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Child (Un)Awareness of Parental Incarceration as a Risk Factor: Evidence from South Korea

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Abstract

A large body of research has been devoted to the relationship between parental incarceration and adverse outcomes for children, but such studies often compare children of incarcerated parents to those whose parents have never been imprisoned. Research is lacking regarding the effects of parental incarceration on children aware of their parent’s imprisonment compared to those who are unaware of their parent’s incarceration. In the current study we use propensity score weighting with a sample of 219 incarcerated Korean parents to examine differences in developmental outcomes between children cognizant of their parent’s incarceration and those who are unaware of parental imprisonment. We found that, compared to a control group of children not aware of their parent’s imprisonment, children aware of their parent’s incarceration demonstrate decreases in educational attainment and increases in depressive symptoms, victimization, and criminal justice system involvement. We also reveal that maternal incarceration has a larger impact on children’s developmental consequences than paternal incarceration. We discuss implications from our research, which may inform how children of incarcerated parents are treated in schools and their communities, so they do not face the stigmatization that their parent faces. Additionally, we recommend that children receive more contact with their incarcerated parent as well as acknowledgement that awareness of a parent’s imprisonment may present as a risk for children regarding their education, depressive symptoms, victimization, and criminal justice system involvement in South Korea.

Highlights

  • We assessed South Korean youth aware of parental incarceration and those unaware.

  • Awareness was associated with worse outcomes regarding multiple developmental outcomes.

  • Revealing parental incarceration may have unexpected outcomes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 1W University Blvd, BMSLC 3.211, Brownsville, TX, 78520, USA

    Youngki Woo

  2. Department of Criminal Justice, SUNY Brockport, Albert W. Brown Building 231, Brockport, NY, 14420, USA

    Melissa A. Kowalski

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  1. Youngki Woo
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  2. Melissa A. Kowalski
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Correspondence to Youngki Woo.

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The authors utilized secondary data. However, all procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (Institutional Review Boards of the Korean Institute of Criminology, Project No. 11-1270000-000485-01) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. We used data that was already available, which does not require ethical, Institutional Review Board approval by our institution. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Table 5 Balancing Statistics (N = 219)
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Woo, Y., Kowalski, M.A. Child (Un)Awareness of Parental Incarceration as a Risk Factor: Evidence from South Korea. J Child Fam Stud 29, 3211–3224 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01835-w

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