Measures for potential confounders

Several variables were considered as potential confounders in our analyses, as they may be associated with work stress and/or parent-child bonding: Education, number of children, age of index child, hours of childcare, hours of household work, hours of work, and working in home office. They were selected based on previous research and correlation analyses with the predictor and outcome variables. Education was used as a measure for the socioeconomic status. It was assessed during pregnancy with the index child using a question regarding professional qualification in the main DREAM study questionnaire: “Do you have a university degree: yes or no?”. The other variables were collected as items in the DREAM_CORONA questionnaire. The participants were asked to fill out the age of the index child and the total number of their children. Concerning work factors, participants were asked to provide information about the number of hours of work (per week), number of hours of childcare and of household work (per workday), and to indicate if they work in home office due to the COVID-19 restrictions. The variable parents’ sex was not included as a confounder, because the results of the data analyses were investigated separately for mothers and fathers.