Assisted mothers and burnout symptoms: why help matters
E. Polonetskaya, E. PervichkoIntroduction
Apart from the inherent psychological workload, motherhood increases the volume of most basic household chores and requires extensive engagement in caring for one’s child. Nowadays, as nuclear families become more widespread, mothers are commonly left to face this struggle alone.
Objectives
Our research was aimed at studying the associations between the amount of help extended to mothers (with household chores and/or with childcare) and maternal burnout during the first years of motherhood.
Methods
A maternal burnout questionnaire in Russian (the Maternal Burnout Assessment Tool, MBAT), being an adaptation of the Burnout Assessment Tool to the motherhood context, was used to assess burnout tendencies in mothers. The sample consisted of 792 Russian-speaking mothers with children up to seven years of age. Single-factor analysis of variance was used for data analysis (Kruskal-Wallis test).
Results
Our research has shown that 45% of mothers receive an insignificant amount of help with childcare (where the mother would be left on her own for at least several hours a month), while 82% of mothers receive little to no assistance with household chores. The relevant mean burnout scores and p for the relevant single-factor analysis of variance are shown in Table 1 and Table 2 below, statistically significant differences according to the Dwass-Steel-Critchlow-Fligner paiwise comparison are marked with asterisks. No statistically significant differences in the burnout symptoms not shown below (such as cognitive impairment) were discovered. identification of most vulnerable groups
Table 1. Long description.