Maryhelen MacInnes
Department of Sociology, Michigan State University
Extended Abstract
The impact of child disability on divorced mother’s union formation
Contemporary statistics clearly indicate that ours is a divorce culture. While
estimates vary, approximately 40% of first marriages end in divorce (Bramlet & Mosher,
2002). Moreover, the majority of those divorces will involve children: about half of
divorces involve couples with children (Amato, 2000). Yet divorce is not the endpoint for
the majority of these families. The vast majority of divorced women remarry.
Remarriages account for about half of all weddings, and upwards of 75% of divorced
women will remarry within 10 years (Bramlet & Mosher, 2002). Moreover, many
divorced women choose to cohabit, either prior to a remarriage or in lieu of remarriage
(Bumpass & Sweet, 1989).
The literature clearly indicates that children with disabilities destabilize
marriages (Corman & Kaestner, 1992; Joesch & Smith, 1997; Mauldon, 1992; Spearin,
Park, D’Ottavi, & Goldscheider, 2003). Children who have disabilities are more likely to
experience their mother’s divorce than are otherwise similar nondisabled children. While
children with disabilities seem to destabilize marriages, little has been done to assess their
impact on the likelihood of remarriage among their mothers.
It is reasonable to anticipate that raising a child with a disability should have an
impact upon the likelihood of remarriage. Divorced mothers raising a child or children
with disabilities may be more strongly motivated to seek another husband than are
women whose child or children are nondisabled. Raising a child with a disability can be
immensely taxing in both an emotional and a pragmatic sense. Such children can be
immensely costly (Lukemeyer, Meyers, & Smeeding, 2000). These children often require
services from a variety of health professionals as well as equipment or other health-
related supplies, many of which are not covered by health insurance. Further, raising a
child with a disability can be stressful for the caregivers (Darling, 1987; Ireys & Silver,
1996). In fact, these stresses are thought to explain the higher risk of divorce among
parents raising children with disabilities. Thus, we may see that women raising children
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
with disabilities to that among nondisabled children. She found no evidence of a longer
duration to remarriage among children with disabilities.
This study aims to more fully investigate the impact of child disability on
mother’s prospects for union formation. While Mauldon’s analysis suggests that there is
no impact of disability on remarriage, I propose that by only looking at remarriage, we
may be missing part of the story. In recent decades, cohabitation has become increasingly
common, particularly following divorce. This study aims to explore the impact of raising
a child with a disability on post-divorce union formation, looking at its impact on the
likelihood of remaining single compared to cohabiting or to remarrying.
Data and methods
This study will make ues use of recent data that contains information on both the
marital status/ histories of women and strong measures of child disability: matched data
from the 1993 NHIS and 1995 NSFG. The 1993 NHIS is a national survey designed and
administered by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Information is
obtained about the health, disability, and other characteristics of each member of the
household. Likewise, the 1995 NSFG is a national survey that examines marital, fertility,
contraception and employment trajectories of women ages 15-44, designed and
administered by NCHS. It contains information regarding marital history, as well as a
variety of demographic and economic characteristics. The file includes information
about the birth dates of all children regardless of residence. The 1993 NHIS provided the
sampling frame for the 1995 NSFG. As a result, records from women interviewed in the
1993 NHIS can be linked to records of the same women interviewed in the 1995 NSFG.
The resultant matched dataset thus includes information on both child disability status
and on the characteristics of their families.
Analytic strategy
This study will use a series of logistic regression models to assess the impact of
raising a child with a disability on the union-formation outcomes of divorced women.
The sample contains information on all women whose first marriage ended in divorce at
least two years prior to the date of the NHIS survey. I am able to use the characteristics of
women and their children at the time of divorce (including the disability status of
children) to predict whether women will be remarried, single, or cohabiting at the time of
the survey, controlling for relevant covariates such as mothers race, age, duration since
divorce, and the like.
A superior analytic approach would be to conduct a competing-outcomes Cox
hazard model to assess the impact of child disability on the risk of both remarriage and
cohabitation as types of first union following divorce. Unfortunately, the matched data set
only contains information on the first and current cohabiting unions, thus prohibiting
such an analysis. However, the data do permit hazard modeling of time to remarriage. As
such this model will also be used, in conjunction with models predicting current union
status, to assess the impact of child disability on union formations.