The big five personality traits and parental burnout: Protective and risk factors

- Parental burnout syndrome arises from chronic exposure to excessive parental stress
- We examined the role of the Big Five personality factors in parental burnout
- High neuroticism, low conscientiousness and high agreeableness are all risk factors
- Future studies will need to probe other personality traits using the full NEO-PI-R

Parental burnout is an emotional disorder related to the context of parenthood (Roskam, Raes, & Mikolajczak, 2017). Personality differences in parental burnout were explored. One thousand seven hundred twenty-three parents, age 20 to 75 years, responded to a questionnaire. Results indicated that three personality traits are linked to this syndrome. A high level of neuroticism, a low level of conscientiousness, and a low level of agreeableness were all found to be risk factors for parental burnout. Parents who have difficulty initiating and maintaining positive affective relations with their child(ren) (high neuroticism), identifying and responding to their child(ren)'s needs (low agreeableness), or providing their child(ren) with a structured and coherent environment (low conscientiousness) are more likely to experience parental burnout syndrome.