Burnout Beyond Employment: Correlates of General, Parental, and Employee Burnout Among Working Mothers.

Abstract

Burnout is typically studied as an employment-related phenomenon, but work-related demand and strain experiences can occur in all life domains. We construct-validated brief and easy-to-deploy measures of general, parental, and employee burnout, and contribute to the growing literature that supports expanding the conceptualization of burnout as a more complex and domain-spanning phenomenon than is typically reflected in research and practice. We explored, via survey, the general, parental, and employee burnout experiences of a large sample of working mothers (n = 2334). Findings supported distinguishing among general, parental, and employee burnout, given unique patterns of correlations between these variables and a variety of health, well-being, demand, and resource variables. These findings support continued use of these new adapted burnout measures and inform practical recommendations for preventing burnout among working mothers.