A Review of Research on Mechanisms of Mindfulness Alleviating Parental Burnout—From Perspective of Risk-Resource Balance Theory (BR²)

With the ever-increasing social costs of raising children, the intensity of competition in the educational system, and the growing popularity of conflict between work and family, the process of parental burnout is increasingly observed throughout the world. Occupational burnout among parents is a significant issue in the globe. The proposed research has been developed according to the theoretical framework of Risk and Resource Balance (BR2) and combines empirical studies that have been conducted recently to investigate how mindfulness lowers parental burnout. The paper concluded that mindfulness primarily has two sets of pathways: The first set of pathways is that of mediation transmission - mindfulness removes parental burnout by reducing risk factors including perfectionism, rumination thinking, and perception of stress; mindfulness removes parental burnout by increasing protective resources including self-compassion, self-efficacy, parent-child relationship, and social support. The second one is the feedback reinforcement path - mindfulness moderates the beneficial effect of resource factors by increasing the beneficial effect of protective resources, or decreasing the adverse factor is resource factors by increasing the beneficial effect of protective factors, thus decreasing parental burnout. This research has pointed me to future theoretical and empirical advancement, as well as has also given me the theoretical bases of how to construct measures of mindfulness intervention to reduce parental burnout given the BR2framework.