It’s all too common for parents to feel exhausted whilst trying their best to be the perfect mum or dad. Mum-of-two Catherine Morgan signed up to a new course in search of her own waning mojo
I cannot describe the true exhaustion that I feel as a mum,” says Emma, a working mum-of zone. “I have never experienced anything like this and I did nightshifts, on calls, and worked [as a midwife] for 27 hours in a row.”
Emma’s experience may sound extreme, but she isn’t alone. I have had enough ‘I’m so tired’ conversations with too many mums to know that parental exhaustion is a very real issue. So when Emma says that, sometimes, going to work makes for a far easier day than being at home, I nod in agreement. Modern parenting, it seems, is taking its toll.
Understanding the cause
Research on parental exhaustion was once exclusively concerned with parents of sick children. But now, there is growing interest in parental burnout within families of healthy children as well. Last year, a Belgian study published in Frontiers in Psychology reported on the experiences of five exhausted mothers.1 The women were all aged 30 to 42 and had two children; two worked full-time, one worked part-time, one had stopped working, and the other was on sick leave.
For these mums, exhaustion was found to be “rooted in a tendency to over-invest one’s parental role, with a desire to be perfect and an overwhelming sense of responsibility for one’s children’s future, which would leave no respite”.
この記事は Optimum Nutrition の Winter 2018/19 版に掲載されています。
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この記事は Optimum Nutrition の Winter 2018/19 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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