Balancing Tradition and Profession: Chronic Guilt & Burnout among Working Mothers

Abstract

The fast inclusion of women in the urban labour force in North India has been accompanied by the continuation of the conventional gender expectations, and they have developed contradictory psychological issues among the working mothers. This paper explores the association between chronic guilt and burnout in urban North India working mothers and determines predictors of burnout. Data analysis was done using cross-sectional survey data of 624 working mothers using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression. The findings indicated that there is a strong and statistically significant positive correlation between chronic guilt and burnout which implies that the more the amount of guilt, the more the emotion exhaustion. Multiple regression analysis found out that chronic guilt is the best predictor of burnout despite the adjustment of spousal support, number of children, flexible work hours, and age. The regression model was able to explain a significant percentage of variance in burnout reflecting the compound effect of psychological and contextual variables. The results also demonstrated the necessity of family-level support systems and organizational policies to decrease the level of guilt-induced burnout in working mothers in urban India.