The research, published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, tracked 988 Polish mothers raising children up to age five and found that a reduced interest in a child’s inner emotional world was linked to worsening symptoms of parental burnout in subsequent months.

Researchers also found that mothers who felt less confident in understanding their children’s emotions and needs were more likely to experience burnout.

According to previous international studies, Poland ranks among the countries with the highest rates of parental burnout, a condition increasingly described as one of the most serious mental health challenges facing parents of young children.

Researchers conducted three rounds of surveys over a one-year period, asking participants about symptoms of parental burnout and different aspects of how they understood their children’s emotions, thoughts and behaviours.

“This is important because most previous studies were cross-sectional, meaning they were based on a single measurement. They could only show that certain phenomena co-occurred, but did not allow to assess which of them preceded others over time,” lead author Anna Kamza, PhD, said.

The study focused on mentalisation, which researchers defined as a parent’s ability to understand the mental states underlying a child’s behaviour.

“Mentalisation can be defined as the ability to look at a child not only through the lens of behaviour, but also trying to understand what lies beneath it. That is, what the child might feel, think, experience, desire,” Kamza said.

The team examined three aspects of mentalisation: prementalisation, confidence in understanding a child’s mental states, and interest in the child’s mental world.

Researchers said one of the most surprising findings involved prementalisation, a tendency to interpret a child’s behaviour through distorted or defensive assumptions. They had expected that mothers who more frequently viewed their children as manipulative or intentionally difficult would face a greater risk of burnout.

Instead, the study suggested the reverse relationship.

“A more negative or simplistic interpretation of the child's behaviour turned out to be a consequence of burnout rather than a factor that preceded it. In other words, a mother does not necessarily burn out because she attributes inappropriate intentions to the child. It is prolonged emotional exhaustion that seems to gradually change the way she begins to interpret the child's behaviour,” Kamza said.

She added: “This means attributing inappropriate, sometimes even hostile intentions to the child, which the child actually lacks.”

Researchers also identified a reciprocal relationship between burnout and mothers’ confidence in understanding their children’s emotions and needs.

“For example, she might think her tiny baby is crying because she needs closeness. Then she picks the baby up and observes the reaction. If the baby continues to cry and refuses to be soothed, she looks for other possible causes,” Kamza said.

The strongest findings concerned mothers’ interest in their children’s mental world.

“It is about an active, genuine curiosity about what the child is feeling, thinking, and experiencing,” she said.

The research found that when this curiosity declined, symptoms of parental burnout increased several months later. The pattern appeared both across different mothers and within individual mothers over time.

Kamza said the findings suggested burnout may be linked not only to practical pressures such as workload and sleep deprivation but also to changes in how parents engage emotionally with their children.

“If we see this curiosity diminishing, it may be a sign that symptoms of parental burnout will intensify in the coming months,” she said.

The authors said support for mothers should extend beyond helping them manage responsibilities and find time for rest.

“This is, of course, very important, but supporting parents in maintaining emotional contact and curiosity about their children can be equally important,” Kamza said.

The study controlled for factors including the ages of mothers and children, education levels, number of children, employment status and place of residence in order to isolate the relationship between burnout and mothers’ understanding of their children’s inner experiences.

Researchers also highlighted the broader Polish social context. According to Kamza, Poland has some of the highest parental burnout rates recorded internationally.

“In Europe, we rank highest, and globally, third. This may be due to a combination of several cultural and social factors. In our country, parents, especially mothers, are expected to demonstrate a very high level of emotional, time, and organizational commitment. Parenting is supposed to be highly conscious, nurturing, and mindful. This creates a very difficult standard to achieve,” she said.

Kamza said sociological literature suggests the ideal of the “Polish Mother” remains influential in Poland, while the psychological costs of motherhood are discussed less often. As a result, women may find it difficult to talk openly about frustration or exhaustion because of guilt and fear of judgment.

The researchers plan to expand their work by examining whether similar patterns appear in other countries and by studying links between parental burnout, postpartum depression and anxiety disorders. Future projects will also explore the experiences of parents living in smaller communities.

“We would like to better understand how different social and environmental conditions influence the experience of parenting. In smaller towns, social support tends to be greater, while in large urban areas, parents are more likely to function in a more isolated environment and have to rely primarily on themselves, which may contribute to the development of burnout,” Kamza said.

Katarzyna Czechowicz (PAP)

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