Eco-Emotion Profiles Among Parents and Links to Violent and Neglectful Parenting: Parental Burnout as a Mediating Pathway

Climate change is a psychosocial stressor with implications for parenting and child safety. Many parents experience eco-emotions that can tax caregiving resources and self-regulation, yet evidence is scarce on how eco-emotion profiles relate to parental burnout and violent and neglectful parenting. This study aimed to identify eco-emotion profiles and to test whether parental burnout explains associations with psychological aggression, physical assault, and neglect toward children. Participants were 1,203 cisgender heterosexual Italian parents (70.16% mothers; M = 45.60, SD = 9.37) who completed self-report measures through an online survey. Latent profile analysis of eco-anxiety, eco-guilt, eco-grief, solastalgia, and eco-paralysis identified eco-emotion profiles; structural equation modeling tested direct and indirect effects of profile membership on maltreatment outcomes via parental burnout. Three profiles emerged: Eco-disengaged (18.8%), Eco-concerned (60.6%), and Eco-distressed (20.7%). Eco-distressed parents reported higher parental burnout than eco-concerned parents (standardized mean difference [SMD] = 0.324, p < .001). Parental burnout predicted psychological aggression (β = .370), physical assault (β = .288), and neglect (β = .525; all p s < .001). Eco-distressed membership showed positive indirect associations via parental burnout on psychological aggression (SMD = 0.120), physical assault (SMD = 0.093), and neglect (SMD = 0.170), with all 95% bootstrap CIs > 0, as well as a negative direct association with psychological aggression (SMD = −0.193, p = .014). Climate-related distress may function as an emerging caregiver risk factor, emphasizing the need for preventive interventions that strengthen parental resources and address climate-related emotional burden within child protection frameworks.