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Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents in each country (standard deviations are in brackets).

Sociodemographic characteristics of respondents in each country (standard deviations are in brackets).

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In Western countries, recent decades have witnessed a revolution toward gender equality. Inequalities have been greatly reduced in areas such as education or employment. Because inequalities lead to distress, this development has largely benefited women. One notable exception is the realm of parenting, which has remained rife with inequalities even...

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... recruitment procedure (e.g., newspaper advertisement, word of mouth, social networks, door-to-door) and the presentation of the survey (i.e., paper and pencil, or online) varied from country to country according to local practices. A summary of the data collection procedures in each country is provided in Table 2. Table 3 presents the sociodemographic characteristics of respondents in each country. In order to avoid (self-) selection bias, participants were not informed that the study was about parental burnout. ...

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... Sweden is a country internationally known for scoring highly on the gender equality index and having family-friendly policies in place to enable parents of all genders to combine family life and work. Nonetheless, parents struggle to combine full-time work with involved parenthood, and parental burnout is rather common, especially among mothers (Roskam et al., 2022). Historically, the Swedish welfare state has been designed to create citizens who are independent of other people in relation to finances, emotional life, and social relationships. ...
... The majority of the participants were mothers with young children, who were explicitly affected by the process of transition to parenthood. As seen in previous studies, countries with high expectations of gender equality like Sweden also show high levels of parental burnout (Roskam et al., 2022), despite access to paid parental leave for both parents and subsidized childcare. What distinguishes the parents in our study from many other parents is that they saw the negative experiences of parenthood as outweighing the positive ones and that these negative feelings persisted over time. ...
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Loneliness is a common feeling often framed in negative terms. It can take several forms, including social, emotional, and existential loneliness, or through the concept of solitude, which is the desire to be alone. This qualitative study explores these types of loneliness among Swedish parents who regret having children. Our analysis of 29 interviews shows that loneliness is intertwined with regretting parenthood. Participants perceived that parental regret was unconventional, socially taboo, and unspeakable, which resulted in feelings of loneliness, shame, and guilt. They also reported that healthcare professionals, friends, and family rarely acknowledge parental feelings of regret and loneliness. Since loneliness is associated with the potential for mental health issues, it is important to build support structures for parents. In Sweden, the welfare state relies on healthcare professionals (such as nurses, midwives, and psychologists) to support parents. There is hence a need to create better support structures for parents dealing with regret and loneliness, including specialized training for healthcare professionals who work with these vulnerable groups.
... As primary caregivers, mothers often experience high levels of stress and exhaustion (Roskam et al., 2022), putting them at risk for mental illness. To reduce these pressures, parenting interventions should be expanded to include fathers and extended family members. ...
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... They must find their place in a work organization and explore whether they can fulfill their work obligations, evaluating how their own competencies meet specific role requirements and expectations [16]. At the same time, they report increased pressure at home related to childcare and household responsibilities [14] -especially working mothers [17][18][19] -subsequently resulting in lower levels of work-life balance compared with individuals in other family life stages [20]. In a large-scale study spanning several countries, it was found that conflicting demands from work and family reduced work-life balance primarily across early family life stages, especially among workers with preschool and school-aged children [21]. ...
... Furthermore, as assumed, women in family life stages 2 and 3 in particular were less likely to report high work-life balance, which supports the results of prior studies demonstrating that workers in family life stages involving the care of young, dependent children report increased pressure at home (e.g. childcare and household responsibilities) [14], especially working mothers [17][18][19]. Subsequently, it has been found that workers in these family life stages report lower levels of work-life balance compared with workers in other family life stages [20]. However, we were surprised to find that men's family life stage did not emerge as a significant predictor for their work-life balance. ...
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... This is important for future research to consider, given the fact that current studies suggest that there is a lack of gender equality in parenthood and the amount of burnout among mothers should be addressed. (Roskam et al, 2022). ...
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... Parents in individualistic cultural societies, which are characterised as valuing independence, individual achievement, and self-reliance, might carry out all the demanding parental responsibilities alone rather than sharing them with others in their family. Consequently, they might experience higher levels of parental burnout (Roskam et al. 2022). This intriguing finding emphasises the need to examine parental burnout from a cultural perspective. ...
