The role of marital adjustment, work-family conflict and parental burnout in predicting the level of depression in working mothers

With the increase in the participation of women in business life, the effects of the roles on their individual and family lives is a field of study that researchers have been interested in recent years. In the Covid-19 pandemic we are in, it is expected that married women who work from home and have children will experience parental burnout and difficulties in their marriage with increasing burdens. For depression, where being a woman is considered a risk factor, the role of these factors has not been investigated in our country yet. The aim of this study is to investigate the predictive effect of marital adjustment, work-family conflict, and parental burnout on depression in a non-clinical sample. The sample of the study consists of 495 women (M=34.27, SD=5.88) who are married, have the experience of working from home and have children under the age of 18 living with them. In the study, Sociodemographic Information and Data Form, Depression sub-dimension of the Depression/Stress/Anxiety Scale (DASS-21), Renewed Couple Adjustment Scale, Work-Family Conflict Scale and Parental Burnout Assessment are presented via Google Forms, respectively. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test were applied to see the difference of sociodemographic characteristics on variables whereas Pearson Correlation and Hierarchical Regression analyzes were used to test the hypotheses. According to the findings, marital adjustment, work-family conflict, and parental burnout predict depression at similar rates. When the sociodemographic characteristics were examined, it was found that the participants working only from home experienced more work-family conflict when compared to the participants working both from the office and from home. It was concluded that mothers with children between the ages of 0-2 experience more work-family conflict compared to other mothers. In addition, it was found that as the number of children people have increased, the parental burnout they experienced increased as well. The findings of the study are thought to be beneficial in intervention programs related to depression.