Thesis

According to Maslach (1982), when it comes to gender then there are only moderate
differences between men and women in burnout, meaning that men and women experience
burnout relatively in a similar fashion.
When it comes to age, it has been shown that there is an obvious connection between age and
burnout. More precisely, it has been shown that burnout occurs more frequently among
younger workers than older ones. The reason for this has been stated to be the experience,
where younger workers have less experience than older workers. Also, older workers are more
stable and mature, they seem to have a more balanced outlook on their lives and they are less
prone to the effects of burnout. Another explanation for the fact that older workers seem to
report less burnout than younger workers, might be that in many workplaces there seem to be
a critical year for burnout between the first and fifth year at one workplace. Thus, if there is a
difficulty for people to deal with burnout in the first five years at a workplace then they have a
higher chance of leaving a workplace due to its negative effect on the person. If this is true
then the workers who leave their workplace within the first five years will not be around to
answer possible questions about the emotional strain of their workplace later when they are
older. Thus, the older workers will be the people surviving the tough first years at a workplace
and they will be the ones who have been able to deal with the early threats of burnout.
Probably these will be the workers who report less burnout than their younger work
colleagues.
Marital status also has a clear relationship with burnout. Generally workers who are single
are the ones most prone to burnout and married people are less prone to burnout. Single
people even show a tendency to score higher on burnout than the people who have been
divorced. People who are divorced usually fall between the single and the married group,
since they are nearer to single people when it comes to higher emotional exhaustion but they
are closer to married people when it comes to lower depersonalization and a higher sense of
accomplishment.
Having no children has also been associated with an increased risk of burnout. The reasons
behind this have been stated to be that people with families are likely to be older, and thus
more stable and psychologically more mature. Also, a person’s dealing with her husband and
children makes her more skilled in handle personal problems and emotional conflicts. Another
reason which has been mentioned is that the love and support from family members is helping
the person to cope with emotional stress at work, and also a person who has a family has
another way of looking at her work than a single person. This might mean that a person with a
family is not as dependent of her workplace as a place for providing personal social life, since