Child (Un)Awareness of Parental Incarceration as a Risk Factor: Evidence from South Korea
- PDF / 661,722 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 6 Downloads / 192 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Child (Un)Awareness of Parental Incarceration as a Risk Factor: Evidence from South Korea Youngki Woo1 Melissa A. Kowalski2 ●
1234567890();,:
1234567890();,:
Accepted: 14 September 2020 / Published online: 23 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract A large body of research has been devoted to the relationship between parental incarceration and adverse outcomes for children, but such studies often compare children of incarcerated parents to those whose parents have never been imprisoned. Research is lacking regarding the effects of parental incarceration on children aware of their parent’s imprisonment compared to those who are unaware of their parent’s incarceration. In the current study we use propensity score weighting with a sample of 219 incarcerated Korean parents to examine differences in developmental outcomes between children cognizant of their parent’s incarceration and those who are unaware of parental imprisonment. We found that, compared to a control group of children not aware of their parent’s imprisonment, children aware of their parent’s incarceration demonstrate decreases in educational attainment and increases in depressive symptoms, victimization, and criminal justice system involvement. We also reveal that maternal incarceration has a larger impact on children’s developmental consequences than paternal incarceration. We discuss implications from our research, which may inform how children of incarcerated parents are treated in schools and their communities, so they do not face the stigmatization that their parent faces. Additionally, we recommend that children receive more contact with their incarcerated parent as well as acknowledgement that awareness of a parent’s imprisonment may present as a risk for children regarding their education, depressive symptoms, victimization, and criminal justice system involvement in South Korea. Keywords Children of incarcerated parents Depressive symptoms Educational attainment Criminal justice involvement South Korea ●
●
●
●
Highlights ● We assessed South Korean youth aware of parental incarceration and those unaware. ● Awareness was associated with worse outcomes regarding multiple developmental outcomes. ● Revealing parental incarceration may have unexpected outcomes.
Existing literature has generally shown that parental incarceration is associated with several harmful effects for children, including mortality, mental health problems, poor educational attainment, school dropout, homelessness,
* Youngki Woo [email protected] 1
Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 1W University Blvd, BMSLC 3.211, Brownsville, TX 78520, USA
2
Department of Criminal Justice, SUNY Brockport, Albert W. Brown Building 231, Brockport, NY 14420, USA
substance abuse, aggressive behavior, and criminal justice (CJ) system involvement (Mears and Siennick 2016; Murray et al. 2012a, 2012b). Recent studies have utilized national-level, large-scale longitudinal data, and ri
Data Loading...
