Incarceration and the Life Course: Age-Graded Effects of the First Parental Incarceration Experience
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Incarceration and the Life Course: Age-Graded Effects of the First Parental Incarceration Experience Brae Young 1
& Nicole
L. Collier 2 & Sonja E. Siennick 3 & Daniel P. Mears 3
Received: 23 April 2019 / Revised: 7 May 2020 / Accepted: 17 May 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Purpose Research shows that parental incarceration can produce adverse effects across the life course. One question that remains largely unaddressed, however, is whether these effects are age-graded. Drawing on developmental and life-course scholarship, we argue that parental incarceration will exert different effects depending upon the developmental stage that it is first experienced. Methods This study employs regression techniques using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 11,670). Specifically, we examine whether the effects of parental incarceration are greater if it is experienced during the early childhood (i.e., before age 6). The outcomes examined include adult offending, marijuana use, depression, educational attainment, and earnings. Results The results revealed an apparent age-graded effect of parental incarceration during adulthood. However, post hoc tests indicated that the apparent differences are only statistically significant for criminal offending, lending only limited support for an age-graded effect of parental incarceration. Conclusions Although experiencing parental incarceration during childhood may not exert an age-graded effect on adult outcomes, the results lend support to theoretical arguments that parental incarceration may serve as an event that is especially salient— or a “turning point”—in the lives of children. Keywords Parental incarceration . Life course . Young adulthood . Collateral
consequences
* Brae Young [email protected] Sonja E. Siennick [email protected] Daniel P. Mears [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
B. Young et al.
Introduction In the United States, over half of all prisoners are parents to children under the age of 18 [52]. Studies estimate that 2.7 million, or 1 out of every 28, children in this country have experienced a parent’s incarceration [52, 74]. Research finds that experiencing parental incarceration can create substantial problems for offspring, including developmental delays, behavioral problems, lower school attainment, and worsened mental health [28, 30, 36, 44, 48, 68, 73]. These problems, however, are not limited to childhood. Longitudinal assessments find that parental incarceration during childhood can affect offspring well into adulthood [74, 77]. Adverse consequences during adulthood have been reported across numerous domains including criminal involvement, earnings, social bonds, and mental and physical health [25, 41, 43, 57]. Such scholarship suggests that parental incarceration may act as a turning point in the lives of prisoners’ children. Although a growing body of literature has assessed the long-term implications of parental incarceration, most of thes
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