The Impact of Paternal Incarceration within the Broader Family Context on Mentorship Experiences in Young Adulthood

• In Event: Parental Incarceration and Collateral Consequences

Abstract

The collateral consequences of paternal incarceration on children have been explored by social scientists for decades, with research indicating mostly bleak outcomes. We further the Systemic Social Exclusion perspective, which has uncovered ways in which children with incarcerated fathers are marginalized from conventional society (e.g. Foster and Hagan 2007), by adopting a recent analytic trend: incorporating paternal incarceration and the Broader Family Context (BFC) (Giordano, Copp, Manning, & Longmore, 2019) to investigate how paternal incarceration, alongside other paternal risk factors summed into an index and the “bundling” of certain paternal risk factors with incarceration itself, influence access to social relationships among children in emerging adulthood (age 18-30). By doing so, we “zoom out” to investigate the BFC in which paternal incarceration occurs and reveal specific paternal details that may be influential on children throughout the life course. We specifically explore access to mentorship. By utilizing the Add Health data, a nationally representative sample, our analysis showed the complexities of exclusion faced by children with incarcerated fathers. Specifically, we uncover that paternal incarceration, alongside other paternal factors such as low paternal education and paternal alcoholism within the BFC, negatively influenced mentorship in emerging adulthood. Our results may inform future preventative efforts.

Authors

• Angelique Nevarez Maes, The University of Texas at El Paso

• Holly Foster, Texas A&M University