Title: Exploring the connection between maternal mental health and partnership, parental role,
and satisfaction with various aspects of life using pairfam data: a cross-sectional analysis
Version: 2 Date: 04 Dec 2024
Reviewer's report:
Thank you for the opportunity to review the manuscript.
The paper explores the relationship between maternal mental health and the important aspects
of women’s life: relationship with a partner, parental role and satisfaction with other areas of
life. Although conceptually it is clear that maternal emotional wellbeing is inseparable from the
wellbeing in family, professional, economic, and other areas of life, it is essential to conduct
high-quality academic studies in order to provide information for evidence-based solutions to
improve women’s quality of life. Thus, the topic of the study is timely and of great individual
and social value.
The study is based on a well–established cohort with a good sample size. It uses adequate
measurement and statistical tools. However, while reading this manuscript, several concerns
have arisen.
General comments:
The manuscript requires a significant language check as in many instances the text utilizes
non-academic style. For example, the very first sentence of the Introduction goes as “Mothers
experience different burdens in their parenting and their family life.” It is unclear, different from
who? Or the authors means “various burdens”? Furthermore, expressions like “in that case”,
“one of these effects is supposed to be” are more appropriate for blogs or popular science texts,
while they should not be used in a scientific article. Moreover, there are multiple punctuation
errors. Please, address this issue throughout the text.
Abstract:
In the Methods section please indicate all the questionnaires and measures you used without
abbreviations. In the results please leave only “mothers in partnership, 208 (14.0 %) are mentally
stressed”, and omit the “while 1,276 (86.0 %) are mentally not stressed”, the readers can easily
calculate that themselves. On the contrary, please, indicate the exact statistics from your linear
regression models results (B, 95% CI, and/or p-value). Replace “By doing so” with more
appropriate academic transition words, such as “Therefore”, “Thus”.
Introduction:
Line 42: it is unclear why you use italic text for mental spillover here. If it is an important
concept, please, introduce it properly.
Lines 45-47: please, provide concrete examples of studies exploring the associations between
maternal mental health and child development
Methods:
Line 84: please, change to “participants and procedures”
Line 90: can you please clarify, why this particular wave was chosen, why only this one and
how it may be different to the others?
Lines 91-92: what do you mean by “Mothers living apart together”?
Line 95: please, omit the name of the questionnaire and use the general formulation that the
participants with any missing data were excluded.
Line 99: please, rename the subsections  according to the variable name, not type, e.g. maternal
mental health; satisfaction with partnership, etc.
Line 108: I am concerned that the cut-off is sample-based, not diagnostic criteria based.
Therefore, it simply reflects the level of stress within your particular sample, while the results
may not be compared to other samples. When a woman falls into the category “mentally
stressed”, she may not be stressed in a different group and vice versa. As your whole in-between
groups analysis is based on this cut-off, you need to justify it carefully.
Line 134: Rename to Covariates
Lines 139-140: please, clarify if the reported income is annual or monthly, individual or family?
Also, please explain what is OECD.
Lines 147-149: It is unclear why you excluded certain domains. They might be of high relevance
for maternal mental health as low satisfaction with leisure  or friends time may reflect the
strains on the mothers ability to have private restoring experiences and serve as risk factors for
depression, burnout, and other mental health problems.
Results:
Lines 160-161: the difference between 104.17 and 22.500 euros is enormous. Are there any
outliers? Again, better clarification of what kind of income is indicated here would help with
the interpretation of the results.
Line 174: your most consistent result is with the “unspecific strain” variable. Could you explain
in more detail what this variable means and talk about this result  in the Discussion section?
Discussion:
The discussion feels quite vague. Based on what feels like a quite random cut-off, you
found differences of less than 1 point between the stressed and non-stressed groups. Although
statistically significant, these results do not look very informative. I believe it is important to
discuss that in this part of the manuscript rather than exaggerate your findings. I can see that you
briefly mention that in the Limitation section, however, you should also address the question
of the cut-off there.
Conclusions:
The conclusions are particularly lacking in academic style, thus, I recommend very drastic
language check.