Detrimental for Some? Heterogeneous Effects of Maternal Incarceration on Child Wellbeing

• Author: Christopher Wildeman,Kristin Turney
• Published date: 01 February 2015
• Date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12109

RESEARCH ARTICLE

MATERNAL INCARCERATION AND

CHILD WELLBEING

Detrimental for Some?

Heterogeneous Effects of Maternal

Incarceration on Child Wellbeing

Kristin Turney

University of California—Irvine

Christopher Wildeman

Cornell University

Research Summary

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N =3,197) to

consider the heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration on 9-year-old children. We

find that maternal incarceration has no average effects on child wellbeing (measured

by caregiver-reported internalizing problem behaviors, caregiver-reportedexternalizing

problem behaviors, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition scores, and child-

reported early juvenile delinquency) but that the effects vary by mothers’ propensities

for experiencing incarceration. Maternal incarceration is deleterious for children of

mothers least likely to experience incarceration but mostly inconsequential for children

of mothers more likely to experience incarceration.

Policy Implications

It is important that public policies take into account the fact that not all children

experience similar effects of maternal incarceration. For children of mothers who are

unlikely to experience incarceration, the negative consequences of maternal incarcera-

tion could be driven by at least three factors, all of which may operate simultaneously

and all of which potentially call for different policy interventions: (a) jail incarceration

This research was supported by a Research Grant from the American Educational Research Association to

Prof. Turney. Funding for the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study was provided by the NICHD through

grants R01HD36916, R01HD39135, and R01HD40421, as well as by a consortium of private foundations (see

http://www.fragilefamilies.princeton.edu/funders.asp for the complete list). Direct correspondence to Kristin

Turney, University of California—Irvine, 3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697–5100 (e-mail:

kristin.turney@uci.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12109 C2015 American Society of Criminology 125

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Research Article Maternal Incarceration and Child Wellbeing

as opposed to prison incarceration, (b) incarceration for a crime that did minimal—

or no—harm to their children, and (c) inadequate family supports for coping with

maternal incarceration. We discuss these policy implications.

Keywords

maternal incarceration, parental incarceration, child wellbeing, heterogeneous treat-

ment effect models, public policy

In response to dramatic, highly concentrated increases in the American incarcera-

tion rate throughout the last four decades (e.g., Bonczar, 2003; Sampson and Loeffler,

2010; Western,2006), scholarshave developed an acute interest in the growing, yet re-

cently stabilized, population of children who experience parental incarceration (Wildeman,

2009). Most of this research has explored the intergenerational consequences of paternal

incarceration (e.g., Foster and Hagan, 2007; Geller, Cooper, Garfinkel, Schwartz-Soicher,

and Mincy, 2012; Haganand Foster, 2012a; Murray and Farrington, 2005, 2008; Roettger

and Boardman, 2012; Roettger and Swisher, 2011; Wakefield and Wildeman, 2011, 2013;

Wildeman, 2010), which is unsurprising given that children have a much higher cumulative

risk of experiencing paternal, rather than maternal, incarceration (Wildeman, 2009).

But recent decades have witnessed striking relative increases in maternal incarcera-

tion, especially among poor and minority children (Wildeman, 2009), and accordingly, a

burgeoning literature has considered the intergenerational consequences of maternal incar-

ceration (for reviews, see Arditti, 2012a, 2012b; Eddy and Poehlmann, 2010). Quantitative

research in this area often has estimated the average effects of maternal incarceration on

indicators of child wellbeing including internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors,

test scores, and delinquency (e.g., Cho, 2009; Dallaire, Zeman, and Thrash, 2014; Foster

and Hagan, 2013; Hagan and Foster, 2012b; Poehlmann, 2005; Wildeman and Turney,

2014). Some of this research has found that maternal incarceration, on average, is detri-

mental to children (Hagan and Foster, 2012b), whereas other research has suggested it is

inconsequential (Wildeman and Turney, 2014) or dependent on the outcome (Foster and

Hagan, 2013; Lee, Fang, and Luo, 2013; Murray, Farrington, and Sekol, 2012). The varia-

tion in the effects of maternal incarceration is strikingly apparent in the rich and textured

qualitative literature (Arditti, 2012a; Giordano, 2010; Siegel, 2011; Turanovic, Rodriguez,

and Pratt, 2012).

Despite compelling indications of heterogeneous effects within qualitative research

studies, as well as inconsistency in the direction, magnitude, and statistical significance of

findings across quantitative research studies, no broadly representative quantitative research

has provided a systematic examination of the heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration

on children’s problem behaviors, test scores, or delinquency. Therefore, in this article, we

use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWB), a birth cohort

126 Criminology & Public Policy

Turney and Wildeman

of children born to mostly unmarried parents in urban areas, and a series of propensity

score matching techniques to consider whether the effects of maternal incarceration vary by

the social contexts that shape children’s likelihoods of experiencing maternal incarceration.

Specifically, we consider heterogeneity in the effects of maternal incarceration, according

to maternal propensities to experience incarceration, across four indicators of wellbeing in

middle childhood: caregiver-reported internalizing problem behaviors, caregiver-reported

externalizing problem behaviors, Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Third Edition (PPVT-

III) scores, and child-reported early juvenile delinquency. Although these data have been

used extensively to consider the effects of paternal incarceration on children, few researchers

have considered the effects of maternal incarceration (see Geller, Garfinkel, Cooper, and

Mincy,2009; Wildeman and Turney, 2014), and no studies using these data have considered

variation in the relationship between maternal incarceration and children’s wellbeing by

the propensity for experiencing maternal incarceration. This lack of research is a missed

opportunity on the research side as these data include established measures of wellbeing in

middle childhood contain a large number of children exposed to maternal incarceration,

and include incarcerated mothers who are demographically similar to mothers incarcerated

in jails, state prisons, and federal prisons (Wildeman and Turney, 2014). It also represents a

missed opportunity on the policy side, as identifying effect heterogeneity in the consequences

of maternal incarceration also could provide guidance about which types of maternal

incarceration policies might harm children, benefit children, or be inconsequential for

children.

The results suggest that the effects of maternal incarceration on wellbeing in middle

childhood are strikingly heterogeneous. Forthree of the four measures considered (caregiver-

reported internalizing problem behaviors, caregiver-reported externalizing problem behav-

iors, and child-reported early juvenile delinquency), maternal incarceration is damaging

for children of mothers unlikely to experience incarceration. The effects of maternal in-

carceration, for these children, are pronounced, corresponding to between two fifths and

three fifths of a standard deviation difference from their counterparts without incarcerated

mothers. But maternal incarceration exerts no independent effect on children of mothers

more likely to experience incarceration. By providing the first broadly representative quan-

titative evidence documenting heterogeneous effects of maternal incarceration on children,

this study helps rectify divergent findings about the average effects of maternal incarcer-

ation (e.g., Foster and Hagan, 2013; Hagan and Foster, 2012b; Huebner and Gustafson,

2007; Wildeman and Turney, 2014), advances our understanding about how the conse-

quences of incarceration may vary across social contexts, and provides novel insights for

policy makers.

Understanding Heterogeneity in the Eects of Maternal Incarceration

The inattention of prior quantitative research to systematically documenting the hetero-

geneous effects of maternal incarceration on child wellbeing is an unfortunate oversight

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