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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted working parents with an accumulation of stressors regarding changes in work, family, and social life, putting their mental health at risk. Stressors include altered working conditions such as working from home or changes in working hours as well as the difficulty to reconcile work and childcare due to the closure of childcare facilities. The present study examined the relationship of psychosocial work stress (i.e., work-privacy conflict and effort-reward imbalance at work) and depressive symptoms in working parents and whether this association was moderated by individual resilience. Methods: Data of the present study (n = 452) were collected in Germany between May and June 2020 as part of the DREAMCORONA study. A subsample of working mothers (n = 191) and fathers (n = 261) completed the subscale for work-privacy conflict (WPC) of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire, the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) Questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Multiple linear regression analyses including moderation were performed, controlling for gender, working hours per week, and a lifetime history of depression as potential confounders. Results: Both WPC (β = 0.336, p <.001) and ERI (β = 0.254, p <.001) were significantly associated with depressive symptoms. Resilience moderated the relationship between ERI and depressive symptoms (β = − 0.101, p =.018), indicating that higher resilience weakened the relationship. However, this effect was not found regarding the relationship between WPC and depressive symptoms (β = 0.055, p =.167). Conclusions: The results highlight the need for measures to reduce psychosocial work stressors such as WPC and ERI during the COVID-19 pandemic on the one hand and to promote resilience on the other hand. The findings partially support the potential protective role of resilience buffering the association between psychosocial stress and mental health in working parents. Longitudinal studies are needed to confirm this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Socialist Government of Germany has as one of its avowed aims the improvement of the biological and racial qualities of the German people. For this purpose, it has undertaken a variety of measures, carried or as part of the public health and social welfare services of the state. Three out of every hundred Germans are afflicted with physical and mental diseases which are believed to be hereditary, and which seriously interfere with their ability to earn a livelihood. In some sections of the country, hereditary feeblemindedness afflicts about six out of every thousand inhabitants. Hence, a sterilization law has been passed. The German sterilization law is not a hasty enactment, as some people believe. Educational work along eugenic lines goes back four decades. Application for sterilization can be made by the afflicted person himself, by his guardian in the case of minors and incompetents, by the local public health office, or by superintendents of insane asylums, prisons, or homes for the feeble-minded.

• Higher work-privacy-conflict was associated with poorer parent–child-bonding. • When stratifying by parents' sex this association stayed significant only for men. • Working from home had no significant moderating effect on this association. During the COVID-19 pandemic, working parents have been faced with a double burden by struggling to satisfy their children's needs as well as dealing with altered working requirements at the same time. In the unprecedented context of a pandemic, the present study extends the existing literature to investigate the association between work-privacy-conflict (WPC) and parent–child-bonding in families with children aged 0–34 months old. Additionally, the potential moderating role of working from home is considered. Data of the present cross-sectional study (n = 385) were collected in Germany between May and June 2020 as part of the [name of the study will be inserted after the masked review]. Mothers (n = 165) and fathers (n = 220) currently working completed the Work-Privacy-Conflict Scale and the Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire. A hierarchical linear regression analysis including the confounders sex, working from home, working hours per week, age of index child, and childcare revealed a significant association between higher WPC and poorer parent–child-bonding (ß = 0.154, 95 % CI [0.02, 0.28]). In a second linear regression analysis stratified by sex, only the association within the sample of men remained significant (ß = 0.240, 95 % CI [0.07, 0.39]). Working from home had no significant moderating effect on the association between WPC and parent–child-bonding. Given our results, it seems particularly important for working parents to maintain a balance between work and private life as it could not only affect themselves but also the emotional connection to their child. Future research should consider additional factors, such as mental health, parenting, and couple dynamics when investigating the interference of WPC with parent–child-bonding. Additionally, a longitudinal approach will be necessary to establish causal relations between WPC and parent–child-bonding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To translate the Employment Precariousness Scale (EPRES) from Spanish into German (EPRES-Ge), adapt it to the German context, assess the psychometric properties and show prospective associations with mental health outcomes within the peripartum period., Design: Analyses encompassed descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to validate the structure of the EPRES, and multivariate regression analyses with mental health outcomes 8 weeks after birth., Participants: Self-report data from 3,455 pregnant women and their partners within the Dresden Study on Parenting, Work, and Mental Health prospective longitudinal cohort study were used., Results: The EPRES-Ge with five dimensions and 20 items showed good internal consistency (Cronbach's α=0.77). All scales showed good reliability coefficients of α=0.73-0.85 and good item-subscale correlations of r=0.63-0.98, with the exception of subscale rights, which showed poor reliability of α=0.30 and item-subscale correlations of r=0.45-0.68. Exploratory analysis and CFA confirmed the proposed five-dimensional structure, explaining 45.08% of the cumulative variance. Regression analyses with mental health outcomes after birth revealed statistically significant associations ( β= 0.12-0.20)., Conclusions: The EPRES-Ge is a valuable tool for assessing employment precariousness as a multidimensional construct. The scales could be adapted to the German working context. Precarious employment, as measured by the EPRES-Ge, is a determinant of mental health problems in young families., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)