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Purpose Parental burnout is a psychological syndrome that develops in response to the chronic stressors in one’s role as a parent. It can be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of both parents and children and has been empirically proven to result in more negative parenting behaviours. Based on recent research, parental burnout is more prevalent in individualistic cultures. Considering that parenting norms and practices vary greatly across cultures, there could be different effects of parental burnout on parenting practices in different areas. The present study aimed to determine the relationship between parental burnout and parenting behaviours in Shanghai and Nanning, two cities in China that differ in the extent to which they have been exposed to the cultural influence of Western individualism, and to examine the moderating effect of city on these relationship patterns. Methods Three hundred and sixty-eight mothers in Shanghai and 180 mothers in Nanning took part in the survey. Results On average, mothers in Shanghai had more severe parental burnout than their counterparts in Nanning. Furthermore, parental burnout was associated with positive parenting behaviours (i.e., parental warmth) and negative parenting behaviours (i.e., parental hostility and neglect), and the associations between parental burnout and negative parenting behaviours in Nanning were greater than in Shanghai. Conclusions These results can be explained by cultural differences in individualism and collectivism between Shanghai and Nanning. This study extends the knowledge on the role of culture in shaping parental roles.
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... However, the parental experience is not necessarily easier in a country with gender equality ideals. In fact, according to a recent multinational study, high egalitarian values at the individual level and high gender equality at the societal level are associated with higher degrees of burnout levels in mothers (Roskam et al., 2022). Roskam et al. suggest that this can be, in part, a consequence of relationships turning out to be less gender equal than expected. ...
... Without explicitly talking about gender equality policies, these mothers reveal that what is expected is the possibility of a work-life balance: to combine involved parenthood with paid work as well as things like physical activity and a social life with friends. Not being able to achieve this leads to feelings of entrapment, and at times to burnout (Roskam et al., 2022). ...
... To answer the questions outlined in the introduction, this study shows that Swedish mothers and fathers express regret for similar reasons (entrapment, overload, role conflicts, disappointments) as parents in other Western contexts, despite having strong reproductive rights, good access to formal child support and high gender equality on a societal level. One explanation could be related to what Roskam et al. (2022) recently suggested, that the high expectations of gender-equal parenthood are unmet in reality. Another reason could be the difficulty of combining involved parenting with gainful employment and other social activities, without much informal support. ...
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In the past decades, parents have used online forums to discuss challenges associated with parenthood, seeking support from other parents as well as professional advice. A highly sensitive topic discussed in these forums is regret about having children. Previous studies from various contexts have highlighted how regret, as expressed online, is often connected to difficulties of living up to and identifying with ideals of parenting, and that parenthood leads to feelings of exhaustion, entrapment and a negative self-image. In this article, I analyze how regret is expressed in two major Swedish online forums, including accounts from 142 parents. Sweden is a country that is often highlighted internationally as a pioneer in gender equality, with laws that protect sexual and reproductive rights and family- friendly policies that support parents in combining family life and work life. In light of this, I focus on the different decisions related to parenthood that people regret, the challenges and disappointments that family life has brought to parents, and the consequences that parenthood has had on their lives. I show how gender-equal parenting ideals are highly present in the discussions, and how they coexist and conflict with more traditional parenting behaviours and patterns.
... Thus, these policies may not be enough to boost fertility rates in Finland. Furthermore, a recent study suggests that mothers experience more parental stress in countries like Finland where gender equality in the society is at a high level (Roskam et al., 2022). ...
... This may be because relatively high gender equality in the public sphere sets also high expectations of parental equality, but these expectations are not fulfilled in the everyday life of parenting (Roskam et al., 2022). Thus, support from other mothers can be particularly meaningful in this kind of context. ...
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Becoming a mother is often accompanied by a loss of social connections, which can reduce the availability of social support. This can increase maternal stress with negative health outcomes. Therefore, we examined how mothers' social contact with other mothers living in the same neighborhood can form a compensative source of social support and wellbeing. Data was collected from mothers (N = 443) of a child under school age while visiting the public maternity and child health clinics located in two neighborhoods in Helsinki, Finland. We found that mothers' frequent and positive contact with other local mothers was positively related with their life satisfaction through identification-based social support. Contact also had a specific indirect effect on life satisfaction through social support. Frequent positive contact with other local mothers can serve to scaffold the emergence of social identification, which in turn unlocks further social support with positive health effects.
