Do more as a caring dad for a disabled child and your marriage gets better: new Polish research

A colleague in Poland, Eugene Kaniok, sends me the outcomes of his research on 243 Polish fathers of disabled children. Fathers means also carers of course, and it's usually mothers who do the most caring.

But this research looks at fathers' involvement: if they got interested in the child’s life, and involved in the child's care, education and rehabilitation then this was very significantly associated with an increase in satisfaction in their marriage. Less important, but still significant, involvement correlated with the level of fathers’ concentration on the needs of their child with disabilities, the level of fathers' cooperation with their wives, the number of years during which parents cared for a child with disabilities, time devoted by fathers daily for their child with disabilities, fathers’ self-esteem, fathers’ education, the level of disability of a child, the level of fathers’ skills in dealing with their child with disabilities and the level of fathers' knowledge about their child with disabilities.

My experience is that when families have a child with disabilities the mother is almost forced to take on responsibility for the care, and fathers can feel left out, or decide that they can't cope with what's happening to their family. It often, sadly, leads to marriage break-up. If this research relates to other families with disabled children across the world, it's a message to social workers and others helping families with disabled children. Work hard to get dad interested and doing things actively, and you'll strengthen the marriage and really benefit the child in their life too.

Far be it from me to give it a political tinge, but one thinks, looking at this research, of our Prime Minister's family. Whatever you think of his politics, he clearly did the business as a dad, and if this research is true for England, that's probably one of the reasons that he seems to have a strong marriage.

I've got this from the English abstract and talking to the writer. there are going to be papers published in English, and I'll try to draw attention to them when they come out. We should be looking at and learning from international research.

P. E. Kaniok. (2011). Poczucie powodzenia malzenstwa a udzial ojcow w opiece nad dzieckiem niepełnosprawnym i w jego wychowaniu [Fathers' marital satisfaction and their involvement with their child with disabilities], Opole, Opole University Publishing.