with disabilities will be more likely to remarry than are those who have only healthy
children.
However, the literature on remarriage generally suggests that children are a
barrier to remarriage (Koo & Suchindran, 1980). Scholars suggest that children may
serve as a barrier to remarriage by limiting mothers time and capacity to search for a
spouse, or may decrease women’s desirability to potential partners as men are reluctant to
take on responsibility for another man’s offspring. Raising a child with a disability may
serve as an even larger barrier to remarriage for either reason. Caring for a child with a
disability is even more time consuming than caring for nondisabled children. Moreover,
if men are reluctant to take on caregiving responsibilities for nondisabled children, they
may be particularly reluctant to take on children with amplified needs, such as those
exhibited by children with disabilities (Mauldon 1992). As such, we may see that
divorced mothers raising children with disabilities are less likely to remarry than
otherwise similar mothers of nondisabled children.
Yet remarriage is not the only option available to individuals who desire the
companionship and aid that a partner brings. Cohabitation has grown increasingly
common over the course of the last three decades. We now see that a majority of
marriages are preceded by cohabitations (Bumpass & Lu, 2000), and are particularly
common preceding remarriage (Smock & Manning, 2004). While many couples cohabit
in anticipation of marrying, some view cohabitation as an alternative to marriage.
Cohabitation provides many of the benefits of marriage, but does not require the same
degree of commitment. If men are reluctant to take on legal responsibility for the care of
children with disabilities, we may see that divorced women raising children with
disabilities are more likely to be single, or that they are equally likely to be in a union as
are women whose children are nondisabled, yet are more likely to be in a cohabitation
and less likely to be remarried.
In one of the few studies exploring this issue, Mauldon (1992) assessed the hazard
of remarriage from the perspective of children using data from the 1981 NHIS. She
concluded that while children with disabilities have a greater likelihood of experiencing
their parents divorce, there was little difference with regard to the hazard of remarriage.
Specifically, Mauldon (1992) compared the time to their mother’s remarriage for children