Workplace gender harassment, illegitimate tasks, and poor mental health: Hypothesized associations in a Swedish cohort.

Workers exposed to gender harassment and illegitimate tasks may experience adverse mental health outcomes such as depression and burnout. However, the longitudinal effects and the complex interrelationships between these variables remain largely unexplored. We investigated the cross-lagged relationships between gender harassment, illegitimate tasks, and mental health outcomes among working adults in Sweden over a period of two years, as well as the gender differences in the cross-lagged effects. Additionally, the study examined whether illegitimate tasks mediated the relationship between gender harassment and negative mental health outcomes over time. Data were drawn from the Swedish Longitudinal Occupational Survey of Health (SLOSH), covering 2796 working men and 4110 working women in a two-wave analysis from 2018 to 2020. We employed a structural equation model to examine the cross-lagged effects and the mediating effect between gender harassment, illegitimate tasks, and mental health outcomes over time. Furthermore, we applied a multigroup analysis to determine gender differences in the cross-lagged effects. The results showed statistically significant cross-lagged relationships (forward, reverse, and reciprocal) between gender harassment, illegitimate tasks, and mental ill-health. There were statistically significant gender differences in these cross-lagged relationships (burnout: △χ2(47)=106.21, p < 0.01; depression: △χ2(47)=80.5, p < 0.01). Initial illegitimate tasks mediated the relationship between gender harassment and mental ill-health outcomes over time. The gender differences in the interrelationships between gender harassment, illegitimate tasks, and mental ill-health outcomes among workers in Sweden indicate that policies, regulations, and interventions that address these exposures in organisations must be tailored to benefit both men and women.

The effects of parenting on early adolescents' noncognitive skills: Evidence from a sample of twins in Germany.

Many theories in the social sciences assume that parenting affects child development. Previous research mostly supports the notion that parenting affects the skill development of children in early childhood. There are fewer studies testing whether parenting in early adolescence has such an influence. We estimate the effects of parenting on early adolescents' noncognitive skills using data from the German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife). Specifically, we look at the effects of parenting styles, parental activities, and extracurricular activities on the academic self-concept, motivation, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and locus of control of 10 to 14 years old children. To control for unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality, we employ twin fixed-effects models combined with longitudinal information. In addition, MZ twin fixed effects models also control for genetic confounding. Our findings provide no support to the notion that parenting styles, parental activities, and extracurricular activities in early adolescence affect the development of children's noncognitive skills. We conclude that our results, in combination with the majority of evidence from previous research, are in line with a model according to which parenting has larger effects on the skill development of children in early childhood than in early adolescence.

Working Hours, Sleep Disturbance and Self-Assessed Health in Men and Women: A Multilevel Analysis of 30 Countries in Europe.

Objectives: This study examined the gender and cross-country differences in the relationship between working hours and self-assessed health among working men and women in Europe, and further explored the moderating role of sleep disturbance in the relationship. Methods: We used cross-sectional data from the 6th European Working Condition Survey on 14,603 men and 15,486 women across 30 countries in Europe. A multivariate logistic regression was applied to evaluate the relationship between working hours, sleep disturbance, and self- assessed health. In addition, we employed a two-stage multilevel logistic regression to assess the cross-country variations in the relationship between working hours and self-assessed health. Results: The study showed a slightly U-shaped relationship between working hours and less-than-good self-assessed health among working adults in Europe (<31 h: aOR = 1.11; 95% CI: 1.00-1.25, 41-50 h: aOR = 0.98; 95% CI: 0.84-1.15, and 50+ h: aOR = 1.31; 95% CI: 1.07-1.59). However, working men had higher odds of reporting less-than-good self-assessed health as compared to women when they devote longer hours to paid work. The results further showed that there are cross-country variations in the association between working hours and less-than-good self-assessed health for both men and women, and that men had slightly lower variations as compared to women. Contrary to expectation, sleep disturbance did not moderate the relationship between working hours and less-than-good self-assessed health for both men and women in Europe. Conclusions: Although there are gender differences and cross-country variations in the association between working hours and less-than-good self-assessed health, sleep disturbance did not moderate the associations. These findings underscore the importance for strict work time regulation and generous work-family policies that may promote good working conditions and health.

Do academic ability and social background influence each other in shaping educational attainment? The case of the transition to secondary education in Germany.

