The socio-demographic risk factors for parental burnout in Togo

ABSTRACT Objective This study aimed to assess the level of parental burnout in Togo and to examine his association with other socio-demographic variables. It is an investigation that took place alongside the International Investigation of Parental Burnout (IIPB). Method Using the Parental Burnout Assessment, 103 parents in Lomé and Tsévié were asked to respond on paper or online questionnaires. Results The results highlighted the low rate of parental burnout among participants and significant associations between parental burnout and the socio-demographic variables. This study suggests that having a high level of education, being male and having very young children are the protective factors against parental burnout. However, few indications were found to establish a relationship between parental burnout and variables like age, ethnic origin, number of children, number of men and women living at home, neighbourhood, or having a paid professional activity. Conclusion Far from being revealing, this study earns to be investigated deeply in much more robust other studies to identify the protective and risk factors for Togolese parents. In any case, burnout prevention programs in countries (especially in the West) with the highest prevalence of parental burnout should learn from the parenting practices of countries with low levels of parental burnout like in Togo. Key Points What is already known about this topic: (1) Parenting is a universal activity that can be stressful for many parents. (2) As child rearing is a collective and social activity, it is the responsibility not only of the family, but also of members of the same neighbourhood, village or ethnic group. (3) The reconfiguration of the family structure (nuclearization) underway in West Africa and Togo limits the role of grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins in parenting, leaving biological parents alone to deal with the emotional and material needs of children. What this topic adds: (1) This study presents the local situation regarding parental burnout in Togo as part of studies initiated by the International Investigation of Parental Burnout (IIPB). (2) The results of this study highlight the low rate of parental burnout in Togo. (3) They also suggest that in Togo, having a high level of education, being male and having very young children are protective factors against parental burnout. (4) This study suggests that burnout prevention programs in Western (individualistic) countries where the prevalence of parental burnout is highest should be inspired by parenting practices in (collectivistic) countries where the level of parental burnout is low.

It has long been known that parents play a particularly important role in ensuring a climate of happiness, love and understanding within the family to enable children to grow up better and face the future. Caring for children, protecting them, and ensuring the harmonious development of their personality has been a virtuous and difficult task that is not neutral on psychological health. Thus, parenthood was recognized by the United Nations through the resolution A/RES/66/292, adopted on 17 September 2012, which devotes every 1 June to honouring the dedication, commitment and sacrifice of parents to ensure the future of their children (United Nations, 2012). In Togo, the role of the parents is also recognized and detailed in the New Persons and Family Code (Assemblée Nationale du Togo, 2012) and the laws on the rights of the child, which order that the primary responsibility for the education and the care of the child remains to the parents or their substitutes. The Article 227 of this code orders: "Parental authority is a set of rights and obligations which the law grants or imposes on the father and mother in relation to the person and property of their minor children, who are not emancipated, with a view to fulfilling their duties of custody, supervision and education." (Assemblée Nationale du Togo, 2012, p. 26).
Parental burnout can occur when parents are exposed to chronic parental stress without being able to overcome it; parental stress occurs when the demands of parenting exceed the parents' resources (Roskam et al., 2017;Roskam et al., 2018). In other words, parents with this condition will have reached a point in their lives where they feel they are not good parents anymore. According to these authors, the parental burnout includes four dimensions: emotional exhaustion, emotional distancing, lack of personal accomplishment, and contrast. Indeed, the emotional exhaustion refers to the aspects reflecting an overwhelming exhaustion related to one's parental role. The exhausted parent feels drained, tired and lacks enthusiasm in his interaction with his children. The emotional distancing refers to the aspects reflecting the tendency to distance oneself from one's children. The parents no longer have the energy to invest in the relationship and they do the bare minimum by performing everyday tasks robotically. Parents can no longer show their love to their children because they are so exhausted. The feelings of being fed up or the lack of accomplishment refers to feelings of ineffectiveness in parenting. The parents are not fulfilled in their role, which becomes a burden, and this results in a loss of pleasure in exercising it. The contrast is the difference between what parents were and what they have become. Thus, they feel they are no longer the good parents they once were. They no longer recognize themselves when they interact with their children; they feel shame because of this. To be diagnosed with parental burnout it is not necessary to have symptoms of the all four facets, at least 65% of the symptoms must be significantly present .
