Does coparenting contribute to maintaining a healthy parental involvement? Investigating the relationship between coparenting and parental Burnout

• Grant number: 18/23510-8
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): February 01, 2019
• Effective date (End): January 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Human Development Psychology
• Principal researcher: Elizabeth Joan Barham
• Grantee: Caroline dos Santos Spindola
• Home Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The constant demands involved in managing parental responsibilities can result in intense, chronic stress. The risk of child maltreatment is greatest among parents who reach a state of exhaustion, now being described as parental burnout. As such, it is important to identify conditions and skills that help parents deal with stress during the many years of effort it requires to raise their children. A potential source of support for parents is the other child's parent, even if the parents do not live together. Parents usually interact with one another to make decisions about how to raise their child, and these exchanges constitute the coparenting relationship. In the proposed study, descriptive, correlational methods will be used to investigate the influence of the quality of the coparental relationship on perceptions of parental burnout. A sample of 70 fathers and mothers who live with at least one child (of an age to attend pre-school or up to grade-four schooling) will be asked to complete the Coparenting Relationship Scale and the Parental Burnout Inventory. To analyze the data, the normality of the distribution of observations will be verified for each instrument, to determine whether to use parametric or non-parametric data analysis procedures. The strength and direction of the relationship between the total scores and factor scores for each instrument will be examined using the Pearson or Spearman correlation coefficient (for parametric and non-parametric data, respectively). A significant negative relationship between these two constructs would indicate that researchers should evaluate the effects of programs to strengthen the coparenting relationship on the likelihood of parents mistreating or abandoning their children.