By Emma Gallegos for EdSource
Originally published on Dec. 19, 2025
Two-thirds of families who have a child with a disability told Stanford researchers that they struggled to meet basic needs, such as food, housing, utilities, child care and health care.
Since 2020, Stanford’s Rapid Survey Project has been surveying parents nationwide with children age 5 and under about material hardship and its effects on well-being. Of those, 14% of parents report having a student with a disability.
These parents have always reported struggling more with basic needs than other parents, but those struggles have hit a crescendo in the most recent data.
In August, 68% of families who have a child with a disability reported difficulty in the past month meeting one or more basic needs, compared to 54% of families who do not have a child with a disability. The most common areas of hardship were food (48%), utilities (46%), housing (42%), health care (29%), and child care (26%).
Almost every family (94%) that has a child with a disability reported experiencing emotional distress. Stress (88%) was the most prevalent experience, followed by anxiety (70%), loneliness (60%), and depression (55%).
“We have difficulty balancing attention and time between our child with a disability and our other child,” one parent in California told researchers.
Most families (73%) with children under 5 without disabilities are also experiencing emotional distress.
