The Comparison of Parental Burnout Experience and Attitudes Towards Gender Roles in Employed and Non-Employed Mothers Living in Tehran

The current study was administrated to investigate the attitudes to gender roles and parental exhaustion of parting duties in mothers having or not having paid professional activity. The research method was descriptive, and the research design is ex post facto. The study sample was 195 mothers (76 employed and 119 unemployed) who participated voluntarily from five regions of north, south, west, east, and center of Tehran. Measurements included the Parental Burnout Assessment (consist of parental exhaustion, contrast with the past self of the parent, being fed up, and emotional distancing from the parenting role), and the Attitudes towards Gender Roles Questionnaire (including the traditional, the gender-specific, and the androgenic attitude). The results of the independent t-test between two groups showed that there was a significant difference between two groups of employed and unemployed mothers in attitudes towards the gender-specific role and androgenic (gender equality) role (p = 0.02), and there was no significant difference in parental burnout and its dimensions. The results also showed that employed mothers, although having egalitarian attitudes to gender roles and experience more role pressure than unemployed mothers, experience less parental burnout compared to unemployed mothers who have gender-specific role attitudes. It is worth considering the role of overload in employing mothers and how unemployed mothers spend their leisure time with their children according to their gender attitudes.