A new Danish study has found that, overall, parents whose child is diagnosed with cancer are no more likely to separate or divorce than comparable families whose children do not have cancer. The study also found that such a diagnosis was not tied to family planning.

For the study, published in the journal Cancer, the researchers analyzed Danish registry data on 7,066 children diagnosed with cancer between 1982 and 2014 and 12,418 parents of these children. The parents were each matched with 10 comparison parents of cancer-free children, resulting in a comparison cohort of 69,993 children and 125,014 parents.

The parents of the children diagnosed with cancer were 4% less likely to separate and 8% less likely to divorce compared with the parents of cancer-free children.

Parents of children with cancer who were younger than 45, did not have a high school diploma, and were unemployed had a higher rate of separation and divorce compared with the parents of children without cancer. Additionally, parents whose child was diagnosed at an age younger than 15 were more likely to separate or divorce.

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