Edited by: Katja Upadyaya, University of Helsinki, Finland
Reviewed by: Carolina Panesso Giraldo, Adolfo Ibáñez University, Chile; Olga Gómez-Ortiz, University of Cordoba, Spain
This article was submitted to Anxiety and Stress Disorders, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Being a parent can lead to exhaustion when risk factors offset protective factors. Recent research enabled the understanding of parental burnout antecedents among parents of typical and atypical children, but we know few about parental burnout (PB) among parents of intellectually gifted (IG) children. At the same time, several qualitative studies report particularities of being a parent of IG child(ren). In this quantitative study, we explore whether the risk of PB is different for parents of IG child(ren) than for the global population. We use two samples of 196 strictly matched parents: the first is composed of parents having at least one IG child, the second is constituted of demographically matched control parents (data collection took place from November 2019 to February 2020). We use Kruskal-Wallis analysis to compare groups. The results suggest that having an IG child does not significantly modify the risk of PB (Mean IG group = 32.45, SD = 28.21; Mean control group = 27.69, SD = 25.58; KW = 3.500,
Intellectual giftedness has been extensively studied. Although different conceptual frameworks exist, many authors define it as a high general intelligence reflected by a high intelligence quotient (IQ) (
Some authors, however, point to the burden that parents of IG children could face. Qualitative studies suggest that parents feel isolated (
It has recently been shown that when the burden of parenting becomes too heavy, parents are at higher risk for parental burnout (PB) (
PB results from a prolonged imbalance between risk factors (that significantly increase parenting stress) and protective factors (that significantly decrease parenting stress) (
This paper examines the effect of another characteristic of the child on PB: intellectual giftedness. In line with the arguments mentioned at the beginning of the introduction, we may assume that having an IG child would be a risk factor for PB. But we can also think of it as a protective factor: indeed, many IG children achieve better than others at school (
This research seeks to answer the question “does having at least one IG child modify the risk of PB?” Given that there are arguments for both higher and lower risk, we hypothesize that there would be no difference in PB scores between parents having at least one IG child and control parents, or if there is a difference, that the effect size would be very small.
Data were collected from a sample of 879 French-speaking parents having at least one child living with them. Among the 879 respondents, 458 parents (52.1%) have at least one IG child (see Procedure below). In order to answer to our research question, parents with IG child(ren) (i.e., having at least an IG child attested by an IQ test realized by a professional) needed to be matched with demographically similar control parents. After the matching procedure (see below), our final sample is composed of 392 parents, including 196 parents of IG child(ren) (later named “IG group”) and 196 control parents (later named “control group”).
Sociodemographic characteristics of the sample and equivalence of the control and IG groups.
0.282 |
||||
Male | 34 (8.7%) | 20 (10.2%) | 14 (7.1%) | |
Female | 358 (91.3%) | 176 (89.8%) | 182 (92.2%) | |
1.000 |
||||
Heterosexual two-parents family | 238 (60.7%) | 119 (60.6%) | 119 (60.6%) | |
Single-parent family (separated or divorced) | 100 (25.5%) | 50 (25.5%) | 50 (25.5%) | |
Single-parent family (widowed or unmarried) | 22 (5.6%) | 11 (5.6%) | 11 (5.6%) | |
Stepfamily | 28 (7.1%) | 14 (7.1%) | 14 (7.1%) | |
Homosexual two-parents family | 4 (1.0%) | 2 (1.0%) | 2 (1.0%) | |
1.000 |
||||
Primary education | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | |
Middle school | 8 (2.0%) | 4 (2.0%) | 4 (2.0%) | |
High school | 58 (14.8%) | 29 (14.8%) | 29 (14.8%) | |
Bachelor's degree | 128 (32.7%) | 64 (32.7%) | 64 (32.7%) | |
Master's degree | 156 (39.8%) | 78 (39.8%) | 78 (39.8%) | |
Post-graduate education | 42 (10.7%) | 21 (10.7%) | 21 (10.7%) | |
0.637 |
||||
Full-time | 167 (42.6%) | 81 (41.3%) | 86 (43.9%) | |
Part-time | 153 (39.0%) | 81 (41.3%) | 72 (36.4%) | |
Doesn't work | 72 (18.4%) | 34 (17.3%) | 38 (19.4%) | |
1.000 |
||||
0 to 1,500€ or 0 to 4,000CHF | 28 (7.1%) | 14 (7.1%) | 14 (7.1%) | |
1,500€ to 2,500€ or 4,000CHF to 6,500CHF | 80 (20.4%) | 40 (20.4%) | 40 (20.4%) | |
2,500€ to 4,000€ or 6,500CHF to 8,500CHF | 118 (30.1%) | 59 (30.1%) | 59 (30.1%) | |
4,000€ to 5,500€ or 8,500CHF to 10,000CHF | 80 (20.4%) | 40 (20.4%) | 40 (20.4%) | |
5,500€ to 7,000€ or 10,000CHF to 12,500CHF | 46 (11.7%) | 23 (11.7%) | 23 (11.7%) | |
More than 7,000€ or more than 12,500CHF | 30 (7.7%) | 15 (7.7%) | 15 (7.7%) | |
Missing values | 10 (2.6%) | 5 (2.6%) | 5 (2.6%) | |
0.903 |
||||
Considers oneself as not in precariousness | 329 (83.9%) | 164 (83.7%) | 165 (84.2%) | |
Considers oneself as in precariousness | 58 (14.8%) | 29 (14.8%) | 29 (14.8%) | |
Considers oneself as in high precariousness | 5 (1.3%) | 3 (1.5%) | 2 (1.0%) | |
42.92 (7.612) | 43.45 (8.993) | 42.39 (5.905) | 0.159 |
|
Missing values | 1 | 1 | ||
2.13 (0.827) | 2.13 (0.828) | 2.13 (0.828) | 1.000 |
|
1.98 (0.806) | 1.95 (0.802) | 2.01 (0.810) | 0.475 |
dParents were asked to indicate their net monthly income in Swiss francs if they previously indicated that they live in Switzerland. The equivalences were calculated considering the difference in the cost of living in Switzerland compared to Belgium and France.
