “I behave exactly in this way”, so that higher scores reflected lower parental self-discrepancies.
Individualism. Individualism at the individual level was assessed with the 11 independence items (e.g. I try to do what is best for me, regardless of how that might affect others) of the Singelis Self-Construal Scale [44]. Parents answered on a 6-point-scale (strongly disagree (1), disagree (2), somewhat disagree (3), neither agree nor disagree (4), somewhat agree (5), agree (6), strongly agree (7)). The individualism score at the individual level was obtained by averaging the scores on the 11 items, so that higher scores reflected higher individualism.
Country Level
Individualism. Individualism at the country level was retrieved from Hofstede’s work [45]. Individualism scores ranged between 0 and 100 (retrieved from https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/). In the present sample, Individualism scores ranged between 8 (Ecuador) and 91 (USA). They are displayed in Table 2 for the 36 countries.
Statistical analyses
Stata17 [46] was used to perform the statistical analyses. The full syntax and dataset are available on OSF at https://osf.io/h5fdx/?view_only=7947a23e5e2b4dd8b5a503064b758e22. Preliminary analyses were conducted in order to test the validity of the measures (i.e., measurement invariance across languages), normality, and correlations between all variables. Details about the preliminary analyses are provided in the supplemental material.
For the main analyses, we estimated a structural path model in which individualism at the country level predicted parental burnout both directly and indirectly through the three mediators, i.e. parental task-sharing, agency socialization goals and parental self-discrepancies, and the control variable, i.e. individualism at the individual level. The model also controlled for the relation between individualism at the country level and individualism at the individual level, as well as for covariances between the three mediators, and between the three mediators and the control variable, i.e. individualism at the individual level. The maximum likelihood method of estimation was used to estimate the model, with the option mlmv so that we used all the information available without listwise deletion. We then tested the direct, indirect and total effects of individualism at the country level on parental burnout. Since the specific effects of the three mediators were confounded in the indirect effect coefficient, we tested the equality of coefficients to identify if some mediators played a more important role in the model. Finally, we compared the total effect of individualism at the country level on parental burnout through each of the significant mediation processes by multiplying the coefficient of the path between individualism at the country level and the mediator, by the coefficient of the path between the mediator and parental burnout, plus the coefficient of the direct link between individualism at the country level and parental burnout.