Sunday, July 30, 2006

Disability --> Divorce?

Factoid I've been trying to verify: the percentage of parents of autistic children who divorce. I've seen a figure of 80% given any number of times (go ahead and Google it--you'll see it come up all over the place, including various news sources who just quote it and don't bother verifying it either). The closest I've come to any kind of verification is a citation for an article by Jane Mauldon, an associate professor at Berkeley, late of the RAND Institute, which I've been unable to find online--she had apparently written something in 1992 on the question of disabled children and divorce rates (note: not specifically autistic children). It seems it does lead to a higher divorce rate, though I couldn't find a specific figure. I also found something to the effect that divorce is more likely to happen after the child reaches school age--there was speculation that it was b/c the child had to be educated by the school district, freeing the mother up somewhat more and making her less dependent on the father.

I had one of those power surges I get very late at night and emailed Jane Mauldon herself to ask if she could point me to some specific sources or numbers. I will be very, very surprised if I hear back. I'm not holding my breath for a reply, of course.

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