Poster #86 - Collateral Consequences of Parental Incarceration: Exploring the Role of Frequency & Duration on Child Development

• In Event: 2-002 - Special Poster Session 05 with Continental Breakfast Reception
  In Poster Session: PS 05 - Interdisciplinary Section

Integrative Statement

In the United States, there are approximately 10.9 million admissions to jails each year (Minton & Zeng, 2016). Consequently, more than 5% of children under the age of six experience the incarceration of a residential parent (Murphey & Cooper, 2015). Parental incarceration has deleterious implications for child development (Wildeman, Haskins & Poehlmann, 2018), but less is known about the consequences of two aspects of incarceration: frequency and duration. Most prior work dichotomizes incarceration into whether the parent has ever or never been incarcerated. However, incarceration is more than just a yes or no experience, and this operationalization limits exploration of how the count (frequency) or length (duration) may differentially impact children. To further understand parental incarceration and its implications for child development, we focused on three questions: 1) What is the average frequency and duration of incarceration in our sample? 2) What are the vocabulary, behavior, and cortisol profiles of children with incarcerated parents? 3) Is there an association between frequency and duration of incarceration and child vocabulary, behavior, and cortisol levels?

133 incarcerated parents with children 2-6 years old participated. Jailed parents provided demographic information, shared their incarceration history, and completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL). Two types of incarceration variables were constructed: frequency (total number of incarcerations) and duration (total days and proportion of the child’s life that the parent was incarcerated). A subset of children and their non-incarcerated caregivers (n=62) completed assessments at home, including the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) and caregiver CBCL. Some families (n=33) also provided child hair samples that were analyzed to assess cortisol levels.

The vast majority of jailed parents had experienced prior incarcerations (n=122, 91.73%). Frequency of lifetime incarcerations ranged from from 1 to 21 (mean=4.23, sd=2.81), and many occurred during the child’s life (mean=2.62, sd=1.46). The average proportion of the child’s life spent separated from the parent due to incarceration was 16.27%, ranging from 0.1% to 98.43% (sd=19.28%). Of the 62 children in the subsample, 21% (n=13) scored below age-appropriate vocabulary levels, and 27% (n=17) scored in the subclinical range for behavior problems. OLS regression analyses showed a statistically significant association between frequency of incarcerations and increased behavior problems (p=0.049) and a trend towards decreased PPVT scores (p=0.075), controlling for child and caregiver demographics. An additional analysis (n=33) revealed a statistically significant association between frequency of incarcerations and increased cumulative cortisol levels (p=0.029), net of child and caregiver demographics. Models found no significant associations between duration of incarceration and child outcomes.

Frequency and duration may provide key insights otherwise missed by dichotomizing incarceration. Although parental incarceration broadly has negative impacts on child development, these results suggest effects might vary more by frequency than duration. Incarceration is not a homogeneous event experienced uniformly across families. Therefore, it is essential for future work to continue investigating how frequency and duration influence child developmental outcomes.

Authors

• Elizabeth Marie Premo, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Presenting Author

• Luke Muentner, University of Wisconsin - Madison
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julie Anne Poehlmann-Tynan, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  Non-Presenting Author