Family stressors and personal resources of mothers are discussed as important risk factors for infant development. At 2 measurement points (beginning and end of mother-child rehabilitation; duration: 3 weeks; N = 564 mother-child-pairs) data of mothers' self-report of stress as well as personal resources and children's self-report of quality of life were examined, using a structural equation model. Family stressors have a direct effect on children's quality of life and an indirect effect mediated by psychological health or maternal self-reported competence. Changes in mothers' psychological health and maternal self-reported competence show a small but significant correlation with changes in children's quality of life.

Recently, the concept of effort-reward imbalance (ERI) developed by Siegrist had been applied to unpaid household and family work (ERI-HF). Evidence suggests that the imbalance between effort spent and reward received in family and domestic labor is associated with poor mental and physical health. However, so far, the adopted questionnaire ERI-HF was exclusively used among women in childcare responsibility. This paper reports on the application of the model to men in childcare responsibility using data from a clinical sample of fathers in rehabilitation clinics (N=415). Analogous to the original version, ERI-HF is divided into 2 components: (i) dysbalance of effort and reward, and (ii) overcommitment. For both components, confirmatory factor analyses revealed good to satisfactory properties. Overall, 13.4% of men in childcare responsibility showed a dysbalance between high effort and low reward of household and family work. High levels of effort were more frequently reported than high levels of low reward. With percentages ranging between 24.3 and 59.6%, a significant proportion of fathers reported difficulties to withdraw from household and family work obligations. Analyses of construct validity revealed significant associations between ERI and socio-demographic factors (number of children, employment status, single fatherhood, work-family-conflict) as well as subjective health. Taken together, our findings suggest that the instrument is applicable to men in childcare responsibility.

Inpatient measures do not only cause short-term improvements of mothers' health status, they also lead to clinically relevant reductions of health impairments and complaints in the medium term. In contrast, the health status of mothers, who miss the intervention, deteriorates. This also applies to mothers, who were rejected. Therefore, it is highly recommended to take the self-reporting forms into account when identifying mothers for the intervention, and also to start the intervention early after the approval.