When Mothers BURN OUT

By Carole Ritter Page 1 2 Plain Truth — April, 1977

Guilt Feelings

There is nobody who feels guiltier than a mother who paddles her child for a minor infraction that would have been ignored earlier in the day, but which at that moment was just too much on top of the noisy television, the ringing phone, the overflowing garbage disposal, and the newspaper-reading husband wondering when dinner was going to be ready. This can happen to the same woman who, a few years before, childless, vowed never to act like those other mothers she saw who flew off the handle "for no good reason" and seemed to be constantly harried by a plethora of details. She wasn't prepared for the possibility of her own burnout.

A wife who works outside the home knows that the janitorial aspects of housewifery are not all that overwhelming. In an urban environment, a couple of hours a day or less of efficient effort usually suffice. But add children, and you instantly have a never-ending battle against grime, clutter and inadvertent destruction. On top of this add demands for emotional support, solace, geometry lessons, and advice to the puppy-lovelorn, and you have a recipe for imminent mental breakdown in many cases.

Having compared these stresses of motherhood to the stresses of the helping professions, the parallel is obvious.

Hope Amidst the Ashes

But if professional burnout has been diagnosed and labeled, what can be done about it? Can it be minimized or cured? Dr. Maslach and her associates found several effective ways of dealing with the problem. First, burnout rates were lower among professionals who expressed and shared their feelings with fellow workers or colleagues. Second, guilt-free time away from the people they served was of great help. And third education in dealing with themselves and other people — preparation for the professional-client or doctor-patient relationship — proved immensely beneficial.

If you're a prospective mother (or even if you've already had several children), what can you personally do to avoid the specter of burnout? If professionals can be helped by becoming more educated in interpersonal skills, then such studies should help mothers too. Perhaps no college or university offers the exact classes needed to prepare for motherhood, but taking a few courses in child growth and development can help. Reading a good number of books in this area may also be extremely beneficial. And it might be good to stay well informed on the advances made in recent years in the study of human behavior. Workers in this field have come up with some remarkable practical understanding of human nature and ways to work with it. At times their suggestions loudly echo biblical principles.

But formal education isn't the total answer. Perhaps some "field experience" (say, taking over for a friend with several small children while she and her husband go on vacation) would be in order. But even this won't give you a total feel for what the job entails, since you'll be able to pack up and leave at the end of two or three weeks. Nonetheless, it can give you a general idea of what you'll be in for. And if you find you're just not cut out for such strenuous work, you've discovered this before it is too late, while alternatives are still available. Or you may find that this is exactly what you want to be deeply committed to for a large portion of your life.

Peer Support

Resident psychiatrists and doctors working in hospitals sometimes get together in informal professional groups to give each other advice and support. But once they leave the hospital and go into practice on their own, they sometimes find they desperately miss such contact. Mothers need the same kind of professional contact and support. Some women today find themselves totally isolated from what in former times would have been an intricate network of female family and friends (mothers, aunts, older sisters) who would have served this purpose. Now a woman may need to develop such a network of surrogate family from those in the local neighborhood, since real family may be scattered all across the country. The morning kaffeklatsch, rather than being a mere gossip session, is many times an informal attempt to provide this type of professional support. Adult education parent-participation nursery schools can serve the same function.

Time Off

Dr. Maslach's research has shown that the one biggest help in preventing burnout is time off, time to escape without feeling a burden of guilt. "Time-offs" are possible in well-staffed hospitals and welfare agencies. But how does a mother take a time-off? She can't just call in sick.

Of course it is a wife's and mother's job to deal with her children and make her home a peaceful haven for her family. But she needs peace too. She deeply needs an occasional respite from her work, just the same as her husband does — and perhaps even more desperately.

Dr. James Dobson, well-known Christian psychologist and author of books on child and family problems, agrees with this premise and recommends two things: first of all, that domestic help for mothers of small children should be available if at all possible (he suggests hiring competent high school students if one cannot afford adult helpers): and secondly, that a wife "should get out of the house completely for one day a week doing something for sheer enjoyment. This seems more important to the happiness of the home than buying new drapes or a power saw for Dad" (What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, p. 53).

Another helpful alternative is for the father to take a more active role in parenting at critical junctures during the day. A recent study showed that the average time spent by middle-class fathers with their small children was thirty-seven seconds per day! Fathers directly interacted with their children an average of 2.7 times daily, each encounter lasting only ten to fifteen seconds! This shocking, tragic situation could be avoided if more fathers were aware of their wives' (and children's) needs and took over parenting for a while each day as a break for their battle-weary spouses. Studies have also shown that more home accidents occur around 5 p.m. — the time mother is cooking dinner, the kids are hungry and cranky, and dad has just returned from his day's trials. This is also the time when symptoms of burnout — the traditional shouting, screaming pre-dinner freak-out — usually occur. But a husband who really loves his wife as he loves himself won't have too much trouble empathizing with her situation. He will realize that if he can take only five minutes (or less) of his offspring before they begin to "get on his nerves," then he will know how she feels, having been with them all day long with no break.

There Is Hope

But what if you're already a burned-out mother? Is the situation hopeless? Not at all. Burned-out mothers, like burned-out doctors and social workers, can be rehabilitated. It takes time and caring, though, and a conscious effort on the mother's part to face reality, accept her condition, and do something about it.

Awareness is half the battle. If you know you are going to be worn out at a particular time, reschedule the day if possible or warn your family of your delicate condition. They can't cooperate and avoid pushing you to the brink unless they know how you feel. They'll probably make noise, for example, unless they realize quiet is needed. In his book Parent Effectiveness Training, Dr. Thomas Gordon mentions that one father made his small daughter aware of his need for "quiet time" when he first got home, promising to spend time with her once he had "recharged his batteries." She became so solicitous that she, who formerly bugged him to death, now kept others away, explaining his need for temporary rest. Perhaps mothers could put the same strategy into action.

Studies have also shown that regular daily exercise can be of great value in working off tensions that can lead to symptoms of burnout. Although some of this exercise can be had on family outings, it's probably best to have a program that can be worked on alone. Exercises like running, jumping rope, or working with weights (which can be very beneficial to women as well as men) can be done privately with no need for car-pooling or finding a babysitter. Or a mother may want to schedule a trip to the local health club as part of her weekly "timeout." And one can always do calisthenics along with a TV exercise show.

Time alone is therapeutic. Room for privacy is also important. While it may be nearly impossible for parents to afford a house where each child has his or her own room and both parents have some sort of den, sewing room, or whatever, a mother needs a nook or cranny she can call her own — a place where she can at least temporarily have undisturbed privacy. Sometimes evening walks alone can be helpful in this respect.

A Priceless Opportunity

It cannot be emphasized enough that marriage and motherhood can be a tremendous opportunity for growth and character development — and this, after all, is our purpose for being here. Without daily problems and challenges to face openly and honestly, life would indeed be boring and purposeless.

Each individual family and each mother will have to come up with their own particular strategy for coping with the possibility or the reality of burnout in their lives. Not all of the above suggestions will work for everybody; nobody's situation is exactly the same. But given enough creative thought, love and support, the problem of the burned-out mother can be resolved.

Matthew 24:14

When Mothers BURN OUT

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