Alexithymia and attachment dimensions in relation to parental burnout: A structural equation modelling approach
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Parental burnout is a chronic, parenting-specific syndrome marked by emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing from one's children, and reduced parental fulfilment. Although links of insecure attachment and emotion-processing difficulties with parental burnout have been reported, their joint associations remain underexplored. This study applied Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to examine whether alexithymia-defined as difficulties identifying and describing feelings and externally oriented thinking, assessed with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20)-is involved in the associations between attachment orientations and parental burnout, and whether these associations differ by sex. METHODS: A cross-sectional sample of 440 Polish parents (229 women, 211 men; 52.1% women; M = 38.91, SD = 7.33; age range = 21-61) completed the Experiences in Close Relationships-Relationship Structures Questionnaire (ECR-RS), the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), and the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA). Sex-stratified SEMs were estimated. RESULTS: In women, higher avoidance toward the mother was directly associated with higher burnout, whereas anxiety toward the mother related to burnout indirectly via elevated alexithymia. In men, avoidance of the mother was directly associated with burnout, while anxiety toward the mother related to burnout indirectly through alexithymia. Parallel patterns emerged for paternal attachment in sex-specific models. CONCLUSIONS: Across sex-stratified models, alexithymia was consistently implicated in the associations between insecure attachment and parental burnout. The patterns differed for women and men, underscoring the value of emotion-focused and attachment-informed support tailored by sex. Findings reflect cross-sectional associations and do not imply causality.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".