Even though parents are recognized as important role players in the socialization of children and wellbeing of their families, there is ample evidence to suggest that the parenting (a universal activity) can be stressful for many parents (Hubert & Aujoulat, 2018). This is more so in instances where parents lack the resources needed to handle stressors related to parenting and it has been shown that the stress of parenting can even translate into parental burnout (Mikolajczak et al., 2019). Moreover, one study in Rwanda found that parents of infants cared for in a neonatal intensive care unit showed symptoms of stress (Musabirema et al., 2015). This study also found that parental age, education and occupation were associated with parental stress. Another study conducted in a Nigerian hospital found that parents of children admitted to an intensive care unit had high levels of distress (Essan et al., 2017). On the other hand, several studies conducted mainly in Europe have shown that parental burnout can lead to several health problems such as sleep disorders, drug, gambling and work addiction, irritability, and anger (Ahola et al., 2006). There is therefore no doubt that parental burnout is associated with several factors. Furthermore, it has been shown that capillary cortisol (stress hormone) concentration levels were higher in parents suffering from parental burnout compared to controls (Brianda et al., 2020). Parental burnout is also associated with marital difficulties, depression, suicidal ideation, and urgency to run away (Mikolajczak et al., , 2019. According to Lindström et al. (2011), mothers have higher levels of parental burnout when compared to fathers whilst Nomaguchi and Brown (2011) have found a correlation between parental burnout and age of the parents; the younger parents present more parental stress due to lack of experience. A higher number of children in the family is likely to lead to increased social isolation in mothers (Skreden et al., 2012). Although there is an increase of literature on parenting and parental burnout, this area of research is still poorly investigated in African context in general and in Togo in particular.
Moreover, a global study in 42 countries found that individualistic cultures had a significantly higher prevalence and average level of parental burnout than collectivistic cultures (Roskam et al., 2021). Indeed, individualism plays a more important role in parental burnout than economic inequality between countries or any other individual and family characteristic examined so far. The results of this study suggest that the cultural values of Western countries may be risk factors for high parental stress.
The extended family, in Togo, is undergoing important changes resulting from several factors such as Western-style modernization and globalization (Green et al., 2005;Kula-Kim, 2010;Yao, 2014). There are more and more nuclear families (biological father-motherchildren) and the relationship between parents and their children is becoming more and more difficult (Kuyu, 2005;Makiwane et al., 2017). This reconfiguration of family structure limits the parental role that grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins usually play in the extended family (Traoré, 2013). With the nuclear family increasingly replacing the extended family in Togo, biological parents can find themselves almost alone in providing for the various emotional and material needs of children. Also, the socioeconomic context and difficult living conditions can threaten the parenthood (Cissé et al., 2017;Mbasso, 1993;Nguimfack et al., 2010). In the lack of specific studies of the impact of all these factors on the vulnerability of parents, the level of parental burnout and its characteristics ask for to be evaluated in the African context in general and in Togo in particular.
Elsewhere, parental burnout has been found to affect mothers and fathers in equal proportions, despite the gender inequality in parenting. Indeed, data collected from a matched sample of 900 French and English-speaking mothers and fathers showed invariance in the measurement of parental burnout between mothers and fathers . It was also found that the same antecedent mechanism was at work in mothers and fathers: an imbalance between risks and resources in the specific context of child rearing. However, fathers would be more vulnerable to this imbalance in this specific area. This study was conducted in a Western cultural context and it is legitimate to ask whether these results can be transposed to fathers and mothers living in Togo.
Family forms in West Africa, as in Togo, respond to the logic of the extended kinship. Thus, the brothers of the child's father or mother are in the "daddy" position, the sisters of the child's father or mother are in the "mom" position (Cissé et al., 2017;Kula-Kim, 2010;Kuyu, 2005). This means that a child knows his biological father and mother, but that several adults related to him are also his social parents who can play the roles of biological parents (Traoré, 2013). The parenting is thus conceived as something extended and the duty of co-care is part of the implicit assignments attributed by the social norms to each adult (Cissé et al., 2017;Kula-Kim, 2010;Kuyu, 2005;Yao, 2014). The education has a collective and social character that makes it the responsibility not only of the family, but also of members of the same neighbourhood, village, or ethnic group (Mbasso, 1993;Nguimfack et al., 2010;Yao, 2014). The parenting is therefore not limited to only the parents or only relatives but can be extended to all adults who encounter a child.
