Parental burnout among military fathers: The moderating roles of unit support, marital satisfaction, and emotional regulation strategies.

OBJECTIVE

The military family stress model (Gewirtz et al., 2018) was used to examine the associations between deployment experiences, interpersonal relationships, and four aspects of parental burnout-emotional exhaustion, contrast in parental self, fed-up feelings, and emotional distancing from the child-among military fathers. The study focused on testing main and moderating effects for these variables.

METHOD: A total of 105 Israeli military fathers deployed to combat zones completed self-report questionnaires on deployment exposure, emotion regulation, unit and spousal support, and parental burnout. Hierarchical regressions examined both direct and moderating effects for each burnout dimension.

RESULTS

Emotional suppression was positively associated with emotional exhaustion, contrast with previous parental self, and emotional distancing. Importantly, higher unit support predicted lower emotional exhaustion and emotional distancing, but these protective effects were significant only at low and moderate war-related exposure levels, not at high exposure. Marital satisfaction was associated with lower contrast with previous parental self and fed-up feelings, with cognitive reappraisal moderating these associations; when reappraisal was low to moderate, marital satisfaction was protective. No significant main effects were found for the length or frequency of deployment exposure.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings highlight context-dependent roles of unit cohesion and spousal support in mitigating parental burnout. To bolster family resilience, military units should implement psychoeducational programs focused on flexible emotion regulation and unit cohesion, while clinicians should prioritize couple-focused interventions enhancing meaning-making and emotional attunement. These targeted efforts by military leadership and mental health professionals are essential to support fathers' well-being across varying levels of combat exposure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).