Resilience and Paternal Incarceration

• In Event: Consequences of Parental Incarceration for Children and Families

Abstract

The detrimental effect of paternal incarceration is well documented for children’s behavioral problems but much less is known about if and how these effect sizes vary across children and outcomes. Using the Fragile Families and Childhood Wellbeing study, we leverage the concept of ‘resilience’ to explore heterogeneity in the effects of paternal incarceration on children. We first compare the correlation between predicted and observed effects of paternal incarceration on children’s mental health and behavioral problems across a variety of outcomes. We then ask whether there is evidence of a population of ‘resilient’ children of incarcerated parents or, alternatively, whether children simply vary with respect to form of their reaction to having a parent incarcerated. In so doing, our results contribute to the literature on parental incarceration by outlining potential sources of heterogeneity in outcome.

Authors

• Kathleen Powell, Rutgers University

• Sara Wakefield, Rutgers University

• Kristin Turney, University of California, Irvine

• Christopher Wildeman, Cornell University