Families with disabled children represent a sizeable share of all American households. Living with a disabled child can have profound effects on the entire family, which in turn can affect the health and well-being of the child who is disabled. Much needs to be learned about how children's health affects their parents, siblings, and other family members and about how family characteristics and resources modify those associations. Numerous programs and organizations provide resources for disabled children and their families, but the system is extremely fragmented and difficult to navigate. This commentary reviews what is known about the effects of child disability on the family, provides an overview of the complex needs of and multitude of resources available to families of disabled children, and concludes with suggested directions for practice, research, and public policy.

No abstract

We use data from the national longitudinal Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to estimate the effect of poor child health on father presence. We look at whether parents live in the same household 12-18 months after the child's birth and also at how their relationships changed along a continuum (married, cohabiting, romantically involved, friends, or not involved) during the same period. We find that having an infant in poor health reduces the likelihood that parents will live together and increases the likelihood that they will become less committed to their relationship, particularly among parents with low socioeconomic status.