This paper focuses on the effect of the presence of a disabled child in a family and in particular on its demographically relevant consequences in a comparative framework. Using data from Gender and Generation Surveys, and using descriptive statistics, we show that couples who rear a disabled child are more frequently unstable, more often forego their fertility intentions, more frequently suffer from economic difficulties, show more traditional gender role arrangements, are more frequently in bad health, and have lower well-being than families without disabilities. After showing these results in different European countries, we will analyse more specifically the situation of Italian families with and without disabled children. In fact, Italian data are collected for all members of the family and provide a rich source of information on the family members’ well-being. This paper contributes to the existing literature by showing that comparative large-scale surveys on topics other than disability (such as the Gender and Generation surveys) can be quite a rich source of information on the family life of disabled children.