Exhausted minds: Maternal reflective functioning and parental burnout in mothers of young children in a one‐year longitudinal study

Objective: This 12-month longitudinal study with three waves of data collection examined reciprocal relationships between parental reflective functioning (PRF)—the capacity to understand one's child's mental states—dimensions and parental burnout in mothers of young children. Background: Parental burnout affects approximately 3%–8% of mothers in Western populations, with particularly high rates in Poland, yet factors that explain parental burnout remain poorly understood. PRF may be an important factor, but no longitudinal research has examined the relationships between parental burnout and PRF over time. Method: This three-wave longitudinal study is the first to examine PRF–burnout relationships over a one-year period. Using cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) and random-intercept CLPM (RI-CLPM), we modeled stable between-person differences from dynamic within-person processes in the longitudinal associations between parental burnout and three PRF dimensions (i.e., prementalizing modes, certainty about child's mental states, and interest/curiosity in mental states) in 988 Polish mothers of children aged 0–5 years 12 months. Results: Findings revealed considerable heterogeneity in PRF–burnout relationships. Prementalizing modes showed unidirectional effects, increasing only in response to chronic parental exhaustion rather than predicting parental burnout. Certainty about mental states demonstrated a bidirectional relationship with maternal burnout, driven by stable between-person differences in both constructs. Maternal interest and curiosity predicted increases in parental burnout, with lower curiosity associated with higher parental burnout at both the between-person and within-person levels. Conclusion: Different aspects of maternal mentalization predict parental burnout through distinct longitudinal patterns that challenge prevailing theoretical frameworks. Implications: These findings provide the first longitudinal evidence that maternal curiosity about the child's mental states and chronic uncertainty may represent key psychological processes implicated in vulnerability to parental burnout, with potential implications for prevention and family support.