Studies examining the interplay between children's academic ability and parental background are rare, and their findings are mixed and inconclusive. This paper addresses possible reinforcing or compensating relationships between child characteristics and parental social background in their influence on the transition to upper secondary education, the most important transition in the German school system. We use the German TwinLife data for genetically informed analyses and include comprehensive information on parental background as well as child cognitive ability and personality. We find no evidence for a significant influence of reinforcing or compensatory interactions in addition to the strong additive effects of child and parental characteristics. The ACE decomposition with covariates shows an almost equal influence of genetic variation and shared environments. However, indicators of child academic ability and parental background contribute only a little to explaining both contributions. Interestingly, the influence of child characteristics on enrollment in upper secondary school works mainly through environmental rather than genetic effects.

COVID-19 and Work-Family Conflicts in Germany: Risks and Chances Across Gender and Parenthood.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected everyone's daily life in one way or another, requiring a re-negotiation of existing strategies for work-life integration, not only for individuals but also within families and partnerships. To contribute to existing knowledge on work-life integration during COVID-19 in Germany, we look at gender and parenthood differences in the experiences of work-to-family (WFC) and family-to-work (FWC) conflicts. By accounting for employees' previous conflict experiences, we were able to reveal the extent to which the current conditions contributed to differences in these conflicts. Moreover, we explored the relevance of demands and resources in the family and work spheres as a way to explain different levels of WFC and FWC across gender and parenthood. Our analyses are based on a sample of 660 employees from a German linked employer-employee panel study and a COVID-19 follow-up survey conducted in late 2020. Results revealed that work-family conflict experiences before the pandemic play an important role in current conflict perceptions. Whereas WFC were more likely to be accentuated during the pandemic, prior FWC experiences may have helped to mitigate conflicts under these new conditions. Work-family conflicts in general have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but this finding applied only to conflicts in the family-to-work direction. Although such increases were not limited to parents, they were particularly high in this group. Overall, gender differences in work-family conflicts were absent, but differences were found between mothers and fathers. The need to compensate for a lack of external childcare, as well as having to work from home, increased FWC, especially among fathers. This study suggests that FWC in particular became more important during the pandemic; however, parents were not the only ones who were disadvantaged when it came to work-life integration; childless individuals likewise struggled to balance the demands of work and private life.

Is there something special about twin families? A comparison of parenting styles in twin and non-twin families.

Twin comparisons offer a powerful quasi-experimental design to study the impact of the family of origin on children's life chances. Yet, there are concerns about the generalizability of results obtained from twin studies because twin families are structurally different and twins have a genetic resemblance. We examine these concerns by comparing mothers' reports on their parenting styles for twin and non-twin children between twin and non-twin families, as well as within twin families. We use two German studies for our comparisons: TwinLife and pairfam. Our results demonstrate that twins receive more differential treatment and more emotional warmth than non-twins; however, these differences are largely accounted for by age differences between children. Overall, our results indicate that results on parenting obtained from twin studies can be generalized to non-twin families.

Twin Research in the Post-Genomic Era: Dissecting the Pathophysiological Effects of Adversity and the Social Environment.

The role of twins in research is evolving as we move further into the post-genomic era. With the re-definition of what a gene is, it is becoming clear that biological family members who share a specific genetic variant may well not have a similar risk for future disease. This has somewhat invalidated the prior rationale for twin studies. Case co-twin study designs, however, are slowly emerging as the ideal tool to identify both environmentally induced epigenetic marks and epigenetic disease-associated processes. Here, we propose that twin lives are not as identical as commonly assumed and that the case co-twin study design can be used to investigate the effects of the adult social environment. We present the elements in the (social) environment that are likely to affect the epigenome and measures in which twins may diverge. Using data from the German TwinLife registry, we confirm divergence in both the events that occur and the salience for the individual start as early as age 11. Case co-twin studies allow for the exploitation of these divergences, permitting the investigation of the role of not only the adult social environment, but also the salience of an event or environment for the individual, in determining lifelong health trajectories. In cases like social adversity where it is clearly not possible to perform a randomised-controlled trial, we propose that the case co-twin study design is the most rigorous manner with which to investigate epigenetic mechanisms encoding environmental exposure. The role of the case co-twin design will continue to evolve, as we argue that it will permit causal inference from observational data.

The German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife).

