Regulation between daily exhaustion and support in parenting: A dyadic perspective

Abstract

The current article serves a dual purpose: to highlight the overlooked and recent concept of parenting-related exhaustion and to propose a specific methodology to test concurrent variations of the parent’s exhaustion with the partner’s exhaustion and her or his perceived and given support. Questionnaire data were collected from 97 mother–father couples over the course of 5 consecutive days. Results from multilevel model analyses revealed day-to-day dyadic variations as well as day-to-day regulation occurring in parental couples. The dyadic variations were shown by the fact that over the week, on the days when one parent felt more exhausted, the other parent’s exhaustion was also high. Dyadic regulation meant that greater exhaustion felt by one parent was associated with greater support from her or his partner. Partner’s extra support was both perceived by the exhausted parent and reported by the support provider (i.e., the partner).