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Children catching stress

Parents who push themselves too hard at work may harm their children's chance of success at school.

Parents who push themselves too hard at work may harm their children's chance of success at school.

Research shows that mothers and fathers with career burnout pass on their feelings of disillusionment at home. Their offspring are more likely to lose interest in schoolwork. They can begin to worry they are not keeping up with their classmates, become cynical about the value of education and exams and may even start to experience the exhaustion that accompanies burn-out.

The researchers, from the Academy of Finland's educational arm, quizzed more than 500 teenagers about whether they had ever experienced burn-out. Their parents were asked similar questions about work-related burn-out and a pattern quickly emerged.

The parents worn out physically and emotionally were more likely to have children who meet the same fate over their schoolwork, the European Journal of Developmental Psychology reports.

What is more, burnt-out dads tended to have burnt-out sons and working mothers under pressure had school-age daughters in the same boat. Researcher Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro said: 'The parent of the same gender seems to serve as a role model for the development of burn-out.'

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