Weathering the Storm of Parental Incarceration: Best Friends as Social Anchors

• In Event: Social Bonds, Attachment, and Networks

Abstract

The present paper goes a step beyond demonstrating the link between parental incarceration and juvenile delinquency and explores the ability of one’s peers in the form of best friends to ameliorate the heightened risk of deviance that often comes parental incarceration. Prior research has well-documented the relationship between parental incarceration and adverse life outcomes for children (Murray, Farrington & Sekol, 2012). This is nothing new to the field or this area of study. However, we still know very little about mechanisms through which children develop resiliency, and subsequently resist participation in crime and adjacent forms of deviance. If best friends can serve as social anchors to reduce the negative consequences of parental incarceration and diminish justice system contact, then program and policy interventions based on leveraging pre-existing social networks to reduce crime and adverse developmental outcomes for children, should be an area of further research and attention. Data from AddHealth is used to assess the ability of prosocial best friends to moderate the effect of parental incarceration on juvenile delinquency and deviance.

Author

• Michael Jacob Lebron, University of Maryland