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Disentangling the effects of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional competence on parental burnout

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Abstract

Emotional competence (EC) has been documented as one of the most influential resource to protect parents from parental burnout (PB). However, the dimensions of EC have inconsistent effects across studies: while intrapersonal EC consistently had a protective effect on PB, interpersonal EC was paradoxically documented both as a risk factor and a protective factor. Relying on third-variable effect analyses on two independent datasets (842 Belgian parents and 377 Polish parents), this pre-registered study found that (1) intrapersonal EC drives the protective effect of interpersonal EC, and (2) after being adjusted for intrapersonal EC, interpersonal EC does not have significant effect on PB in the Polish sample and even becomes detrimental in the Belgian sample. These findings highlight the importance of examining the unique effect of each EC dimension while controlling for the others. Besides, it also implicates interventions aimed at improving EC to reduce PB should focus on intrapersonal EC.

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Fig. 1

Data Availability

The analyses reported in this article were formally preregistered, and the datasets of study variables have also been made available. They could be seen on the permanent third-party archive, Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/ady2t/?view_only=0d4e6adfe2b64799a66da8a4778b2632

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Funding

M.M., I.R., and G.-X.L. were supported by a Coordinated Research Grant from the French Community of Belgium (ARC Grant n°19/24–100). This fund did not exert any influence or censorship of any kind on the present work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychological Sciences Research Institute, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Louvain, Place Cardinal Mercier, 10, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Gao-Xian Lin, Isabelle Roskam & Moïra Mikolajczak

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  1. Gao-Xian Lin
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  2. Isabelle Roskam
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  3. Moïra Mikolajczak
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Contributions

G.-X.L. proposed the analysis strategies. G.X.L. performed the data analyses and interpretation. G.-X.L. and M.M. drafted the manuscript. I.R. provided revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gao-Xian Lin.

Ethics declarations

Consent to Participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Protections of Research Participants

The studies were carried out in accordance with the provisions of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki.

Consent to Publish

The datasets used in this study are all anonymized. Besides, there are only group analysis results and no case report involved in this study.

Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests

M.M. and I.R. founded the Training Institute for Parental Burnout (TIPB) which delivers training on PB to professionals. The TIPB did not participate in the funding of this study nor did it influence the process or the results in any manner.

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Lin, GX., Roskam, I. & Mikolajczak, M. Disentangling the effects of intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional competence on parental burnout. Curr Psychol 42, 8718–8721 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02254-w

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