Children's age matters: Parental burnout in Chilean families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For families all over the world, going through a pandemic has presented a number of challenges. In particular, social distancing measures involving the closure of schools and day care centers, as well as increasing work hours at home, made parents face very demanding situations. However, we know little about whether parents' burnout levels are influenced by the age of their children. This study sought to determine whether levels of parental burnout (PB) are higher in families with at least one child under the age of four than in families with older children (5 to 18 years). The second goal was to explore whether having children under 4 years of age moderates the relationship between parental cooperation and PB. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 651 participants (525 mothers and 126 fathers) since May 18th until August 27th, 2020. The main results showed that child age is a predictor of PB. Besides, having a child aged 0-4 years old moderates the relationship between parental cooperation and PB. Finally, it was found that in cases where there was at least one child under 4 years of age in the family, with one of the partners who worked remotely, the respondent's PB rose by 7.9 points. The implications of these results with respect to the consideration of children's ages in the different parental scenarios were discussed.

Manifestation of Trauma: The Effect of Early Traumatic Experiences and Adult Attachment on Parental Reflective Functioning.

There are many risk factors that make the transition to parenthood difficult, even in the best of circumstances. One such risk factor is the experience of parental childhood trauma, which has the potential to affect the parent/child relationship, both in terms of attachment style parental reflective functioning. This study aims to expand on the line of research concerned with the effects that trauma has once that child transitions into adulthood and into parenthood by looking at the role that the experience of trauma and adult attachment has in relation to parental reflective functioning. This study assessed mothers (N = 125) by using the CTQ (childhood experience of trauma), ECR (adult attachment), and the PRFQ (parental RF). Our study found that in the presence of physical neglect, insecure attachment had a particularly deleterious effect on maternal reflective functioning. This relationship was not as strong in the absence of physical neglect.