The Structural Relationship between Mindful Parenting and Parental Burnout: The Mediating Role of Mothers' Parenting Stress

The few researches that have studied the burnout experience of Iranian parents in recent years have not developed or tested conceptual models and speculations regar-ding parental burnout in a meaningful way. Therefore, this study investigates the mediating role of parenting stress in the relationship between mothers' mindful pa-renting and their experience of parental burnout. This research was a descriptive-cross-sectional study, and its statistical population included mothers who had preschool children in the academic year of 2019. The statistical sample was compr-ised of 369 mothers who participated in this research by completing online quest-ionnaires. The research tools included the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA), the Parenting Stress Index- Short Form (PSI), and the Mindfulness in Parenting Quest-ionnaire (MIPQ). To examine the conce-ptual model, Structural Equation Mode-ling was used. The findings showed that mindful parenting explains nearly 78% of the variance of parental burnout only thro-ugh mothers' parenting stress. However, it does not have a direct effect on parental burnout. The findings, in addition to prov-iding a better understanding of parental burnout, can be applied in educational or therapeutic interventions aimed at redu-cing parental burnout.