Promotors: Isabelle Roskam (spokesperson), Alexandre Heeren, Isabelle Aujoulat, Aurore Fran莽ois,聽Mo茂ra Mikolajczak
One may wonder whether a cultural system that has placed the best interests of children at the聽center of its priorities could generate situations of great vulnerability for some of them. This is the聽very core question of the current research project. It is rooted in two related observations: (1) the view聽of the child has evolved over the last century. The child is now viewed as a human subject with聽multiple rights: education, security, stability, health, well-being, expression,鈥� (2) this evolution has聽led to a fast-growing expansion of the role and duties of parents who are expected to provide support聽and warmth, avoid harsh punishment and coercion, and develop the child鈥檚 potential. The 鈥済ood聽parental鈥� role has been translated into a series of duties associated with competences which,聽progressively, have objectified it as a full-time job doomed to success or failure. As it is聽conceptualized and formulated, the parental role is stringent, taxing, and often stressful. In this way,聽some parents may experience important and chronic stress that may increase the risk of parental聽burnout, which, in turn, may lead to detrimental downstream cascade of consequences for children,聽such as neglect and violence. However, uncertainty still abounds regarding the exact mechanisms聽whereby those phenomena interact. As a consequence, the current project aims at clarifying how a聽system聽 promoting children鈥檚 well-being may foster such downstream harmful parental pressure,聽which, in turn, ultimately yields deleterious consequences for those whom it sought to protect.聽In order to do so, four Work Packages (WPs), involving five disciplines, i.e. Cross-cultural聽Psychology, History, Public Health, Clinical Psychology, and Health Psychology, are proposed. The聽WPs bring together complementary backgrounds and methods, i.e. study of archives, quantitative聽survey, laboratory studies, qualitative participatory research, and ecological sampling methods聽exploring parent-child interactions, which will be combined to address common questions and achieve聽common goals. Based on the outputs of the WPs, a multilevel (i.e. historical, social, public health, and聽psychological) model of the antecedents, consequences, and moderators of parental burnout will be聽developed combining face validity and international Delphi consensus approaches.聽In sum, this interdisciplinary and fundamental research project addresses novel and timely聽issues with far-reaching implications, ultimately setting up the scene for new research horizons in the聽field of parental burnout.