Stability and Instability in the Intergenerational Consequences of Paternal Incarceration

• In Event: 1-069 - Innovative Developmental, Family, Educational, and Sociological Approaches to Studying Children with Incarcerated Parents

Integrative Statement

Introduction: The rapid growth of mass incarceration in the United States, a phenomenon characterized by its concentration among already marginalized individuals, means that a historically unprecedented number of children experience parental incarceration. More than 2.6 million children currently have a parent, usually a father, incarcerated in jail or prison, most of them for nonviolent offenses, and this number excludes children with parents recently released from jail or prison. Despite a burgeoning literature that documents inequality in the well-being of children with and without incarcerated fathers, little is known about the processes through which paternal incarceration impairs children’s well-being, how these processes vary across subgroups of children, and how these processes change during and after incarceration.

Methods: To document the processes through which paternal incarceration affects children’s well-being, data were used from the Jail and Family Life Study, a longitudinal in-depth interview study of 123 incarcerated fathers and their family members combining sociological and developmental perspectives. Specifically, the study includes baseline interviews (conducted while the father was in jail) and follow-up interviews (conducted after the father was released from jail) with 38 children who experienced paternal incarceration (ages 8 to 17). Coding of the in-depth interviews, which were recorded and transcribed verbatim, occurred in two stages. The first stage of coding, an iterative process, was primarily descriptive rather than analytic. The second stage of coding was analytic and inductive. This second stage of coding and analysis paid particular attention to patterns of subgroup variation and patterns of stability and instability over time.

Results: Analyses of the qualitative interviews revealed three primary findings. First, children of incarcerated fathers described paternal incarceration as a stressor experienced by themselves and their families. Children described how paternal incarceration fundamentally changed their emotional, instrumental, and financial responsibilities within their families. Children also described how paternal incarceration fundamentally changed their relationships with their family members (including fathers, caregivers, and siblings). These changing household responsibilities and changing relationships with family members are additional stressors resulting from the principal stressor of paternal incarceration. Second, the pathways resulting from paternal incarceration are heterogeneous, contingent on both the child’s gender and his/her relationship with the father prior to incarceration. Third, the processes are characterized by both stability and instability, with some children experiencing stability and other children experiencing instability during and after incarceration.

Conclusions: By documenting the processes through which paternal incarceration affects children’s well-being, how these processes vary across subgroups of children, and how these processes change during and after incarceration, these findings provide new insights into how the unintended consequences of the expanding penal system transforms the life course of children. Understanding the processes linking paternal incarceration and children’s wellbeing provides direction about how to most successfully intervene. Understanding heterogeneity in the processes provides an understanding about which children most need and will most benefit from interventions and, therefore, provide guidance about how to allocate resources. Understanding how the processes change during and after incarceration provide knowledge about when might be the most appropriate time to provide resources.

Author

• Kristin Turney, Department of Sociology, University of California Irvine
  Presenting Author