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Incarceration and the Life Course: Age-Graded Effects of the First Parental Incarceration Experience

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Abstract

Purpose

Research shows that parental incarceration can produce adverse effects across the life course. One question that remains largely unaddressed, however, is whether these effects are age-graded. Drawing on developmental and life-course scholarship, we argue that parental incarceration will exert different effects depending upon the developmental stage that it is first experienced.

Methods

This study employs regression techniques using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 11,670). Specifically, we examine whether the effects of parental incarceration are greater if it is experienced during the early childhood (i.e., before age 6). The outcomes examined include adult offending, marijuana use, depression, educational attainment, and earnings.

Results

The results revealed an apparent age-graded effect of parental incarceration during adulthood. However, post hoc tests indicated that the apparent differences are only statistically significant for criminal offending, lending only limited support for an age-graded effect of parental incarceration.

Conclusions

Although experiencing parental incarceration during childhood may not exert an age-graded effect on adult outcomes, the results lend support to theoretical arguments that parental incarceration may serve as an event that is especially salient—or a “turning point”—in the lives of children.

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Notes

  1. The focus of this paper is on whether parental incarceration during early childhood has a greater effect on adulthood outcomes than parental incarceration experiences during later points during childhood and adolescence. As a result, we chose to compare the effects of parental incarceration during early childhood (before age 6) to the effects of parental incarceration during the rest of childhood and adolescence (ages 6 to 17) together. However, in supplemental analyses, we compared the effects of parental incarceration during early childhood to both later childhood (ages 6 to 12) and adolescence (ages 13 to 17). Those supplemental results are reported below.

  2. At the suggestion of reviewers, we also re-ran the analyses controlling for the frequency of parental incarceration (i.e., the number of times the respondent reported experiencing their mother’s or father’s incarceration) and whether parents had been incarcerated before the respondent’s birth. None of the substantive results changed with the inclusion of these controls.

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Acknowledgments

This study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a program project directed by Kathleen M. Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen M. Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from grant P01-HD31921 for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, Texas Christian University, Scharbauer Hall 4200, 2855 Main Drive, Fort Worth, TX, 76109, USA

    Brae Young

  2. Department of Criminal Justice, California State University, San Bernardino, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA, 92407, USA

    Nicole L. Collier

  3. College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Eppes Hall, 112 South Copeland Street, Tallahassee, FL, 32306-1273, USA

    Sonja E. Siennick & Daniel P. Mears

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  1. Brae Young
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Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Adult outcomes regressed on parental incarceration (PI) and all covariates (N = 11,670)
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Table 4 Adult outcomes regressed on the three-category indicator of parental incarceration (PI) (N = 11,670)
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Young, B., Collier, N.L., Siennick, S.E. et al. Incarceration and the Life Course: Age-Graded Effects of the First Parental Incarceration Experience. J Dev Life Course Criminology 6, 256–279 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-020-00143-7

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