It is also important to remember that the quality of this extended parenting is influenced by other factors such as the type of neighbourhood (underprivileged, problematic, etc.) in which the children live. Some studies suggest that families living in underprivileged environments are further exposed to certain parental practices that are detrimental to the child's development (Leblanc & Desbiens, 2008). Hence, neglecting a child seems to lead to shortcomings in acquiring selfcontrol and social skills. In addition, the development of the hostile attribution bias in children, in violent neighbourhoods, suggests that social relationships are based on coercion. Thus, his behaviour becomes a risk factor for parental burnout as he would show hostility to the parental education.
In view of all this, the question is whether the living environment is a risk factor associated with parental burnout in Togo? And then, does the context of extended parenting protect parents against the parental burnout? If so, what can characterize parental burnout in this such context of extended and shared parenting in Togo?

The current study
With an exploratory focus, the aim of the current study is to assess the level of parental burnout in Togo and to examine its association with other socio-demographic variables. Based on the hypothesis that the Togolese families are most collectivist than individualistic, we expect the level of parental burnout to be low among participants and the mothers to be more affected than fathers. We also expect parental burnout to be related to other variables like age, educational level, number of biological children, number of children living in the household, age of the oldest child, age of the youngest child, number of women in the household, number of men in the household, number of hours spent with children, family type (singleparent, two-parent, polygamous, multigenerational, step-family), neighbourhood (underprivileged, average, prosperous), having a paid professional activity, having his children at his workplace, or ethnic group (Ewe, Kabye, Mina-Guin, Ouatchi, Para-Gourma, Tem-Bassar).

Sample
Data were collected from a sample of 103 parents (35.92% mothers) in Lomé and in Tsévié, two towns in the south of Togo. The participants' ages ranged from 22 to 65 (M = 37.83; SD = 8.76). Most of the of participants (68.9%) are raising their children with a partner, 20.4% are single parents, 1.9% are in a stepfamily, 7.8% are in a polygamous family, and 1.0% are in a multigenerational family. The participants had from 1 to 12 children living in their household; the youngest child's age ranged from 0 to 28 years (M = 4.17; SD = 5.12) and the oldest age ranged from 0 to 41 years (M = 11.00; SD = 8.63). The adult children (aged 28 and 41) are not numerous and do not affect the results: oldest children (mean 11 years) and youngest children (mean 4.17 years).
The parents spend 0 to 24 hours per day with their children (M = 9.04, SD = 6.40). More than 73% (73.5) of the participants live in an average neighbourhood, 20.6% live in a relatively poor neighbourhood and 5.9% live in a relatively wealthy neighbourhood. The number of successfully completed school years from the age of 6 ranged from 6 to 23 with an average of 13.56 (SD = 2.97). Eighty-six percent (86.4) of the participants have a paid professional activity and 1.39 (SD = .70) women and 1.20 man (SD = 1.4) are living in the household caring for the children daily. Descriptive statistics are given in Table 1.

Procedure and measures
This study was conducted in Togo as part of the International Investigation of Parental Burnout (https:// www.burnoutparental.com/international-consortium), a consortium of researchers from 40 countries around the world led by Isabelle Roskam and Moïra Mikolajczak at UCLouvain in Belgium. Parents were eligible to participate in the study only if they had (at least) one child still living at home. This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations and the ethical standards prescribed by the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments. All participants gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The informed consent they signed allowed them to withdraw at any stage without having to justify their reason for doing so. They were also assured that data would remain anonymous.
