Reviewer’s report
Title: 
Maternal Adaptation of Working Mothers with Infants or Toddlers in South Korea: A Systematic
Review
Version: 
0 
Date: 
14 Dec 2020
Reviewer's report:
Please include all comments for the authors in this box rather than uploading your report as an attachment.
Please only upload as attachments annotated versions of manuscripts, graphs, supporting materials or
other aspects of your report which cannot be included in a text format.
Please overwrite this text when adding your comments to the authorsMaternal adaptation of working
mothers with infants or toddlers in South Korea: A systematic review
Statement
Considering the low level of fertility in their country the authors are working towards 
two main objectives
: to summarize the state of the art on maternal adaptation of working mothers with infants or toddlers in
South Korea and to analyze the influencing factors on the so called "maternal adaptation". 
A systematic review of the literature was carried out selecting quantitative studies generally descriptive or
observational studies related to South Korea only.
38 studies were retained.
From their literature review authors defined "maternal adaptation" as a composite process that working
women may have to internalize their different tasks.
Four dimensions were observed in this process: psychological (emotional) behavioral, relational and
cognitive. Each dimension was designed from specific items, generally two or three items. 
Subsequently the authors presented the frequency of each dimension they found in the literature that they
had retained : 37/38 for psychological, 11/38 behavioral, 9/38 relational and 3/38 For 
cognitive.
The results of this descriptive approach are exhibiting a lot of considerations already well known
elsewhere in the world, about the mental charge loading maternal women with labour force involvement.
And finally the authors are asking for a public policy in South Korea supporting maternal adaptation.
Main analysis
I think the study is properly carried out but has no originality, because its brings no new factors related to
women adaptation with children when working. The study illustrates the fact that South Korean working
women are submitted to the same factors (stress, anxiety, self estime…) than others in the richest
countries in this world.
More over the underlying purpose of the paper is to increase the fertility level of Korean women.
Unfortunately a lot of studies have faced the question of the relationship between job involvement of
women and birth rates many years ago. And the present study does not take care of the knowledges already
accumulated at international level. In some cases, for example in France, studies showed that non working
mothers were less healthy than women involved in labour force till they had 2/3 infants ; only the high
parities were discriminant for women in professional activity. In France, as in Nordic European countries
a long story of social help and sustaining working women was established. The strategies that showed
their efficiency are Paid sick leave, paid vacation days, flexible hours and tailored nursing interventions
taken in charge by social welfare during the time the mothers are working. Until now the level of fertility
still stays at a correct level of population reproduction in these area. On the contrary a very low rate of
fertility was observed in Germany were less nursing interventions exist for working women traditionally.
So I suggest the authors to enlarging their systematic review of literature at the international level in order
to be at the true state of the art and be aware of new theoretical frame works.
Another important suggestion should be to study consequences for mothers when their job is home-work
carried out by electronic facilities which is our recent new condition due to the pandemic situation. 
Other remarks
Page 6, l 22 authors must explain precisely how they carried out their regression analysis : what were their
explicative factors and the dependent variables and give some quantitative results;
Page 8, l 26, they have to present by some words the Bronfenbrenner ecological systems theory, which is
not used actually among specialists of women's health studies.
Page 8, Fig 1 important variables are not taken into account ; maternal age, and/or their generation of
birth, number of infants at the survey, how long marriage (or partner relation) was.
Page 13, l 55, this review demonstrates nothing contrary to that is written. Correlation analysis of 38 units
cannot demonstrate that relationships between maternal adaptation and different factors exist but is
suggesting only they have an impact.
It would be interesting to search what factors have a positive impact on the relational, emotional,
behavioral and cognitive conditions of mothers.
Final recommendation : accepted after major revisions in particular the analysis of the international
literature. 
Publons Reviewer Recognition
. Springer Nature can send verification of this review directly to Publons
(a subsidiary of Clarivate Analytics). If you would like to take advantage of this service, please click on
the “Yes” option below. Your name, email address, title of the reviewed manuscript, name of the journal,
and date of your review submission (the “Review Data”) will then be transmitted to Publons after the final
decision on the manuscript has been made. If you have already registered at Publons, they will notify you
of the receipt of this review and update your profile 
as per your settings and their policy. If you are not
registered with Publons, you will receive an email from them asking you to register in order for them to
be able to recognize your review on your new profile page. Publons may use the Review Data to generate
derivative metadata for the benefit of Publons and you as a reviewer, carefully considering the sensitivity
of such information. For example, Publons may verify your record as a reviewer by updating your profile
published on its webservice if you have registered for such service or help editors to identify candidate
reviewers. Please find the details of processing in Publons’ privacy policy
https://publons.com/about/terms
No
Declaration of competing interests
Please complete a declaration of competing interests, considering the
following questions:
1
. 
Have you in the past five years received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an
organisation that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of this manuscript,
either now or in the future?
2
. 
Do you hold any stocks or shares in an organisation that may in any way gain or lose financially
from the publication of this manuscript, either now or in the future?
3
. 
Do you hold or are you currently applying for any patents relating to the content of the manuscript?
4
. 
Have you received reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has
applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript?
5
. 
Do you have any other financial competing interests?
6
. 
Do you have any non-financial competing interests in relation to this paper?
If you can answer no to all of the above, write 'I declare that I have no competing interests' below. If your
reply is yes to any, please give details below.
I declare that I have no competing interests'below
Reviewer Publication Consent.
 I agree for my report to be made available under an Open Access
Creative Commons CC-BY License (
 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
) if this manuscript is
accepted for publication. Any comments that I do not wish to be included in the published report have
been included as confidential comments to the editor, which will not be published.
If you are not happy
for us to publish this report, please contact the editorial office before completing the review.
If you
wish, you can include your name in your published report. Please note you must decide whether to
include your name at the start of the process and confirm this decision whenever prompted. If you
change your decision later, we will not be able to publish your name.
I agree to the terms of the CC-BY 4.0 license; please 
do not
 publish my name with my report. (default)
Is the study design appropriate to answer the research question (including the use of appropriate controls),
and are the conclusions supported by the evidence presented?
No
Are the methods sufficiently described to allow the study to be repeated?
Yes
Is the use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties appropriate?
No
Is the presentation of the work clear?
Yes
Are the images in this manuscript (including electrophoretic gels and blots) free from apparent
manipulation?
Yes