Samenvatting literatuur 3B
Comparing the effects of maternal and paternal incarceration on adult daughters’ and sons’
criminal justice system involvement
This analysis compares the effects of maternal and paternal incarceration on adult
daughters’ and sons’ criminal justice system (CJS) involvement. Data from the National
Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) are used to examine
differences by parent and offspring sex in the effect of parental incarceration on
respondents’ self-reported arrest, conviction, and incarceration after age 18 (N = 15,587).
Net of controls, both maternal and paternal incarceration significantly increase log odds of
adult offspring CJS involvement. This effect is especially pronounced for same-sex parent–
child dyads, suggesting that the salience of parental incarceration for adult offending
outcomes is gendered. In addition, intimate partner abuse and running away are significant
predictors of adult CJS involvement for women, but not for men. The results suggest the
importance of examining parental incarceration using a gendered, developmental
framework such as gendered pathways, as well as the need for gender-responsive
correctional programming.
Gendered pathways combines life-course insights about the role of social bonds in shaping
trajectories of offending and desistence with feminist insights about how gender
moderates these processes.
First, there is evidence that the consequences of parental incarceration vary by both parent
and offspring sex.
Second, researchers have emphasized the need for analyses that capture how parental
incarceration may serve as a “tipping point for problematic outcomes” among
offspring, and how the effects of parental incarceration may vary over time and across
the life course.
Several theoretical perspectives have been used to explain the collateral consequences of
parental incarceration for children. First, from a strain perspective, parental incarceration
alters family composition and can cause significant resource deprivation for families.
Children of incarcerated parents can suffer financially due to the loss of parental income
and/or provision of child support, as well as other social service benefits.
Next, incarceration compromises opportunities for effective attachment between parents
and children. Many incarcerated parents were actively involved in their children’s lives
prior to being confined. Moreover, children benefit from close relational ties even with
criminally involved parents, whose incarceration-related absence can be traumatic.
Furthermore, correctional facilities maintain strict visiting regulations and typically are
located far from family, making it difficult and expensive for incarcerated parents to
maintain contact with their families.
Finally, incarceration of a parent can produce a harmful stigma that does not occur in
parental absence due to divorce, abandonment, or death. Unlike other forms of parental
absence, social attitudes toward incarceration of a parent are likely to be “hostile,
disapproving, or indifferent”. Therefore, many parents report carefully guarding
information about their spouse’s incarceration status to protect their children from
stigmatization, while children of incarcerated parents report purposefully concealing from
others the whereabouts of their incarcerated parent.
, A gendered pathways theoretical framework enables consideration of the ways in which
these three mechanisms—strain, attachment, and stigma—operate in a gendered
context throughout the life course. For example, whereas fathers’ incarceration places
particular strain on the family’s financial circumstances, mothers’ incarceration may be
most acutely felt within family social networks, yielding familial strain for their
children—particularly those living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Parental
incarceration also can lead to changes in guardianship and increased residential
instability which have been linked to CJS involvement, especially in the case of maternal
incarceration.
Incarcerated women also are more likely than incarcerated men to be the primary care-giver
and/or sole custodial parent of their minor children. Given women’s disproportionately
higher likelihood of living in poverty, maternal incarceration thus may yield greater
risk of out-of-home placement for children. Disruption of these attachment bonds with
children and the ensuing negative consequences may be especially salient in cases of
maternal incarceration.
Finally, while incarceration is sufficiently common to be considered a routine life-course
event for young, unskilled Black men living in disadvantaged urban areas, the same is not
true for women. Coupled with public perceptions of criminal women as bad mothers, the
infrequency of women’s incarceration relative to men’s might engender more stigmatic—
and therefore less supportive—responses from friends and relatives of incarcerated
women.
After controlling for a host of criminogenic risk factors, both maternal and paternal
incarceration significantly increase the log odds of adult arrest among offspring in the total
sample, with mothers’ incarceration yielding a stronger effect than paternal
incarceration. (arrestatie)
When the full model is separated by offspring sex, the magnitude of the effect is greater
for same-sex parental incarceration. Adult daughters’ arrest is more strongly predicted
by incarceration of their mothers than their fathers in fact, having an incarcerated
mother nearly doubles the likelihood of adult arrest for women. Conversely, adult
sons’ arrest is more strongly predicted by incarceration of their fathers than their mothers.
However, differences in the effects of maternal and paternal incarceration across daughters
and sons were not statistically significant. Notably, the effect of opposite-sex parental
incarceration on adult arrest also remains significant but smaller for both women and
men.
Both maternal and paternal incarceration significantly increase the log odds of adult
conviction for offspring in the total sample, with the former again having the stronger
relationship. (veroordeling)
When the full model is separated by offspring sex, the effect is again greatest in cases of
same-sex parental incarceration. That is, adult daughters’ conviction is more strongly
predicted by incarceration of their mothers than their fathers, whereas adult sons’
conviction is more strongly predicted by incarceration of their fathers than their mothers.
The effect of maternal incarceration on daughters is particularly strong, as it increases by
two and a half times their risk of adult conviction. In fact, in the conviction model,
differences in the effects of maternal and paternal incarceration across daughters and sons
approach statistical significance (z = 1.88). Consistent with the arrest model, opposite-sex
