Earlier this month, an autism researcher announced good news for parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The study, led by Brian Freedman, clinical director of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute, reported that divorce is not more common among couples that have children with autism than couples who don't.
The study looked at about 78,000 children from the 2007 National Survey of Children's Health. Authors presented their findings last week at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Philadelphia.
This news upends a commonly held and apparently unfounded belief in an 80 percent divorce rate among parents of children with autism.
Despite this reassuring news about divorce rates, there is no doubt that autism brings stress into the family. One father, interviewed for a CNN story on the topic, said he had a hard time believing divorce rates were the same for families with autism and those without because autism made everything so much harder.
As an adult sibling of a person with autism, I have to agree with him. I think of the simple stressers in my own marriage that come from two people sharing a life - and we don't have any kids.
Our friends who have children face the same challenges we do, increased by the need to make decisions that are sound for the children too, plus the added tussle independence and shared parenting responsibility - and their kids don't have autism.
Then I think of my parents and I remember how Margaret would not speak or look at anyone when she was very young. I recall that as a teenager and young adult, her screaming would turn the house upside down. Every social engagement, pubic outing and holiday gathering had us walking on eggshells as we waited for the inevitable meltdown - for decades.
How could all of that not have been had an impact on my parents' marriage?
My parents are still married going on 45 years now, as are the couple in the CNN story. Families find a way to make things work.
I know that having a sibling with autism was difficult for me, as is difficult for many siblings I know. I know it changed me as a person in ways - good and bad - that I am still struggling to understand.
As an adult I'm also interested in studies that consider how ASD affects other children in the family and how they develop as adults. I think it is important to remember siblings as we continue to try to understand how autism affects families.
The Kennedy Krieger Institute seems interested in this, too. In a 2007 article, Teresa J. Foden, assistant editor of the institute's Interactive Autism Network, wrote, "Given the rising numbers of children with autism and the possible mental health risk for their siblings well into adulthood, studies on adult siblings of those with autism could join the other research priorities sure to take center stage in the coming years."
