Parental decisions to divorce and have additional children among families with children with cerebral palsy: Evidence from Swedish longitudinal and administrative data
利用瑞典2001-2015年人口登记数据，研究发现有脑瘫儿童的家庭中，低教育水平父母离婚风险更高，且生育更多子女的可能性降低，尤其是高龄母亲和低教育父母。
This study analyzes the relationship of having a child with the early-onset disability cerebral palsy (CP) and the parental decision to divorce and to have additional children. We use longitudinal matched case-control data from multiple linked Swedish National Population Registers between 2001 and 2015 and perform Cox proportional hazards regressions with interval-censoring. Although we do not find a general excess parental divorce risk on CP relative to the comparison group without CP, we find that having a child with CP increases the risk of divorce for parents with low education. We also find that having a child with CP reduces the likelihood of having additional children, especially for mothers in the older age range (maternal age at delivery >33 years) and parents with low education. The severity level of the disability, as indicated by gross motor function, is not related to the results. These findings should be understood in the Swedish context, which provides extensive welfare support (e.g., personal assistance). If future studies would find adverse results in countries with less social care and benefits, our results may indicate that it is possible to mitigate negative consequences for the family of a child with disability.