To start data collection, participants were asked about their age, gender, number of children, age of the youngest and the oldest child, nationality, marital status (single, cohabiting, married, divorced, widowed), type of family (single-parent, living with the father/mother of the children, step-family, polygamous), number of women and men in the household taking care of children on a daily basis, level of education, whether or not the parents had a paid professional activity, number of hours spent with the children on a daily basis, neighbourhood (underprivileged, average, prosperous). The coding of sociodemographic variables was carried out in a principled approach according to the International Investigation of Parental Burnout consortium's protocol. The coding scheme can be found at: https://osf.io/2nhrq?view_ only=a6cf12803887476cb5e7f17cfb8b5ca2 To finish, the parental burnout was assessed with the Parental Burnout Assessment (PBA, Roskam et al., 2018) that consists of four subscales. It's about the Emotional Exhaustion (9 items; e.g., I feel completely run down by my role as a parent), the Contrast (6 items; e.g., I'm no longer proud of myself as a parent), the Feelings of Being Fed Up (5 items; e.g., I can't stand my role as father/mother any more), and Emotional Distancing (3 items; e.g., I do what I'm supposed to do for my child(ren), but nothing more). The 23 items are rated on 7-point Likert scales: never (1), a few times a year or less (2), once a month or less (3), a few times a month (4), once a week (5), a few times a week (6), every day (7). Cronbach's alphas in the initial validation study were .93, .93, .90, and .81 for the subscales and .96 for the global score . In this study, we found Cronbach's alphas .82 for Emotional Exhaustion, .76 for Contrast, .71 for Feelings of Being Fed Up, .58 for Emotional Distancing and .91 for the total score of PBA. To finish, we also computed one-way ANOVAs to test mean differences for gender, neighbourhood, ethnic origin, family type, having his children at his workplace, and having a paid professional activity.

Results
Based on the criterion of 65% of symptoms present on a daily basis, only 1.9% of parents (all are mothers) were found to be in a state of parental burnout according to the results of this study (see Table 2). Additionally, we got on the parental burnout scale the responses: never (14.6%), a few times a year or less (62.1%), once a month or less (14.6%), a few times a month (4.9%), once a week (1.9%), a few times a week (1.9%), every day (0.0%). These results suggest that participants in this study would be safe from parental burnout. The relations between parental burnout and sociodemographic variables are somewhat low like correlation coefficients are displayed in Table 3. We found significant association between education level and total score of the PBA (r = −.189, p < .05) and Contrast (r = −.280, p < .05), and between Contrast and age of the youngest child (r = .208, p < .05). While the high level of education plays a protective role, the high age of the youngest child was found to be a risk factor.
The analysis of the data did not allow to establish a link between parental burnout and the age of the participants or the age of the oldest child. It is the same results with the number of biological children, the number of children living in the household, the number of women or men in the household, and the number of hours spent with children.
We also compared the mean level of parental burnout according to gender, family type, neighbourhood,  having a paid professional activity, having his children at his workplace, and ethnic group. So, we found significant differences between mothers and fathers, either in the total score (F(1, 102) = 7.079, p = .009) or in the subscales Emotional Exhaustion (F(1, 102) = 7.061, p = .009), Contrast (F(1, 102) = 4.356, p = .039), and Feelings of Being Fed Up (F(1, 102) = 7.906, p = .006). It can therefore be seen that mothers are likely to express more symptoms of parental burnout than fathers (see Table 4). In addition, the family type (single-parent, twoparent, polygamous, step-family) and the neighbourhood (underprivileged, average, prosperous) of participants, having a paid professional activity (or not) or having his children at his workplace (or not) are not related to parental burnout according to the data from this study. Furthermore, there is no significant difference to parental burnout between the ethnic groups of Togo included in this study (Ewe, Kabye, Mina-Guin, Ouatchi, Para-Gourma, Tem-Bassar). The one-way ANOVAs are given in Table 5.

