Children's Antisocial Behavior, Mental Health, Drug Use, and Educational Performance After Parental Incarceration

By J. Murray, David P. Farrington, I. Sekol. Psychological bulletin, 2012

651 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Unprecedented numbers of children experience parental incarceration worldwide. Families and children of prisoners can experience multiple difficulties after parental incarceration, including traumatic separation, loneliness, stigma, confused explanations to children, unstable childcare arrangements, strained parenting, reduced income, and home, school, and neighborhood moves. Children of incarcerated parents often have multiple, stressful life events before parental incarceration. Theoretically, children with incarcerated parents may be at risk for a range of adverse behavioral outcomes. A systematic review was conducted to synthesize empirical evidence on associations between parental incarceration and children's later antisocial behavior, mental health problems, drug use, and educational performance. Results from 40 studies (including 7,374 children with incarcerated parents and 37,325 comparison children in 50 samples) were pooled in a meta-analysis. The most rigorous studies showed that parental incarceration is associated with higher risk for children's antisocial behavior, but not for mental health problems, drug use, or poor educational performance. Studies that controlled for parental criminality or children's antisocial behavior before parental incarceration had a pooled effect size of OR = 1.4 (p < .01), corresponding to about 10% increased risk for antisocial behavior among children with incarcerated parents, compared with peers. Effect sizes did not decrease with number of covariates controlled. However, the methodological quality of many studies was poor. More rigorous tests of the causal effects of parental incarceration are needed, using randomized designs and prospective longitudinal studies. Criminal justice reforms and national support systems might be needed to prevent harmful consequences of parental incarceration for children.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Demography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ebe672dcf7f66597993eda84a24b91973676c766

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

1. M. Tasca
2. Sara Wakefield
3. N. Rodriguez
4. Christopher Wildeman

In Demography

1. M. Tasca
2. Sara Wakefield
3. Christopher Wildeman

Citations in the corpus

• Families coming together in prison: An examination of visitation encounters (2016, background): “In addition, the incarceration of a parent has been linked to poor outcomes for children including mental health difficulties, problems in school, and delinquency—which can perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of familial imprisonment (Cho, 2009; Murray et al., 2012; Tasca et al., 2014).”
• The Children Left Behind: The Impact of Parental Deportation on Mental Health (2013, background): “surprisingly, research examining other types of parental separation, incarcerated parents (Murray et al. 2012) or parents deployed for military service (Lester et al.”
• What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated?: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS) (2019, background): “…a substantial body of work has examined how parental incarceration affects children (e.g., Foster and Hagan 2015; Hagan and Dinovitzer 1999; Murray, Farrington, and Sekol 2012; Wakefield and Wildeman 2013), our understanding of the effects of having a family member other than a parent or…”