Being a parent is no easy task in today’s world. While burnout is most commonly associated with the workplace, the syndrome is increasingly affecting parents, stripping the joy out of raising children. From May 14 to 16, 2026, a group of students from member universities of the European Reform University Alliance (ERUA) — including France, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Italy — gathered at the SWPS University’s Faculty of Psychology and Law in Poznań to explore this phenomenon in a course titled “Challenges of Contemporary Parenthood.” The initiative was launched by Professor Konrad Piotrowski and coordinated by Dr. Kamil Janowicz.
How can we support parents in raising children?
Over the course of five days, 11 students from the University of Macerata (Italy), Paris 8 University (France), the University of the Aegean (Greece), Mykolas Romeris University (Lithuania), and SWPS University (Poland) explored various aspects and causes of parental burnout.
The program consisted of nine thematic modules covering topics such as:
- Parental identity
- Parental burnout
- Parental regret
- Co-parenting
- Parental gatekeeping
- Links between gender identity and parenthood
- Designing and evaluating psychological interventions for parents
- Publication standards in the field of family studies
- Research design in parenthood studies
The modules combined lectures summarizing the current state of knowledge in each area, methodological instruction (e.g., research tools, procedures, and research design), and workshops focusing on the development of research and publication skills, intervention design, and teamwork.
Workshop Facilitators
The workshops were conducted by the team from the Center for Research on Personality Development at SWPS University:
- Ewa Skimina, Ph.D.
- Kamil Janowicz, Ph.D.
- Michalina Dzielińska, M.A.
- Julia Idzikowska, M.A.
- Marta Lasota, M.A.
- Patrycja Osiecka, M.A.
- Jakub Duras
- Zuzanna Malawska