The present research was approved by the Ethical committee of IPSY (Research Institute in Psychological Sciences of UCLouvain). The research took the form of an online questionnaire available from November 19, 2019 to February 17, 2020 (i.e., before the COVID crisis).
Parents were recruited in the context of a larger study about PB in specific populations [precarious parents, same-sex parents, single parents, parents of teenager(s), parents of disabled child(ren), parents of adopted child(ren) and parents of IG child(ren)]. Control parents were recruited at the same time. Parents of IG children were recruited through three channels:
To avoid any possible recruitment bias, the parents were not made aware that the study focused on PB. Instead, it was presented as a study on parental wellbeing and exhaustion. At the beginning of the questionnaire, the parents were informed of the confidential nature of their answers and that they could stop their participation at any time without any justification. After these explanations, they had to consent to participate in the study in order to access the questionnaire itself. By participating, respondents were given the chance to win 200€ (or 220 CHF). Participants had to give their e-mail address if they want to participate to the raffle. They were made aware that the e-mail address was automatically registered in a file separated from the form.
Participants were asked their gender, age, country of residence, number of children in the family, and number of children living with them (i.e., children who sleep at home at least half-time). We also asked parents to indicate their children's age and gender, as well as their own educational level, employment status, family situation (e.g., single family, two-parents family, etc.), net monthly household income, and perceived financial situation. Response options for all the variables are available in
Participants were asked to indicate whether they have any IG child(ren) living at home and certified by a professionally conducted IQ test. In Belgium (i.e., the most represented country), a child is considered as IG if he presents an IQ of minimum 125–130. However, we cannot exclude that some professionals demonstrate some flexibility regarding this score, considering the global profile of the child (
PB was assessed
We demographically matched the IG group with the control group in order to control for demographic variables in a robust way and be sure that the obtained result is due to the IG status of the child and not to a demographic difference. It has been carried out with the Case control matching tool of Stata 17 (
The equivalence of the IG group and the control group after having been matched was checked using Chi2 tests for categorical variables,
To test whether having one or more IG children at home modifies the risk of PB, we first checked the distribution of the PBA. It was not normal according to Skewness and Kurtosis indices. We therefore computed a Kruskal-Wallis test for independent samples. The independent variable was the IG status of children and the dependant variable was the PBA as a continuous variable. All analyses, except the Case control matching, have been computed on SPSS 27 [IBM (
In the IG group, the mean of the PBA is 32.45 and the standard deviation is 28.21. In the control group, the mean is 27.69 and the standard deviation is 25.58. The Kruskal-Wallis test (index = 3.500; degree of freedom = 1) shows a
This research had the objective to assess whether having at least one IG child living at home substantially alters the risk of developing PB. The results indicate that although parents with an IG child have marginally higher PB scores than the control group, the effect size is trivial.
This is in line with results of Mikolajczak et al. (
Despite its strengths, this study has some limitations which may be the starting point of other researches. A first limitation concerns the reduction of our sample in order to create demographically matched groups. The matching procedure made us lose half of our original sample, and one could say that the results may have been different with the whole sample. However, it has likely changed it in a more reliable way because the matching allowed us to control for the impact of demographic variables and therefore increase the robustness of the results.
A second limitation is that the number of IG children in a given family has not been considered, even though having several children with special needs was found to be a risk factor for PB (
A third, related, limitation is that we did not ask to parents if their IG child(ren) had another special feature, whereas the study of Gérain and Zech (
Fourth, we decided to select our samples strictly based on
Fifth, we did not consider parent's giftedness status in this study. It would be very interesting to find out whether there is an interaction effect between the child's and the parent's intellectual giftedness in the emergence of PB. Would the parenthood be easier if the parent and the child have the same IG status, no matter if it is IG or not IG?
Sixth, even though we are glad to see that parents of IG child(ren) are not at higher risk of PB, it does not mean that they do not experience (other) difficulties in their parenthood. For example, they could feel a pressure to allow their child(ren) to develop their full potential. Future studies could explore the experience of IG child(ren)'s parents with other angles of approach.
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethical Committee of IPSY (Research Institute in Psychological Sciences of UCLouvain). The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
IR built the online questionnaire and performed the case control matching. AV and ZS collected the data together. ZS performed the other analysis. ZS, AV, and MM have written the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.
IR and MM were supported by a Coordinated Research Grant from the French Community of Belgium (ARC Grant No. 19/24–100). This fund did not exert any influence or censorship of any kind on the present work.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
We thank the associations CVIM, Singularités Plurielles, Mensa Belgique, HP Repères and Anpeip for their help in the recruitment of parents of intellectually gifted children. We also thank Adeline Parache, Marion Vandenbroucke, Armelle Van Leeuwen, Marie Roulin, Alice Masson, Céline Eeckout, Julie Meulemans, Clara Eecklaer, and Gwaëlle Lacroix who recruited control parents in the context of their end of study dissertation.