Discussion
This study aimed to assess the level of parental burnout in Togo and to examine his association with other sociodemographic variables. The results highlighted the low rate of parental burnout among the participants and significant associations between parental burnout and certain socio-demographic variables. First, compared to the recent studies with western samples, the results of this study highlight the low level of parental burnout of most of the participants. Indeed, this study showed that only 1.9% of parents were experiencing parental burnout, all are mothers. In Europe, a recent study showed that 5.9% of parents (7.0% of mothers and 1.6% of fathers) were found to be in a state of parental burnout . According to the same study, parental burnout affected 4.7% of French-speaking parents and 6.3% of English-speaking parents. Contrary to what happens in the West, family models in Togo are mainly based on the logic of the extended relationship which can be considered as a protective factor. Thus, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins of the father or the mother of the child are substitutes for the parents, even in their presence (Cissé et al., 2017;Lallemand, 1993). As a result, childcare and education tasks are not based exclusively on biological parents, but also on other members of the extended family, or even of the clan or the neighbourhood (Akresh, 2009;Erny, 2001;Kula-Kim, 2010;Kuyu, 2005;Lallemand, 1980;Mbasso, 1993). Even if they prefer living in a nuclear family, away from the larger family, some parents still maintain regular contact with their families of origin out of moral obligation. As a result, they never live completely disconnected from their own and are to a certain extent safe from parental burnout, because they continue to benefit from the emotional support of their families of origin (Akresh, 2009;Cissé et al., 2017;Yao, 2014). This may explain the results that Togolese parent  are safe from parental burnout because their society offers enough resources to parents in their parenting. Most importantly, this study corroborates the results of previous studies conducted in Western countries  and in Africa (Sodi et al., 2020), demonstrating that a high level of parental education plays a protective role against parental burnout. Obviously and as it is in many African countries, Togolese with a high level of education tend to "westernize" their family model, founding increasingly nuclear families (Erny, 2001;Nguimfack et al., 2010;Yao, 2014). This may explain the association between parental burnout and level of education, as parents are more likely to be employed in higher-paying jobs and are therefore more likely to attract the closeness, sympathy, and kindness of their family members. In this way, they benefit fully from the emotional support of the extended family or community in their parenting. The nuclearization of families of high educated parents may also mean a decrease in the educational burden for these parents, reduced to their only children in their charge, because they do not have to worry directly about the children of siblings, uncles, aunts and cousins. Furthermore, in these "westernized" families, the children are open to the world with easier access to information and knowledge (e.g., internet) and therefore do not necessarily ask their parents to solve all their problems (Cissé et al., 2017;Erny, 2001;Mbasso, 1993;Nguimfack et al., 2010;Tsala Tsala, 2007).
Contrary to what was found in previous research in Africa, (Sodi et al., 2020), other results of this study showed a significant difference in parental burnout between mothers and fathers, either in the total score or in three subscales. It can therefore be seen that mothers are likely to express more symptoms of parental burnout than fathers. Indeed, it was highlighted that being a woman is positively linked to parental burnout in general and with Emotional Exhaustion, Contrast and Feelings of Being Fed Up in particular. Being a man is therefore a protective factor for parents. These results suggest the important place of women in the education of the children in Togo. Parenting is related to a social status that is steeped in values and in this way, in Togo, the woman takes care of the education of the children and the man must provide for the material needs of the family. This is coherent with the recent study of Roskam et al. (2018) who found that there is a high level of parental burnout among mothers than fathers in European samples. These authors suggested that this might be due to mothers having higher exposure to parenting stress, when compared to fathers. Champagne et al. (2015) and Matud (2004) have also given a similar explanation for gender differences in parenting stress among European mothers and fathers.
Though Togolese family structure is different to the European one, there are many factors that could explain these similar gender differences in parental burnout. Ziehl (2001) has suggested that industrialization and urbanization may explain the changes in family dynamics in Africa making it similar to what is happening in the West. Furthermore, if the mother is left alone or is not supported in her parenting role, she will be more vulnerable to parental burnout than the father will do. The difference in social roles between fathers and mothers, which can also be invoked here, has already been used to explain the similar results from previous studies on a theme close to parental burnout, work-family conflict (Byron, 2005;Gali-Cinamon & Rich, 2002;van Veldhoven & Beijer, 2012).
Moreover, according to the social role theory (Cissé et al., 2017;Erny, 2001;Fougeyrollas & Roy, 1996;Kula-Kim, 2010;Kuyu, 2005;Mbasso, 1993;Tsala Tsala, 2007;Yao, 2014), women are submissive to men, who distance generally themselves more from the domestic roles compared to women. This may explain the difference between fathers and mothers on the parental burnout scale. Normative expectations for being a "good parent" emphasize for women that their primary role is in the family, whereas for men the role of provider of material needs is primary, despite the transformations of the traditional male-controlled family of most Togolese societies (Akresh, 2009;Cissé et al., 2017;Erny, 2001;Lallemand, 1980;Van Bakel et al., 2018). Expectations of good parenting are often internalized, with a sense of family guilt when parents violate these normative expectations (Morgan & King, 2001). As Togo is a country where traditions are still strongly rooted in behaviours, it is not surprising to find that mothers scored higher than fathers on the parental burnout scale in this study.
