Risk Factors that Contribute to the Negative Effects of Parental Incarceration

A general trend is common, regardless of the source of information, concerning the effects of parental incarceration on children, and that is that there are many factors that contribute to a child’s emotional and behavioral outcomes. When assessing the potential emotional and behavioral outcomes of children with incarcerated parents we must first understand that there are contextual risk factors that play a role as well. Contextual risk factors are poverty, poor parenting, delinquent peers or siblings, physical and emotional abuse. These risk factors make it almost impossible to pinpoint the emotional and behavioral effects that can be attributed solely to parental incarceration. Despite this arduous task, many researches have attempted to isolate the effects of parental incarceration seen in children, I will summarize a few below.

According to research conducted by Phillips, Burns, Wagner, Kramer, and Robbins, and published in their paper, “Parental Incarceration Among Adolescents Receiving Mental Health Services,” we must look at two aspects to begin to try and delineate the effects of parental incarceration on the mental health of adolescents. First, they identified the need to compare adolescents whose parents are incarcerated with adolescents whose parents are not incarcerated but share similar demographics and similar disadvantageous life events. Their second goal was to track the effects of parental incarceration from a starting point to an end in time while considering the contextual risks I mentioned earlier. This study included participants aged 11 – 18 years of age, who were observed in a clinical setting for 6 months, additional data was collected from an adult guardian of the adolescent.  Phillips et al., assessed risk factors, recent stressful life experiences, and clinical characteristics, at the beginning of their study to determine if these have played a role in the outcome of the adolescents in their study. They found that adolescents with incarcerated parents “…had experienced a higher total number of risk factors in their lifetimes.” They also noticed that these adolescents had been exposed to stressful life events during the six-month study.  For their first goal, the researchers arrived at the conclusion that adolescents with incarcerated parents had “higher rates of conduct disorder (39.8% vs.26.0%), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (22.6% vs. 11.3%), and problems with role performance, but a significantly lower rate of major depression (9% vs. 23%).” Results of their second goal revealed that parental incarceration did not influence clinical characteristics such as, symptom severity, relationship problems, role performance problems and consequences. Phillips et al. did conclude that “…a parent’s incarceration had a distinctly negative effect on two out of four outcomes net of the effect of other risk factors.” This study suggests that parental incarceration does has a negative effect on the emotional and behavioral outcomes of adolescents. An important point to remeber is that the gender of the incarcerated parent can affect these results. I've posted a video at the end of this blog entry that serves as an example of how the gender of the incarcerated parent can affect children. 

A second research paper, “Parental Incarceration and Multiple Risk Experiences: Effects on Family Dynamics and Children’s Delinquency,” by Lauren Aaron and Danielle H. Dallaire explores how a child’s outcome and the family dynamic are affected by parental incarceration. Much of their research was focused on “family victimization” and “sibling delinquency,” and how these factors affected the outcome of children with incarcerated parents. Aaron and Dallaire suggest that if there is a history of “family victimization” and “sibling delinquency” in addition to parental incarceration, then parental incarceration cannot be solely responsible for negative outcomes seen in children. They do however suggest that parental incarceration can be disruptive to the family dynamics during and after incarceration. They briefly touch on the gender of the child and how this influences the effects of parental incarceration. They also mention genetics and how this could potentially impact the effects of parental incarceration. In conclusion, the authors suggest that a disruptive family life, due to parental incarceration contributes more to the negative outcome experienced by some children.

Both studies suggest that the effects of parental incarceration can also be caused by contextual risk factors as well as some genetic factors. They also agree that externalizing and internalizing behaviors are seen more frequently and can be attributed to parental incarceration, whereas, mental health disorders such as depression are less significant. It is also suggested in both papers that additional longitudinal data must be collected to fully understand the effects of parental incarceration.  There are hardly any points in these two papers where they disagree; the only way that they do not correspond is in their approach for collecting data.  My first source is more concise and to the point, listing the goals, procedures, methods, and results. My second source is structured well, but there are occasions where a topic is introduced such as gender or genetics, but then the authors do not expand on the topic. This made the second paper difficult to follow. Something I found interesting that was noted in both papers was the low rate of depression among these children and adolescents. Why are the rates of depression so low? Have these children experienced so many traumatic events that they have become immune to depression?

Photo: Kosofsky, Isadora. The Intersection of Love and Loss: Children of Incarcerated Parents.2016. TIME. time.com/4327836/love-and-loss-children-of-incarcerated-parents. Accessed 9 July 2018.

Video: Patton, Angela. "A Father-Daughter Dance...In Prison." TED,  Nov. 2012, www.ted.com/talks/angela_patton_a_father_daughter_dance_in_prison?referrer=playlist-life_in_and_after_prison.

Aaron, Lauren and Danielle H Dallaire. "Parental Incarceration and Multiple Risk Experiences: Effects on Family Dynamics and Children's Delinquency." Journal of Youth and Adolescence, vol. 39, no. 12, Dec. 2010, pp. 1471-1484. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s10964-009-9458-0.

Phillips, Susan D., et al. "Parental Incarceration among Adolescents Receiving Mental Health Services." Journal of Child & Family Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, Dec. 2002, pp. 385-386. EBSCOhost, web.b.ebscohost.com.frccwc.idm.oclc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=8a711f6d-4090-439e-9027-7ab89c634138%40sessionmgr103. Accessed 9 July 2018.