The German Twin Family Panel (TwinLife) is a German longitudinal study of monozygotic and dizygotic same-sex twin pairs and their families that was designed to investigate the development of social inequalities over the life course. The study covers an observation period from approximately 2014 to 2023. The target population of the sample are reared-together twins of four different age cohorts that were born in 2009/2010 (cohort 1), in 2003/2004 (cohort 2), in 1997/1998 (cohort 3) and between 1990 and 1993 (cohort 4). In the first wave, the study included data on 4097 twin families. Families were recruited in all parts of Germany so that the sample comprises the whole range of the educational, occupational and income structure. As of 2019, two face-to-face, at-home interviews and two telephone interviews have been conducted. Data from the first home and telephone interviews are already available free of charge as a scientific use-file from the GESIS data archive. This report aims to provide an overview of the study sample and design as well as constructs that are unique in TwinLife in comparison with previous twin studies - such as an assessment of cognitive abilities or information based on the children's medical records and report cards. In addition, major findings based on the data already released are displayed, and future directions of the study are presented and discussed.

Pathways of Intergenerational Transmission of Advantages during Adolescence: Social Background, Cognitive Ability, and Educational Attainment.

Educational attainment in adolescence is of paramount importance for attaining higher education and for shaping subsequent life chances. Sociological accounts focus on the role of differences in socioeconomic resources in intergenerational reproduction of educational inequalities. These often disregard the intergenerational transmission of cognitive ability and the importance of children's cognitive ability to educational attainment. Psychological perspectives stress the importance of cognitive ability for educational attainment but underemphasize potentially different roles of specific socioeconomic resources in shaping educational outcomes, as well as individual differences in cognitive ability. By integrating two strands of research, a clearer picture of the pathways linking the family of origin, cognitive ability, and early educational outcomes can be reached. Using the population-based TwinLife study in Germany, we investigated multidimensional pathways linking parental socioeconomic position to their children's cognitive ability and academic track attendance in the secondary school. The sample included twins (N = 4008), respectively ages 11 and 17, and siblings (N = 801). We observed strong genetic influences on cognitive ability, whereas shared environmental influences were much more important for academic tracking. In multilevel analyses, separate dimensions of socioeconomic resources influenced child cognitive ability, controlling parental cognitive ability. Controlling adolescent cognitive ability and parental cognitive ability, parental socioeconomic resources also directly affected track attendance. This indicated that it is crucial to investigate the intertwined influences on educational outcomes in adolescence of both cognitive ability and the characteristics of the family of origin.

What Drives the Development of Social Inequality Over the Life Course? The German TwinLife Study.

The German twin family study 'TwinLife' was designed to enhance our understanding of the development of social inequalities over the life course. The interdisciplinary project investigates mechanisms of social inequalities across the lifespan by taking into account psychological as well as social mechanisms, and their genetic origin as well as the interaction and covariation between these factors. Main characteristics of the study are: (1) a multidimensional perspective on social inequalities, (2) the assessment of developmental trajectories in childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood in a longitudinal design by using (3) a combination of a multi-cohort cross-sequential and an extended twin family design, while (4) capturing a large variation of behavioral and environmental factors in a representative sample of about 4,000 German twin families. In the present article, we first introduce the theoretical and empirical background of the TwinLife study, and second, describe the design, content, and implementation of TwinLife. Since the data will be made available as scientific use file, we also illustrate research possibilities provided by this project to the scientific community.

Work-related stress and cognitive enhancement among university teachers.

BACKGROUND: Working conditions of academic staff have become increasingly complex and occupational exposure has risen. This study investigates whether work-related stress is associated with the use of prescription drugs for cognitive enhancement (CE). METHODS: The study was designed around three web-based surveys (n1 = 1131; n2 = 936; n3 = 906) to which university teachers at four German universities were asked to respond. It assessed past CE-drug use and the willingness to use CE-drugs as factors influencing future use. Overlap among participants across the surveys allowed for analyses of stability of the results across time. RESULTS: Our study suggests a currently very low prevalence of CE-drug use as well as a low willingness to use such drugs. The results showed a strong association between perceptions of work-related stress and all measures of CE-drug use (when controlling for potential confounding factors). They also showed that past use of CE-drugs increased participants' willingness to use them again in the future, as did lower levels of social support. Two different measures showed that participants' moral qualms against the use of CE-drugs decreased their probability of using them. CONCLUSIONS: The results increase our knowledge about the prevalence of CE-drug use and our understanding of what motivates and inhibits the use of CE-drug.