Running on Empty: Understanding Maternal Burnout

Burnout; the topic that so many people talk about but so many also struggle to heal from. I hear my clients talk about it every day in my clinic and have also experienced it myself. The gut wrenching feeling of exhaustion that can come with burnout is real and debilitating.

You get the kids fed, dressed, and out the door. You answer forty emails before 9 a.m. You make dinner, referee an argument over who touched whose toy first, help with homework, and somewhere in there you're supposed to also be a person with thoughts, needs, and a pulse. Then you lie awake at 11 p.m. wondering why you feel completely hollowed out, even though nothing "went wrong" today.

If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. You may be experiencing burnout.

Burnout Isn't Just Being Tired

Parental burnout is defined as a chronic, parenting-specific stress response, and is the subject of a growing body of research separate from general job burnout or everyday fatigue. A recent systematic review examining factors related to parental burnout worldwide found that it consistently shows up as a combination of intense emotional exhaustion tied specifically to the parenting role, emotional distancing from one's children, and a loss of enjoyment or sense of accomplishment in parenting (Ren et al., 2024). That last part is often the hardest to admit out loud: it's possible to love your children fiercely and still feel completely disconnected from the experience of raising them.

This same review organized the contributing factors into layers, everything from individual traits like personality and self-compassion, up through relationship and family functioning, out to broader social and cultural expectations placed on parents (Ren et al., 2024). In other words, burnout isn't a personal failing that shows up in a vacuum. It's shaped by the systems around you, too.

Why Mothers in Particular

Working parents face a specific set of risk factors that compound quickly: role overload, disrupted sleep, financial strain, and the mental load of managing both a household and a career, all of which have been linked to elevated burnout and downstream mental health effects such as depression and anxiety (Mehall & Kittelson, 2024). For many mothers, this load isn't evenly distributed even in dual-earner households, which adds another layer of strain.

Relationship dynamics matter here too. A 2024 study of mothers found that parenting stress was associated with higher parental burnout, and that marital satisfaction played a mediating role in that relationship, meaning the quality of support a mother feels from her partner can either buffer against burnout or intensify it (Xu et al., 2024). The same study found that socioeconomic status shaped how strongly that stress translated into burnout, underscoring that maternal burnout isn't purely psychological, it's also structural.

What Actually Helps

Research points to specific, modifiable factors that protect against burnout rather than leaving mothers to simply "push through."

A 2025 study of mothers with young children found that self-compassion, perceived social support, and engagement in self-care activities were all significantly associated with better physical and mental health outcomes — and that these factors functioned as meaningful predictors, not just nice ideas (Bord et al., 2025). This means the way a mother relates to her own struggles internally (self-compassion), the people she can lean on (social support), and whether she carves out any enjoyable activity for herself (self-care) aren't indulgences. They're protective factors with measurable effects.

Practically, this might look like:

• Naming the exhaustion without judgment. Self-compassion research consistently shows that treating yourself the way you'd treat a friend in the same situation reduces distress rather than "letting yourself off the hook."

• Actively building a support network, rather than waiting for it to appear — whether that's other parents, family, a therapist, or a structured group.

• Protecting small pockets of self-care, even five or ten minutes, rather than treating rest as something you earn only after everything else is done.

• Being honest with your partner or co-parent about the actual distribution of mental and physical labor, since relationship strain and burnout are closely intertwined.

You are not alone!

Maternal burnout is treatable. You don't have to wait until you're completely depleted to ask for support. If you're noticing the signs of burnout in yourself such as emotional exhaustion, distancing from your kids, a loss of the fulfillment parenting used to bring you, that's worth bringing to a therapist, not just trying to power through alone.

Our team at Well Mind Body works with mothers navigating exactly this, every single day. We are here to support you.

Thank you for being here!

Dr. E

References

Bord, S., Inchi, L., Paldi, Y., Baruch, R., Schwartz Shpiro, M., Ronen, S., Eizenberg, L., Gens, I., & Yaari, M. (2025). The pivotal role of social support, self-compassion, and self-care in predicting physical and mental health among mothers of young children. Healthcare, 13(15), Article 1889. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13151889

Mehall, S. K., & Kittelson, M. (2024). Burnout and mental health in working parents: Risk factors and solutions. Journal of Pediatric Health Care, 38(5), 392–398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2024.04.010

Ren, X., Cai, Y., Wang, J., & Chen, O. (2024). A systematic review of parental burnout and related factors among parents. BMC Public Health, 24, Article 376. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-17829-y

Xu, X., Hanafi, Z., & Zhang, S. (2024). How is parenting stress related to parental burnout among children's mothers in China: The mediating role of marital satisfaction and the moderating role of socioeconomic status. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, Article 1431598. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1431598

One thing worth double-checking: I wasn't able to fully verify the exact page range for the Mehall & Kittelson (2024) citation through a direct database pull — the journal and year are confirmed, but I'd recommend a quick cross-check against the publisher's page before this goes live, just to be safe.