Poster #28 - The Intersection Between Family Homelessness and Parental Incarceration in Young Children: Risk and Resilience

• In Event: Poster Session 11

Abstract

Family homelessness (e.g. Bassuk et al., 2015) and parental incarceration (e.g. Geller et al., 2012) are both risk factors for mental health problems in children; each may affect a child directly as a stressor or indirectly through impacts on the caregiving and family system. These experiences also often co-occur alongside other overlapping risk exposures, including economic and family instability, and violence exposure (Casey et al., 2015). Yet, many high-risk children display resilience. High quality parenting promotes positive mental health in children, and can also buffer against the negative effects of adversity (Masten, 2019). Despite the co-occurrence of family homelessness and parental incarceration, there is limited research on their intersection or the protective processes that may buffer additional risk for homeless children with incarcerated parents.
In this study, we will compare risk profiles and teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing symptoms of homeless children with and without incarcerated parents. Then, we will examine the main and protective effects of observed parenting quality in buffering against the negative effects of parental incarceration on child mental health symptoms.
The study will draw on existing data from 108 children (M age = 5.2, SD age = 0.6) and their parents recruited in 2014 from two emergency homeless shelters in the urban Midwest, including 46 children (43%) who had experienced parental incarceration. Parents were interviewed about demographic information and their children’s experiences of adversity. Parent-child dyads engaged in structured and recorded family interaction tasks that were later coded by independent raters to assess parenting quality. Three months after the start of the school year, teachers were invited to report on child adjustment, including the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) to assess mental health.
We will test our hypotheses through hierarchical linear regression analyses in “R” (version 3.6.2). Separate models will be tested for internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Child’s sex and gender, and internalizing or externalizing symptoms, will be added to the model first as covariates, followed by parental incarceration as a dichotomous predictor. Parenting quality will then be added prior to the interaction term between parenting quality and parental incarceration.
Although risk profiles might look similar across homeless children with and without incarcerated parents, we expect that teachers will report more mental health symptoms for children of incarcerated parents. Higher quality parenting is expected to predict lower risk for mental health problems, reflecting a promotive or buffering effect. Given the high-risk nature of the sample and limited power, the test of buffering effects is exploratory (interaction of parenting by incarceration). Parenting main effects may capture indistinguishable promotive and protective processes in this context. Understanding the unique risk parental incarceration poses on the well-being of already high-risk homeless young children and exploring whether parenting quality counters or protects against mental health symptoms has the potential to inform prevention and intervention efforts for this population.

Authors

• Frederique Corcoran, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities
  Presenting Author

• Kathleen Francis

• Rebecca J Shlafer, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Ann S. Masten, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities