Speaker
Presentation in English
JORGE GATO
UNIVERSITY OF PORTO. PORTUGAL
Jorge Gato, Ph.D. is affiliated with the Center for Psychology of the University of Porto (CPUP). He is a researcher specializing in the intersection of clinical and social psychology, with his work focusing on the impact of discrimination on the well-being of socially vulnerable groups, such as LGBTQIA+ individuals and migrants. Throughout his career, he has worked in a branch of psychology that explores the lives and experiences of LGBTQIA+ people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and other sexual and gender minoritized individuals). Although LGBTQ+ psychology is concerned with sexuality, it has a broad application, examining many different aspects, including prejudice and discrimination, coming out and identity development, relationships, parenting and families, aging and old age, or affirmative psychological interventions.
He is particularly interested in the development and evaluation of individual, family, and community-based psychological interventions for these populations. He is the author of more than 80 scientific papers and two books, the most recent of which is on psychological interventions with LGBTQIA+ individuals. He has supervised 3 doctoral dissertations and more than 30 master’s theses, and has participated in several funded research projects on minoritized populations. In addition to his research, he is a licensed psychotherapist and family therapist. He currently serves as President-Elect of the European Society on Family Relations. He is a member of the technical-scientific group of the Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality in Portugal. He is committed to social change, with an active presence in the media, volunteer work with NGOs, and collaboration with Portuguese government agencies.
Rainbow Families Navigating Parental Burnout: Insights from the International Parental Burnout Consortium
Parental burnout is defined as a state of chronic physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged parenting stress. Research indicates that LGBTQ+ parents are not more likely to experience burnout simply due to their family structure but rather to the challenges they frequently encounter, including minority stress, discrimination, stigma and social exclusion. These pressures can compound the daily demands of parenting and reduce access to emotional and community support. In this symposium, quantitative and qualitative evidence is provided regarding the experience of parental burnout in the LGBTQ+ community. Carone and colleagues conducted a qualitative analysis of the experiences, interpretations and management of parental burnout by 89 Italian LGBQ parents. The findings extend the existing quantitative evidence by specifying minority-stress-specific burnout mechanisms, including compulsory perfectionism, anticipatory legal dread, and reproductive residues inaccessible to standardized instruments. In the context of an ongoing project seeking to understand how culture and society influence parental well-being among a representative sample of parents in Portugal, Gato and colleagues compared LGB-identified parents with their heterosexual counterparts. Despite the absence of statistically significant disparities between the two groups, a higher incidence of parental burnout was observed in the non-heterosexual sample. Furthermore, a higher proportion of LGB parents reported experiencing heightened pressure from professionals to perform well. Finally, drawing on data collected by the International Investigation of Parental Burnout (IIPB Study 3) consortium, Robert and colleagues propose different solutions to minimise bias and inequivalence in cross-cultural research among LGBTQ+ parents
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