Objective: This work aimed to analyze parental burnout (PB) and establish a comparison between the times before (Wave 1) and during (Wave 2) the COVID‐19 pandemic.Background: The COVID‐19 pandemic brought additional stress to families. The pandemic could be particularly difficult for parents experiencing parental burnout, a condition that involves four dimensions: an overwhelming sense of exhaustion, emotional distancing from the child, saturation or a loss of fulfillment with the parental role, and a sharp contrast between how parents used to be and how they see themselves now.Method: A quasi‐longitudinal research design was adopted, comparing two cross‐sectional studies among Portuguese parents (N = 995), with an interval of 2 years between each wave of data collection. Participants were surveyed voluntarily through an online questionnaire located on the institutional web platform of the universities involved in the study. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used to take into account the associations among variables, alongside controlling the possible confounding effects.Results: Parents have overall higher parental burnout scores in Wave 2 than Wave 1, with increased exhaustion, emotional distancing, and contrast, but decreased saturation. Although parental burnout levels remain higher for mothers across the two Waves, the growth is greater for fathers than for mothers.Conclusion: Reconciling childcare with paid work is a stressful and new experience for many fathers. However, results suggest that even amid a crisis, some parents had the opportunity to deeply bond with their children.Implications: We expect this work to encourage stakeholders to consider proper intervention strategies to address potential parental burnout. Also, initiatives that strengthen gender equity within parenting context are needed.

Background: Motherhood is an emotional rollercoaster. This is overlooked by most literature, which tends to refer mothers’ pathological states of postpartum depression and anxiety, mainly seeking to understand their causes or predicting factors, and consequences on children’s development. Objective: In this study, we aim to observe the diversity of mothers’ emotional states, and to analyze both positive and negative feelings they disclose on specific public and closed motherhood sites on Facebook. We hypothesize that the intensive motherhood model is prevalent in Portuguese society, thus influencing the type of feelings and circumstances in which mothers disclose them. Methods: We collected posts and comments from the four most popular Portuguese Facebook motherhood sites during 2015 and, then, conducted a quantitative and content analysis to identify the expressed range of feelings concerning motherhood. Results: Mothers preferably share their positive feelings on public pages, whereas negative feelings are shared more in closed groups (CGs). Expressed positive and negative feelings were significantly different whether we look at normative or non-normative, public or closed sites. Discussion: We assume that motherhood sites on Portuguese Facebook reflect an intensive motherhood model that is normative in Portuguese society. Positive feelings toward children are promoted and openly shared in public normative sites, while negative feelings concerning motherhood are dealt with in the privacy of CGs. We propose an extensive motherhood model to overcome this duality and to allow women to pursue several different social roles simultaneously in an equally rewarding way.

Parental burnout (PB) results from a chronic imbalance between risks and resources and has severe and extended consequences on the wellbeing of parents and their children. Because same-sex (SS) and different-sex (DS) families face partially different stressors (e.g., SS parents are more stigmatized) but have also partially different resources (e.g., more egalitarian task sharing in SS couples), the current research aimed to investigate whether PB differs or not according to family type. Two studies were conducted. In study 1, family type differences in PB were explored among 114 demographically matched SS and DS families from 18 countries. Study 2 further explored the predictive value of family type, age, gender, and balance between risks and resources (BR2) in PB, using a sample of 222 matched SS and DS families. Parental burnout was not associated with family type in either study. Although differentially composed, the global BR2 score did not differ across family type and was a significant predictor of all PB dimensions, while controlling for the effect of family type, age, and gender. Thus, in accordance with reviewed studies, parental sexual identity was not associated with family functioning. Future studies should investigate the impact of specific risks and resources (e.g., social support from chosen social networks or legal climate) on PB levels among SS families.

Historicamente, a maternidade tem sido apropriada de diferentes formas pelas várias culturas, dando origem a modelos sociais que refletem e condicionam as expectativas e motivações das mulheres para este papel. Este estudo pretendeu identificar os objetivos, as atitudes, os sentimentos e as práticas atribuídos às mães e difundidos por grupos e páginas do Facebook dedicadas à maternidade, com o intuito de identificar o modelo de maternidade dominante atualmente em vigor em Portugal. Uma busca pelas palavras-chave mãe e maternidade, seguida da técnica “bola de neve”, em outubro de 2015, permitiu identificar 132 Páginas Públicas, 47 Grupos Fechados e 5 Grupos Públicos (n = 184) portugueses, tendo sido as respetivas descrições alvo de análise de conteúdo. Esta análise evidenciou que o modelo de maternidade veiculado pressupõe a centralidade da criança e das suas necessidades e interesses, e atribui elevados níveis de exigência ao papel de mãe. As atitudes promovidas são sobretudo a dedicação altruísta da mãe e a interação com a criança em benefício desta. As práticas de cuidado estão essencialmente ligadas à alimentação e saúde da criança, realçando maioritariamente os sentimentos positivos da mãe, tais como a felicidade e o amor maternal. Os objetivos de curto e médio prazo da maternidade visam a promoção da autonomia, da felicidade e do bom desenvolvimento da criança. As necessidades da mulher nunca são mencionadas, desaparecendo atrás do papel materno. O estudo parece assim confirmar a predominância de um modelo de maternidade intensivo no Facebook em Portugal, apesar das possíveis dificuldades da sua implementação pelas mães trabalhadoras, dado o modelo familiar de duplo emprego dominante na sociedade portuguesa.