Le télétravail a connu avec la crise de la Covid-19 une forte expansion et concerne aujourd’hui 18,8 % des salariés en France. Ce mode d’organisation se caractérisant par un mélange des temps et des lieux professionnels et privés, il paraît important d’interroger ses effets sur la santé mentale des parents. Cette étude a pour objectif d’interroger les spécificités du vécu parental du télétravail et d’explorer en quoi il peut être un facteur de protection ou de risque du burn-out parental.

L’étude s’appuie sur des entretiens semi-dirigés exploratoires menés auprès de quatre pères et cinq mères pratiquant le télétravail et ayant au moins un enfant âgé de moins de 18 ans au domicile. Ils ont fait l’objet d’une analyse thématique de contenu suivant une méthode inductive.

Le télétravail apparaît comme une source de diminution des stresseurs parentaux, comme un choix utilitaire au service de la parentalité permettant notamment la « présence » à la maison. On relève toutefois l’existence d’un paradoxe entre « présence » au domicile et absence de « disponibilité » ainsi qu’un vécu de conflit vie privée/vie professionnelle.

Certaines spécificités du télétravail semblent être des facteurs de protection en ôtant des stress parentaux (temps de transport et flexibilité d’organisation) et en renforçant potentiellement l’estime de soi parentale. Cependant la diminution des frontières entre les vies professionnelles et familiales (blurring) pourrait créer un stress inédit.

Cette recherche pourrait se poursuivre en interrogeant l’impact du conflit travail-famille et du blurring sur le burn-out parental.

The share of employees working remotely has increased significantly since the Covid-19 pandemic and now concerns 18.8% of French workers. As this type of organization is characterized by an entanglement between professional and private times and spaces, it seems relevant to analyze its effect on parental mental health. Although research on parental burn-out has been expanding since the first studies in the 2000s, the role played by remote work has yet never been examined. This study aims to investigate the parental experience of working from home and to explore how and at what level remote work can be seen as a safeguard against or a risk factor for parental burn-out.

Relying on a qualitative methodological approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four fathers and five mothers working from home at least one day a week. All participants were living with a partner and were on average 48.1 years old. Their children were aged between 3 and 18. We performed a thematic content analysis following an inductive method.

Five themes emerged from the interviews: remote work as a source of decrease of parental stressors (such as transportation and family organization) ; remote work as a utilitarian choice meant to make parenting easier (with the participants’ “presence” at home seen as a main benefit); a paradox between “being at home” but not “being available” for their children; and the experience of a conflict between private and professional life.

We discuss how remote work implies specificities that may appear as protection factors in parental burn-out while removing parental stresses, such as the elimination of time spent commuting and exhaustion, and an increased flexibility in family organization. Working from home could also be seen as resource factor, as it could potentially strengthen parental self-esteem by allowing parents to be more present for their children. Yet, we discuss how the diminishing of clear boundaries between professional and familial life could add new and specific stresses. Remote work could, in this sense, bring a risk of work overload and a damaging blurring between professional and parental roles.

This qualitative research opens the question of the protective and risk factors of remote work in the development of a parental burn-out. Given the growth and the extension to new socio-demographic profiles of this kind of organization since the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems relevant to further investigate its impact both through positive effects, such as relief of stress and parental self-esteem, and through negative effects, such as work overload and role-blurring.