Le burn-out peut concerner le domaine professionnel mais aussi parental. Les mères, confrontées à de nombreux facteurs de stress, sont effectivement susceptibles de présenter des symptômes d’épuisement. Afin de mieux cerner cette problématique, cette recherche s’intéresse aux facteurs explicatifs de l’épuisement maternel auprès de mères de jeunes enfants. Cent vingt mères ayant au moins un enfant entre un et trois ans ont complété des questionnaires comprenant une fiche anamnestique et cinq échelles : le Maslach Burnout Inventory adapté à la maternité, la Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, l’échelle parentale de provisions sociales et l’échelle de stress de la vie quotidienne lié à l’interface famille/travail. Les analyses ont montré que 34,2 % (n=41) des mères de jeunes enfants présentent un certain degré d’épuisement. Les facteurs principaux en lien avec ce syndrome seraient : le fait de ne pas avoir d’activité professionnelle, la perception de difficultés financières, un mauvais sentiment de compétence parentale et la symptomatologie dépressive. Cette étude préliminaire permet de mettre en évidence l’importance de l’épuisement chez les mères de jeunes enfants et souligne la nécessité de développer des programmes d’intervention et de prévention.

Having a child is a fulfilling experience for most parents that can be experienced as stressful or even exhausting. If this happens, the parent may exhaust his energy reserves to the point where he or she is no longer able to be emotionally available for his or her child. If this persists, deprived of his or her strength, the parent develops a particularly negative and devaluing regard on most of his or her personal accomplishments. As a result, the parent would be suffering from parental burnout (Guéritault, 2008). Despite the fact that job-related burnout has been widely studied we have little scientific work on parental burnout. As in job-related burnout, parental burnout could manifest itself in three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization (emotional distancing for parents) towards others and decreased personal accomplishment (Maslach, Jackson, & Leiter, 2010; Roskam, Raes, & Mikolajczak, 2017; Schaufeli, Enzmann, & Girault, 1993). Although the Maslach model has been widely used to assess burnout, there is currently no clear consensus on its definition. Despite these divergences, several researchers’ report that the central core of burnout corresponds mainly to this exhaustion dimension, the burnout dimension who is most correlated to daily stressors (Malach-Pines, 2005; Schaufeli & Enzmann, 1998). In this way, studies of family stressors reveal that these stressors have the greatest impact on parenting and progeny development. Studies have shown that factors such as the presence of psychosocial risks, the high number of children, social support, professional activity, parent’ and children's young age, the difficult temperament of the child or the state of health of the parent may influence the level of parental distress (Deater-Deckard, 2008). The aim of this study is to find the main stressors in the scientific literature which being unemployed have an influence on emotional exhaustion. In order to do that, we analyzed some personal and family characteristics: mother's social support, family related stressors as well as economic precariousness and psychosocial risks.

A total of 120 mothers (M=31.5, CI=4.3) with at least one child between the age of 1 and 3 years completed a questionnaire to collect socio-demographic information and five scales to identify the factors of interest.

Only emotional exhaustion scale had a satisfactory reliability and was selected for this study. Thirty four point two percent (n=41) of women presented a rate above 1.5 standard deviations above the mean. The main factors related to maternal exhaustion are the not having a job, financial difficulties, depression and a low sense of competence.

This study made it possible to obtain an estimate of the frequency of maternal exhaustion in a French population as well as to explore the factors that could be associated with it. Especially, this research has shown the link between maternal exhaustion and some of the stressors having the greatest impact on parental distress, such as be unemployed, financial difficulties, depression or a low sense of competence. Like job-related exhaustion, maternal exhaustion would be the result of exposure to various and inherent stressors in the maternal role. Thus, while some sociodemographic factors are linked to burnout, the most important factors seem to remain those related to the traits of the parents and can therefore be given special attention in intervention programs (Mikolajczak, Raes, Avalosse, & Roskam, 2017). These findings provide insight into possible avenues of prevention such as the follow-up of mothers with a low sense of competence and a new perspective on the benefits of working with mothers of young children.