The results showed that the age of the youngest child of the participants is positively correlated to the "Contrast" dimension of parental burnout. Quite often, the youngest of sibling is never weaned and remains the closest to the parents and requires more educational resources than his elders. Thus, it is not surprising to realize that he is the one who is likely to hurried parents in parental burnout. Moreover, this is all the truer since the oldest of the youngest children are young adults in this study. This can be experienced as a parenting failure, if these children are not yet independent, and can have a negative influence on the self-image that parents have of themselves and on the relationship that they have with their children. Indeed, contrary to what happens in the West where the child emancipates himself from his parents when he reaches legal majority (18 years old), in Togo, society is more flexible on this issue and allows parents to accept their children in difficulties in the family household regardless of their age and marital status, especially if they are not yet working (Akresh, 2009;Erny, 2001;Lallemand, 1980). Young people generally become independent when they need to travel or to engage in a demanding professional activity. However, even when tolerated, having a young adult at home is a dishonour according to the same society, which considers this situation to be an educational failure of the parents. Then, it is normal for these parents to feel guilty and ashamed of their parenting and to be more likely to suffer from parental burnout.
Other results that interest attention are related to the lack of relationship between the parental burnout and the age of the participants, the age of the oldest child. It is the same results with the number of biological children, the number of children living in the household, the number of women or men in the household, and the number of hours spent with children. In addition, family type, neighbourhood, having a paid professional activity or having his children at his workplace and the ethnic group of participants are not related to parental burnout. These findings are contrary to the findings in previous studies that described the number of children living in the household as a parental burnout risk factors, and having a paid professional activity, coparenting, age of parent, as the parental burnout protective factors (Le Vigouroux & Scola, 2018;Lebert et al., 2018;. Moreover, the study on parenting and parental burnout in Africa (Sodi et al., 2020), showed that while a high number of children in the household was found to be a risk factor, living in a prosperous neighbourhood, and spending hours with children, play a protective role. With regard to the types of family, Sodi et al. (2020) found no significant differences between two-parent, single-parent, step-, and polygamous families, exactly as in the current study. Contrary, they found differences between parents with a paid professional activity and those without for all PBA scores, except Emotional Distancing.
These outcomes may reflect the benefits of the extended family model and community-based education, which lighten the burden on parents in their child-rearing household tasks. However, caution is required in interpreting these insignificant results. This leads us to believe that further studies are needed to confirm these results of our study or the validity of the Balance between Risks and Resources theory  in Togo. It makes more sense to be careful in interpreting the absence of these links, even though they have been established in some previous studies. The other most probable explanation of this results is that the low statistical power of this study (small sample size) and the unrepresentative nature of all the layers of the Togolese population of the study sample did not reject or confirm the existence of the links already established between these socio-demographic variables and parental burnout.

Limits and conclusions
Although some results of this preliminary study are encouraging, they must be interpreted with caution. They indicate that there is a need for larger and deeper studies that cover a great representative sample of all the social components of Togo. Indeed, the Cronbach's alphas of the PBA and its four dimensions are low in this study compared to the Cronbach's alphas in the original validation study. The French version of the PBA (used in this study) has not received prior validation in Togo. In addition, the study sample size recruited here is rather small. It is also important to note that there are many cultural and linguistic differences in Togo that could have influenced the results of this study. In addition, the survey method used (online or paper-based questionnaire) mean that the results must be interpreted with great caution. This study suggests that parental burnout is a very little threat to parents in Togo. Furthermore, having a high level of education, being male and having very young children were found to be protective factors against parental burnout. Finally, the lack of a relationship between parental burnout and other variables like age, ethnic origin, number of children, number of men and women living at home, neighbourhood, having a paid professional activity, far from being revealing, earns to be investigated deeply in much more robust other studies in order to identify the protective and risk factors for Togolese parents. In any case, burnout prevention programs and parents in countries (especially in the West) with the highest prevalence of parental burnout should learn from the parenting practices of countries with low levels of parental burnout such as Togo.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
The work was supported by the Bourse de Doctorat de l'UCLouvain (2019) .