Assortative Mating and the Intergenerational Transmission of Parental Incarceration Risks

• Date: 01 April 2018
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Author: Lars Højsgaard Andersen
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12459

L H A Rockwool Foundation Research Unit

Assortative Mating and the Intergenerational

Transmission of Parental Incarceration Risks

Research on the intergenerational transmis-

sion of incarceration tends to emphasize the

strong association between fathers’ involve-

ment with the criminal justice system and sons’

behavioral outcomes, such as experiencing

incarceration. The father–son association in

incarceration risks is, however, not the only

mechanism through which these risks may

travel across generations. Although female

rates of incarceration are generally low (even

for women who experienced parental incar-

ceration when they were girls), women could

transmit incarceration risks across generations

through their choice of partner. This article

uses administrative data on three generations in

Denmark to show that assortative mating—the

nonrandom selection of partners with similar

characteristics—indeed make women just as

likely as men to transmit incarceration risks

across generations.

Research on the intergenerational transmission

of incarceration tends to focus on patrilineality,

Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, Solvgade 10, 2,

DK-1307 Copenhagen K, Denmark (lha@rff.dk).

© 2018 The Authors. Journal of Marriage and Familypub-

lished by WileyPeriodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Coun-

cil on Family Relations.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Cre-

ativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which

permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited and is not used

for commercial purposes.

Key Words: antisocial behavior,incarcerated parents, inter-

generational transmission, mate selection.

the strong association between fathers’ involve-

ment with the criminal justice system and sons’

behavioral responses (e.g., Farrington, Barnes,

& Lambert, 1996). This emphasis makes sense

because boys who experience paternal incarcer-

ation are at elevated risk of physically aggressive

behavior and involvement with the criminal jus-

tice system at later stages (Murray & Farrington,

2005; Wildeman, 2010). At the forefront of this

research, a recent study found that the associ-

ation between paternal incarceration and sons’

antisocial behavioral response is indeed causal

(Wildeman & Andersen, 2017). A father’sincar-

ceration thus directly affects his sons’ behavioral

problems over and above other types of disad-

vantage that may have piled up in families with

criminal justice contact.

The male-driven transmission of incarcera-

tion risks across generations is, however, not the

only mechanism through which parental incar-

ceration risks may travel across generations.

Assortative mating—the nonrandom selection

of partners with similar characteristics—could

lead females who experienced parental incarcer-

ation as children to also transmit this experience

onto their children through their choice of part-

ner (Krueger, Moftt, Caspi, Bleske, & Silva,

1998). If so, the limited delinquency of females

(Moftt, Caspi, Rutter, & Silva, 2001) does suc-

ceed in obstructing the multigenerational (from

grandparents to grandchildren) transmission of

parental incarceration risks (because they avoid

contact with the criminal justice system them-

selves), yet they indirectly uphold the transmis-

sion through their choice of partner.

There are historical as well as contemporary

reasons to suspect that assortative mating could

Journal of Marriage and Family 80 (April 2018): 463–477 463

DOI:10.1111/jomf.12459