Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard the statistics about how having a child with special needs affects marriages. The most startling statistics report an 80% failure rate in marriages where a child has special needs.
Divorce and Special Needs
A recent article at the Huffington Post reinforces the statistic about marriage and special needs. In it, family attorney Linda Helfend Meyer writes about what she’s observed about the impact of special needs on marriages, both in her law practice and in her personal life. What she writes is sobering.
Marriage and Special Needs
However, these statistics leave me scratching my head because they don’t jive with my research findings for Different Dream Parenting: A Practical Guide to Raising a Child with Special Needs. When the fifty couples interviewed for the book were asked how their child’s special needs affected their marriages, most responded emphatically that it strengthened them.
Don’t get me wrong. Several said they sought marriage counseling sometime after a child with special needs became part of their families. And some couples weren’t able to reconcile their differences and are now divorced. But the vast majority are still married and feel their relationships with their spouses are stronger.
Your Marriage and Special Needs
Experiences is a great teacher, and in this day and age, our marriages need lots of assistance. So leave a comment if you like. It can be about how your marriage got stronger or about how you tried to work things out, but couldn’t. Or describe one of your struggles and how you deal with it as a couple. Leads on good marriage counselors would also be appreciated by couples who need help.
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
Lynette,
Thanks for your honesty and transparency. You are an inspiration to me.
Jolene
thanks for clarifying!
sorry for misunderstanding your thoughts!
and you are right it is surprising the families that can say “it strengthened us”…but that is also so wonderful and all to God’s Glory!
He is good and faithful, in spite of us ;).
We have been thru a lot, but the miracles, and the journey i can’t say i’d of chosen it (honestly wouldn’t), but it has made me a better mom and wife and servent. the journey has made me know and relieve the doubts that i could ever have had!
thanks for all you do and your encouragement!
lynette
Hi Lynette,
Thanks for transparently sharing your family’s experience. You have all been through so much, and I am amazed at the strength you’ve shown.
Maybe the post was unclear in conveying my thoughts. I wasn’t at all surprised by the high divorce rate for families of kids with special needs. I was surprised by the number of families interviewed for Different Dream Parenting who didn’t fit that trend. Their marriages, like yours, grew stronger. All those families attributed their ability to buck the trend to their faith, just as you did. Faith doesn’t guarantee an intact marriage, but in increases the likelihood.
Hang in there, Lynette,
Jolene
i waited awhile to post anything….my immediate reaction was seriously you are surprised that special needs marriages have a higher divorce rate? we were warned over and over to guard our marriage when jocy was sick in the picu in toledo and ann arbor. nurses and doctors alike had many many stories of marriages that didn’t make it. i can also share that mike and i have made it so far, only by god’s grace. not by anything we have done, but sometimes i think it has been simply that neither of us could (1) do it alone, (2) financially couldn’t afford doing two households. if we had had the smallet opening of seperating we would have.
in any ‘normal’ marriage i think it only takes a wee bit on selfishness and/or self-centeredness to put a wedge in a relationship. with a child with special needs, the stress and ‘normal’ life issues that will still occur…you lose the option of selfishness. the struggle and fight to help your child, the dealing with other children, financially struggling, strangers in your life in many invasive ways….there were many many calgon take me away to another place another life moments for both of us.
my hubby in the midst of our daughters journey with AML leukemia, lung hemmorage, kidney failure, and stroke at 14…with daily ups and downs and many many times of staff coming to say goodbye as no one expected jocy to make it thru the night yet again…suddenly lost his mom to a brainstem stroke. he was lost, he was sad, he was angry. and he was even angrier at me as my kids and i still needed him at moment he just had nothing to give any of us. it was simply picking our healthy daughter who had come down with a bad cold from school. i was in ann arbor had not slept for 2 nights, the young woman in the bed next to jocy had just lost her fight with AML and a bone marrow transplant. All perfect conditions for the wrong thing said, one more heavy brink to the load to send the structure of our marriage and family to implode. he decided he was done…done with us, done this our business, done with the life we had made. he was serious. as with all marriages of 20+ years you will have ups and downs and struggles and this time i really thought is was over. i even called a lawyer. god brought a couple of people to us, and softened our hearts to each other…
and it has taken 3 years since to heal that day…he still had hurts, i still had hurts.
this past year, we have been able to come alongside of a our niece and her family who have a newborn with serious medical needs (CDH), and another one in our community (polycystic kidney disease and vent. dependence). we have been able to sit and pray with them, as we have ‘been there’ in someways. what i see with them, other families we met with at the hospital that without the Lord and his grace and provision, we would not be married today.
what i learned quickly in our journey, was that when illness strikes any immediate family member, that person is not the only person who gets ‘sick’. the whole family does. illness changed each of us, healthy son and daughter, still today deal with the trauma of what they saw, felt and the way this journey totally changed the direction of our life.
i know that god has walked each and every step with us. this journey solidified my relationhip with HIM. he worked miracles for my daughter, and ‘yes’ this journey in many ways made our marriage stronger…i am so grateful for the book of Job. and i totally understand Job’s wife and her futility.
so the long and short of it, i agree with the perentage of divorces with parents with kids with special needs. so many marriages end because of choices that we make that end up hurting our spouse. when you are gifted with a journey of a child that has special needs, illness or death…you don’t get a choice, it is what life has dealt you…for better or worse. it tests every vow, every promise…but with hope in jesus, he will get you thru.
I think you hit on two key elements to making marriage work while caring for a child with special needs. You and your husband developed perseverance and a sense of commitment which resulted in a strong bond. For single parents reading this and maybe feeling guilty, remember two people must persevere and be committed. If you had both elements, but your spouse didn’t, don’t beat yourself up!
Jolene
Having lil Raymond wasn’t easy. Big Raymond and I went through hard times we broke up a few times but in the end after a 20year relationship of off and on, we actually got married and we are stronger than ever. I do think we had to focus more on working together because we have a child with Hemophilia.
How wonderful for your family, Valerie. I’m amazed by the number of parents who are closer because of their children with special needs. But other families do struggle and can’t keep their marriage together. Those families need friends and church family to rally around them and support them.
Jolene
I agree with you – everyone I know that has a special needs child seems to get closer. I know of some whom have gotten divorced, but overall, they appear to be in the minority. For our marriage, and also our family, it seemed to bring us all closer. We have often said that we don’t like to think about who we would all be if we didn’t have our little one with Downs. She made us all better!