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Researchers from the Institute of Psychology at Maria Grzegorzewska University in Warsaw report associations between alexithymia and parental burnout as well as gender-specific differences.
Parental burnout is a chronic condition marked by exhaustion, emotional distance, and a reduced sense of fulfillment. Previous work has linked attachment insecurity and emotion processing problems to burnout in parents.
Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulty identifying, describing and processing emotions. The term literally translates from Greek as “lack of words to express feelings”.
In the study entitled “Alexithymia and attachment dimensions in relation to parental burnout: A structuralquad modeling Approach”, published in PLOS OneResearchers examined associations between alexithymia and attachment orientations and parental burnout, and examined whether patterns differ between women and men.
A cross-sectional sample included 440 Polish parents, including 229 women and 211 men aged 21–61 years. The average age of the participants was 38.91 years and the children presented typical neurodevelopment with an average age of 9.10 years.
Measurement and modeling
Participants completed the Parental Burnout Assessment and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale, focusing on difficulties identifying and describing their feelings and externally oriented thinking.
Attachment anxiety and avoidance toward mother and father were assessed using the Experiences in Close Relations-Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) questionnaire for mother and father.
Alexithymia showed consistent associations with parental burnout in all models. Analyzes indicated direct paths from avoidant attachment to burnout and indirect paths from anxious attachment to burnout to alexithymia.
What models show for women
Women in the sample reported connections between their relationships with their own parents and their feelings of exhaustion as parents. Greater avoidance toward their mother showed a direct association with higher parental burnout in the women’s model. Anxiety toward their mother was linked to higher alexithymia in women and higher alexithymia linked to higher burnout. Avoidance of their mothers was not related to alexithymia in women.
Women showed comparable tendencies when the models focused on their fathers. Greater avoidance of their father was directly associated with higher burnout. Anxiety toward their father was linked to higher alexithymia, and higher alexithymia was linked to higher burnout.
Group comparisons showed that women reported lower alexithymia and burnout scores than men, as well as higher avoidance toward their fathers at statistically significant levels.
What men’s models show
The men in the study showed strong links between their attachment patterns and burnout, with alexithymia playing a central role. Avoidance toward the mother was directly associated with higher parental burnout. Anxiety toward mother was indirectly related to alexithymia burnout. Men who described greater difficulty understanding and expressing emotions reported higher burnout overall.
The same pattern emerged when the models examined the father. Avoidance toward father was directly related to burnout, while avoidance and anxiety toward father were related to higher alexithymia, which in turn was associated with higher burnout. Overall, men reported higher alexithymia and higher scores on all measures of parental burnout than women.
Results from sex-stratified models implicate alexithymia in the association between insecure attachment and parental burnout. The authors argue that different gender models suggest the value of gender-tailored emotion-focused and attachment-informed support.
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More information:
Dawid Konrad Ścigała et al, Alexithymia and dimensions of attachment in relation to parental exhaustion: a structural equation modeling approach, PLOS One (2025). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0334647
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