Children’s Genetic Sensitivity to Effects of Paternal Incarceration

• In Event: Public Health Approaches to Incarceration

Abstract

The dramatic rise in incarceration in the late twentieth century, coupled with high rates of fatherhood among incarcerated men, has made the role of incarceration in families a pressing concern. A growing literature has identified paternal incarceration as a driver of several family stressors, including reduced household income, compromised mental health among mothers, material hardship, and residential instability. Each of these has independently been shown to compromise child wellbeing, and several studies show associations between paternal incarceration and children’s adverse behavioral outcomes. In this paper, we use diathesis stress models to examine heterogeneity in estimated effects of paternal incarceration on child behavior. In this paper we test whether estimated effects of paternal incarceration are modified by children’s genetic sensitivity to environmental stressors. Examining the presence of sensitive alleles related to the production of dopamine and serotonin, we test for genetic moderation, based on established estimates of parental incarceration effects (Geller et al., 2012). We hypothesize that observed associations between fathers’ incarceration and children’s externalizing behaviors will be concentrated among children with greater genetic sensitivity. We also anticipate that the insignificant relationship observed with children’s internalizing behavior masks a gene-environment interaction in which associations exist only for children with genetic sensitivity.

Authors

• Amanda Geller, Columbia University

• Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, Columbia University

• Irwin Garfinkel, Columbia University

• Sara McLanahan, Princeton University

• Colter Mitchell, University of Michigan

• Daniel Notterman, Pennsylvania State University