... At the same time, a common assumption in international research is that children intensify the work-family conflict of working families due to increased family demands [1]. Support for this assumption has been found, especially regarding working mothers, since they experience high levels of parental demands [30][31][32], and working families with young children, since these are the most time-pressed-they simultaneously must earn money and provide childcare [32][33][34]. Considering that a relatively large proportion of the world population is living in a family with children, in Finland this frequency was 37% in 2020 [35], work-family conflict among working families therefore requires closer attention in research. ...
... In line with our results, two recent, large-scale, comparative studies have shown that the level of gender equality in the society is an important factor to consider in work-family conflict research. High levels of gender equality in society combined with individual-level egalitarian values are, for example, associated with higher levels of burnout among mothers [30], and while living in a society characterized by gender equality reduces work-family conflict, it also strengthens the negative relationship between work-family conflict and well-being [31]. Thus, the governmental support of gender equality in other areas may have a rather paradoxical effect when inequalities are still existing in parenting. ...
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Working families commonly struggle with reconciling work and family demands. While the Nordic welfare states have been regarded as forerunners in family-friendly policies, worldwide trends threaten work–family reconciliation also in this context. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the associations between family interference with work (FIW)/work interference with family (WIF) and selected psychosocial risk and support factors in the work and family settings of Finnish working families. Data from the Finnish Quality of Work Life Survey 2018 collected by Statistics Finland were utilized to conduct binary logistic regression analyses (N = 1431). Risk factors in the work setting emerged as key covariates as all of them showed statistically significant associations with WIF or both WIF and FIW. Another key finding was that occasional conflicts within the family were beneficial in the context of both WIF and FIW. To conclude, both distinct and mutual psychosocial risk and support factors of FIW and WIF were identified, at the same time as two socio-demographic factors as well as one workplace factor were identified as covariates specifically of FIW. This study showed that work–family reconciliation is a considerable challenge among Finnish working families, and especially to women.
... A possible explanation lies in mothers' greater involvement in the upbringing and daily care of children: a large-scale study conducted by Meier et al. (2016) showed that the ratio of tedious tasks, such as cooking and childcare, to recreational tasks (i.e., involving leisure time with their children), is higher among mothers than fathers. A recent study conducted in 40 countries by Roskam et al. (2022), also showed that parental burnout was higher among mothers who have egalitarian values and who are raising their children in a country where gender equality is high in domains such as access to health care or employment. These mothers would have high expectations of equality in the domain of parenting as well, whereas in this domain specifically, the vast majority of tasks related to childcare and childrearing are still assumed by mothers. ...
... Similarly, the parents' age and number of children were not controlled for. Although we cannot completely rule out the possibility that these factors influenced the prevalence of parental burnout in the current study, sociodemographic factors explained the low amount of variance in parental burnout in previous research (e.g., Mikolajczak et al., 2017;Sorkkila and Aunola, 2020) as well as in cross-cultural research (Roskam et al., , 2022. Fourth, participants mainly came from urban zones of each country's capital. ...
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Parental burnout is a unique and context-specific syndrome resulting from a chronic imbalance of risks over resources in the parenting domain. The current research aims to evaluate the psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA) across Spanish-speaking countries with two consecutive studies. In Study 1, we analyzed the data through a bifactor model within an Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) on the pooled sample of participants (N = 1,979) obtaining good fit indices. We then attained measurement invariance across both gender and countries in a set of nested models with gradually increasing parameter constraints. Latent means comparisons across countries showed that among the participants’ countries, Chile had the highest parental burnout score, likewise, comparisons across gender evidenced that mothers displayed higher scores than fathers, as shown in previous studies. Reliability coefficients were high. In Study 2 (N = 1,171), we tested the relations between parental burnout and three specific consequences, i.e., escape and suicidal ideations, parental neglect, and parental violence toward one’s children. The medium to large associations found provided support for the PBA’s predictive validity. Overall, we concluded that the Spanish version of the PBA has good psychometric properties. The results support its relevance for the assessment of parental burnout among Spanish-speaking parents, offering new opportunities for cross-cultural research in the parenting domain.