Validity of the Parental Burnout Inventory Among Dutch Employees

The purpose of this study was to validate the Parental Burnout Inventory (PBI) in a Dutch sample of working parents. The Dutch version of the PBI and questionnaires about work were administered to 627 working parents, with at least one child living at home. We investigated whether the tri-dimensional structure of the PBI held in a sample of male and female employed parents. Furthermore, we examined the relationships between PBI and the constructs work-related burnout, depressive mood, parenting stress and work-family conflict, which we assessed with widely used and validated instruments, i.e., emotional exhaustion [a subscale of the Dutch version of Maslach's Burnout Inventory], a Dutch Parental Stress Questionnaire and Work-Family Conflict. The results support the validity of a tri-dimensional parental burnout syndrome, including exhaustion, distancing and inefficacy. Low to moderate correlations between parents' burnout symptoms and professional exhaustion, parenting stress, depressive complaints and work-family conflict experiences were found, suggesting that the concept of PBI differs significantly from the concepts of job burnout, depression and stress, respectively. The current study confirms that some parents are extremely exhausted by their parental role. However, the number of Dutch employees reporting extreme parental burnout is rather low.

MATERNAL INTERACTION QUALITY MODERATES EFFECTS OF PRENATAL MATERNAL EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS ON GIRLS' INTERNALIZING PROBLEMS

The role of mother-infant interaction quality is studied in the relation between prenatal maternal emotional symptoms and child behavioral problems. Healthy pregnant, Dutch women (N = 96, M = 31.6, SD = 3.3) were allocated to the "exposed group" (n = 46), consisting of mothers with high levels of prenatal feelings of anxiety and depression, or the "low-exposed group" (n = 50), consisting of mothers with normal levels of depressive or anxious symptoms during pregnancy. When the children (49 girls, 47 boys) were 23 to 60 months of age (M = 39.0, SD = 9.6), parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (T.M. Achenbach & L.A. Rescorla, ), and mother-child interaction quality during a home visit was rated using the Emotional Availability Scales. There were no differences in mother-child interaction quality between the prenatally exposed and low-exposed groups. Girls exposed to high prenatal emotional symptoms showed more internalizing problems, if maternal interaction quality was less optimal. No significant effects were found for boys.

Five-year-olds' cortisol reactions to an attachment story completion task

An earlier study showed that negative parent-child interactions elicit cortisol increases in 5-year-old children (Smeekens et al., 2007a). In the present study, we examined whether an "imaginary" parent-child interaction situation, in which the child used a parent and child doll to complete a set of more or less stressful story beginnings, also elicited cortisol increases in the children. In a sample of 89 five-year-old children (47 boys), an attachment story completion task (Verschueren and Marcoen, 1994) was administered during a school visit. Saliva samples to assess children's cortisol levels were collected right after arrival of the experimenter at the school (T0, baseline), immediately prior (T1, pretest) and 20min after (T2, posttest) the completion of the task. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that children who displayed more insecure stories (i.e., stories depicting the parent as unavailable, unsupportive, or hostile) showed larger relative cortisol increases, but only if they had highly negative parent-child interactions 1 week earlier. Children who did not have negative interactions with the parent showed no cortisol increases when playing insecure stories. The results suggest that it is not the playing of insecure stories itself but perhaps the emotional memories of negative parent-child interactions triggered while playing insecure stories that elicit cortisol increases in children. This underscores the profound impact that negative interactions with parents may have on children's functioning and development, not only at the behavioural and emotional level, but also at the level of physiological arousal and regulation. Results also suggest that a secure attachment to one parent may act as a buffer against negative effects of low-quality interactions with the other parent, but more research is needed to more thoroughly test this assumption.

The predictive value of different infant attachment measures for socioemotional development at age 5 years

The predictive value of different infant attachment measures was examined in a community-based sample of 111 healthy children (59 boys, 52 girls). Two procedures to assess infant attachment, the Attachment Q-Set (applied on a relatively short observation period) and a shortened version of the Strange Situation Procedure (SSSP), were applied to the children at age 15 months and related to a comprehensive set of indicators of the children's socioemotional development at age 5 years. Three attachment measures were used as predictors: AQS security, SSSP security, and SSSP attachment disorganization. AQS security and SSSP security jointly predicted the security of the children's attachment representation at age 5. Apart from that, SSSP attachment disorganization was a better predictor of the children's later socioemotional development than were the other two early attachment measures. First, attachment disorganization was the only attachment measure to predict the children's later ego-resiliency, school adjustment, and dissociation. Second, as for the socioemotional measures at age 5 that also were related to AQS or SSSP security (i.e., peer social competence and externalizing problems), the attachment security measures did not explain any extra variance beyond what was explained by attachment disorganization.