“Packages” of Risk

• Date: 01 February 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12118
• Author: Peggy C. Giordano,Jennifer E. Copp
• Published date: 01 February 2015

POLICY ESSAY

MATERNAL INCARCERATION AND

CHILD WELLBEING

“Packages” of Risk

Implications for Determining the Effect of Maternal

Incarceration on Child Wellbeing

Peggy C. Giordano

Jennifer E. Copp

Bowling Green State University

Interviewer: What’s the best thing that’s happened to you in the last 6 months?

Jason (age 13): My mom came home from prison.

Interviewer:What’sthemoststressfulthing...?

Jason: My mom came home from prison. (Giordano, 2010: 147–148)

As scholars and practitioners alike have drawn attention to negative effects of incar-

ceration, researchers have increasingly considered that one of the most important

collateral consequences may be the impact on the wellbeing of children. Most

research on the effects of parental incarceration has focused on the father’s incarceration,

which is a reasonable emphasis given the much higher rates of male incarceration. Yet

every jurisdiction includes a number of women incarcerated in local and state facilities,

and as Turney and Wildeman (2015, this issue) note, this number has been increasing

(Guerino, Harrison, and Sabol, 2011). They further underscore that similar to male in-

carceration, this phenomenon has become a bigger issue in the lives of poor and minority

children who already face significant challenges (Wildeman, 2009). A compelling reason

to focus research attention on maternal incarceration in particular is that although research

clearly has established that father involvement is an important basis of variation across a

range of child wellbeing outcomes (e.g., Carlson, 2006; Dyer, Day, and Harper, 2013),

mothers remain “close in” if not the primary caregivers for a majority of U.S. children.

Thus, it is important to determine not only whether there are aggregate effects of maternal

incarceration on children, as Wildeman and Turney (2014) have explored in other recent

Direct correspondence to Peggy C. Giordano, Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University,

Bowling Green, OH 43403 (e-mail: pgiorda@bgsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12118 C2015 American Society of Criminology 157

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 14 rIssue 1