Parental eco-stress and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems: Differential pathways via parental burnout symptoms

Parents increasingly navigate climate-related disruptions that may tax caregiving and shape children’s adjustment. This study used a Structural Equation Modeling approach to examine whether parental climate change-related stress (namely, eco-stress) relates to children’s internalizing and externalizing problems via symptom-specific parental burnout in a community sample of 1,200 cisgender heterosexual parents (M = 45.60, SD = 9.37; 70.00% mothers) residing in Italy with at least one biological child (M = 12.00, SD = 5.49; 52.08% assigned females at birth). Parent age, child age, and child gender were covaried in both models, and the number of children was covaried in the externalizing problems model only. Eco-stress showed a direct association with children’s internalizing problems, with no significant indirect associations via parental burnout symptoms. In contrast, eco-stress related to children’s externalizing problems only indirectly via parental exhaustion and saturation. These findings suggest an affective-climate route for child internalizing problems and a resource-depletion route for child externalizing problems, clarifying which parental burnout symptoms carry risk. Findings may inform differentiated, family-focused supports that mitigate parental eco-stress, stabilizing the emotional climate and rebuilding parental resources, thereby enhancing behavioral consistency and resilience in caregiving.