Paternal incarceration and offspring mental health and behavior: A longitudinal within-individual study

• In Event: Biological, biosocial and psychological drivers of criminal behaviour

Abstract

Millions of children worldwide experience parental incarceration on any given day. A growing body of research has described associations between parental incarceration and a wide range of adverse health and behavioral outcomes in offspring. However, most studies have been correlational and have failed to account for unmeasured confounding and selection effects. Thus, the fundamental question of whether parental incarceration is an independent risk factor or merely a risk marker remains largely unanswered. We conducted a longitudinal study on the associations between paternal incarceration and offspring mental health and behavioral outcomes using Swedish population register data with follow-up from age 10 to age 30. We first examined associations at the population level using a study cohort of nearly four million individuals born in Sweden between 1973 and 2010, and found robust associations between paternal incarceration and offspring acute psychiatric conditions, increased psychotropic medication use, acute substance misuse events, risk-taking behavior, and suicidal behavior (hazard ratios [HRs] 1.39–2.61). To investigate the possible causal impact of paternal incarceration on offspring, we applied a within-individual study design that takes into account all time-stable environmental and individual factors by comparing the risk for outcomes among offspring during time periods of paternal incarceration vs. time periods when the father was not in prison, using a cohort of 44,275 individuals exposed to paternal incarceration between the ages of 10 and 30. No significant within-individual associations between paternal incarceration and offspring outcomes were found (HRs 0.98–1.07), suggesting that the population-level associations are mainly explained by selection effects rather than a direct effect of paternal incarceration. This study makes an important contribution to understanding the nature of the intergenerational association between paternal incarceration and offspring mental health and wellbeing.

Authors

• Aurora Järvinen, Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy, University of Helsinki, Finland

• Ralf Kuja-Halkola, Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

• Paul Lichtenstein, Karolinska Institute

• Antti Latvala, University of Helsinki