Citation

Arditti JA. Criminol. Public Policy 2015; 14(1): 169-182.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, American Society of Criminology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/1745-9133.12117

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Although the preponderance of evidence suggests that parental incarceration has lasting and detrimental effects on children (Arditti, 2012; Murray and Farrington, 2008a; Murray, Farrington, Sekol, and Olsen, 2009; Poehlmann and Eddy, 2010; Wildeman and Wakefield, 2014), research has been advancing that seeks to understand the conditions in which negative consequences are most likely. The issue of heterogeneity involves considering variation in children's social and family environments, as well as examining incongruities in child and family outcomes as they pertain to parental incarceration. As pointed out by Turney and Wildeman (2015, this issue), these incongruities among studies are more obvious with regard to maternal incarceration and child outcomes, and they could stem from a methodological approach with qualitative studies suggesting a wider and more nuanced range of possibilities for children experiencing incarceration than quantitative studies. Given the epistemological assumptions that guide qualitative research, it makes sense that new and unexpected possibilities could then emerge, including findings suggesting that children might do well in conjunction with a parent's incarceration. Sample variation, measurement, and different statistical approaches contribute to heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration on children. In this policy essay, I discuss the applied implications of the issue of heterogeneity as it pertains to maternal incarceration and comment on a well-executed analysis examining the heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration. Turney and Wildeman used a well-known representative quantitative data set surveying fragile families. The central conclusion of their study was that maternal incarceration was deleterious for children whose mothers were least likely to experience incarceration but mostly inconsequential for children of mothers more likely to experience incarceration. Turney and Wildeman's findings lend support for the need to study both average and heterogeneous effects of parental incarceration. In the following discussion, I hope to help augment explanations for the heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration. My comments are informed by a family process perspective that pays close attention to mediating mechanisms and childhood and family resilience. I situate these explanations by first summarizing the context of maternal incarceration....

Language: en