“The Drugs Change All His Priorities:” The Symbiotic Relationship Between Incarceration and Substance Use for Coparenting

• In Event: Family Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Relationship Dynamics and Quality

Abstract

Nearly two-thirds of people in jail report active substance use disorders immediately prior to their incarceration, meaning that parents commonly coparent under conditions of confinement, re-entry, and recovery. Yet research has largely neglected to document how these interrelated processes strain coparenting over time. We leverage longitudinal, dyadic interviews with 130 coparents—including 71 incarcerated fathers and 59 mothers—to understand how substance use shapes coparenting across a father’s incarceration. Results reveal how substance use operates as a central organizing force in the lives of families enduring incarceration. We identify four coparenting trajectories emerging across a father’s jail spell: Sobriety-Linked Coparents, wherein parents describe cooperative coparenting, often due to shared sobriety; Relapse-Strained Coparents who report inconsistent coparenting, complicated by discordant substance use; Substance-Severed Coparents, wherein mothers sever all coparenting ties due to father’s substance use; and System-Restricted Coparents, where concordant substance use and—at times—incarceration histories create insurmountable legal barriers to coparenting. We then highlight how these coparenting trajectories are shaped by three interrelated processes—hopefulness, social support, and legal barriers—that occur during and after confinement. By illuminating the deleterious consequences of substance use for system-impacted coparents, results advance an understanding of coparenting under carceral constraints.

Authors

• MacKenzie Christensen, University of Oregon

• Kristin Turney, University of California-Irvine

• Katelyn Rose Malae, Utah Valley University