The Influence Of Parental Burnout On Psychological,Interpersonal And Academic Development Of Junior Middle School Students

Parental burnout is a psychological syndrome caused by chronic parenting stress,which is characterized by extreme exhaustion of parental role,emotional distancing from children,and even feeling that they have lost the qualification to be excellent parents.As children are in a relatively weak position in parent-child interaction,parental burnout possibly brings negative consequences for parents while causing more serious negative effects on their children.Given that junior high school students are not only in the critical period of ability development and but also in a relatively weak position in parent-child relationship,this study will focus on the effects and mechanisms of parental burnout on psychological adjustment,friendship quality and academic engagement of junior high school students from both positive and negative perspectives.In this study,317 middle school students and their parents were selected from a middle school in Henan province by using convenient sampling method.Data were collected for three times,with an interval of one month.Time 1 measured parental burnout;Time 2 measured parental control,parent-child relationship,parental academic involvement and parental neglect perceived by junior middle school students;Time 3 measured psychological adjustment,friendship quality and academic engagement of junior middle school students.SPSS21.0 and AMOS24.0 software were used to process and analyze the data,and correlation analysis,regression analysis and path analysis of structural equation modeling were used to test the research hypothesis.The results showed that:(1)Parental burnout negatively predicted junior middle school students’ positive psychological adjustment and marginally positively predicted negative psychological adjustment.Parental psychological control mediated the relationship between parental burnout and junior high school students’ negative psychological adaptation.(2)Parent-child conflict mediated the relationship between parental burnout and junior high school students’ negative friendship quality.(3)Parental burnout negatively predicted junior middle school students’ academic engagement and positively predicted disaffection.Parental neglect mediated the relationship between parental burnout and junior high school students’ engagement,and mediated the relationship between parental burnout and junior high school students’ disaffection.These results reveal that parental burnout can induce negative factors such as parental psychological control,parent-child conflict and parental neglect,and then affect the negative development of junior middle school students’ psychology,interpersonal and academic aspects,and the impact of burnout on the development of junior high school students is comprehensive and holistic.Therefore,we should pay attention to the problem of parental burnout,take active prevention and intervention measures,and strive to avoid and reduce the adverse impact of parental burnout on the development of junior middle school students.