Interestingly, it turns out there are a lot of similarities between parental and professional burnout, and not just in the sense that parents face the same overwhelming despair as overworked interns. Since the mid-20th century, researchers have been documenting the many social and cultural changes that have contributed to the rise in professional burnout. Jobs that were once simply considered trades, for example, are now often idealized as “callings.” People are working longer hours than they used to, and many feel less supported by company resources (such as personnel and equipment). Over the past several decades, this combination of factors has created a perfect storm for a wave of frustration and, eventually, burnout, often defined in academic literature as a combination of exhaustion, inefficacy (feeling less productive and competent), and depersonalization (feeling emotional withdrawal from your work and the people around you).

By the 1990s, the study authors wrote, “the same factors were at play in the parenting domain” in Europe: Parenting values became increasingly increasingly non-violent, sensitive, and supportive (read: idealized). Parents were expected to do more for their children in terms of education and attention — and all while an unprecedented amount of women were leaving home and entering the workforce, effectively giving parents more to do with much less time. So it’s not surprising that the study found that around 12 percent of parents surveyed were suffering from a “high level” of parental burnout — that is, experiencing all three criteria (exhaustion, inefficacy, and detachment) more than once a week. The researchers noted that more mothers than fathers took part in the survey, but parents of both genders were equally susceptible.