The Effects Of Parental Incarceration On Children 's Development And Attachment Style

Being the child of an incarcerated parent has substantial amounts of negative influences on youth today. As young children, many consider their parents as role models. Someone who they can confide in, someone who will preserve them, and someone who will guide them through life. For most youngsters having an incarcerated parent, means that their admirable example in life is absent. Not having a parent present in one's childhood leads to innumerable negative outcomes and impacts.

Today prisons are overcrowded and over two million Americans, male, and female are sitting in jail or prison, and two thirds of those people incarcerated are parents (U.S. Department of Justice). Approximately two million of these children are separated from their mom or dad because of incarceration of which these are the custodial parent. These children suffer from poverty, inconsistency in caregivers, separation from siblings, reduced education, increased risk for substance abuse, alcoholism and incarceration themselves.

Many of these incarcerated men and women play various roles in their communities. They are parents, siblings, sons, and daughters and have family members who depend upon them for social and economic support. The incarceration of a parent has a particularly destabilizing role in a child’s life, oftentimes leaving the child in the care of a single parent, relative, or foster home (Levy-Pounds, 2006). Parental incarceration is considered an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE), a designation for certain

It serves as a basis for further research about children with incarcerated parents. The finding will enable further discussion and collaboration with international literature and researchers. Therefore the findings from this study could be of great interest to criminal justice and welfare field outside of New Zealand as

Incarceration has been a pending issue amongst western civilization’s history for some time and today continues to raise a wide range of important questions. Incarceration of individuals have become a tremendous tax payer concern along with the incarceration of the drug war, convictions of street gangs, and the rest of the individuals who have broken the law and harmed other innocent individuals. However, the question is always a concern of men incarceration and hardly addressed of women being incarcerated. Not to say that what men can do women can do better, but studies have shown a drastic increase in women becoming incarcerated throughout a range of years. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures research on Children Of Incarcerated Parents by Steve Christian, a study by national survey had reported in August 2008, that during that time, the number of children with a mother in prison increased by 131 percent, from 63,900 to 147,400 (Christian, 2009). Society has always drawn its focus on convicts constantly trying to pin a wrong on an individual’s plate of life, but has never become curious to ask why an individual has become incarcerated and whom it has affected. The drastic increase of women becoming incarcerated have come from numerous of backgrounds in which their choices have led to affect their children as well as their children’s development and in addition affected their own development.

The author attempts to glide over the emotional health and well being and the extent to which the child will be affected by parental incarceration. Most children with incarcerated parents experiance a broad range of emotions, including fear, anxiety, anger, sadness,loneliness, and guilt (The Osborne Association 1993). They may also act out inapproperiately, become disruptive in the classroom or engage in other anti sociol behaviors. Often, their academic performance deteriorates and they develop other school related difficulties. The emotional and behavioral difficulties have been linked to a variety of factors, including parent child seperation and social stigma which the author fails to discuss. The book did not contributed to my understanding of the scope of the problem of parental incarceration and the effects on the children. However reviewing existing literature, though scarce re interated my hypothesis that children of incarcerated parents experience a variety of negative consequences. Nature of the parents, crime, length of sentence, availability of family support or all important factors to be considered affecting these children.

According to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, children who have at least one parent in prison at the age of six are twice as likely to be involved in criminal activities as their peers (ASPE n.d.). We have heard it said many times; like father, like son. It means that, in traits such as looks, speech, or character, children are much like their parents. Growing up in a difficult situation often has some negative effects. Children of incarcerated individuals in particular have a rough time. They struggle to have good relationships with their parents, if any at all. Many develop mental and physical health issues due to such hardships. Therefore, the best method of ensuring healthy development

The International Journal of Psychology and Educational Studies article titled, “Incarcerated Mothers and Fathers: How their Absences Disrupt Children’s High School Graduation” by Huynh-Hohnbaum, Bussell, and Lee (2015) details a great deal of research on how parental incarceration affects the children in regards to education. Lately, along with the entire justice system, parental incarceration has also been scrutinized for its effects on the children of incarcerated parents and how well they do in school as well as the other effects an incarcerated parent has on other aspects of a child’s life. Huynh-Hohnbaum, Bussell and Lee (2015) point out that having an incarcerated mother seems to have a greater effect on a child, but having either parent

On December 31, 2005, 2,320,359 people were incarcerated in the United States. Of these inmates, 107,518 were female. As of 2004, the most recent date for which statistics are available, it is estimated that there are approximately 2.8 million children of incarcerated parents. Of this number, approximately 320,000 are children of incarcerated mothers. The problem with these estimates is that at best, they are an educated guess. Most states lack uniform methods of recording the demographic information regarding an inmate’s children. Moreover, many inmates may choose not to identify their children for the fear of the possibility

Whether people like to admit it or not, society is still stuck on the stereotypical image that fathers are supposed to be caretakers for their families and mothers are supposed to be in charge of the care and well-being of their children, and this ideology has been transferred to how parental rights are granted within the United States Prison System. For example, single fathers that are incarcerated are more likely to have their parental rights curtailed, and they are not given the same services for reuniting with their children as incarcerated mothers (Patton, 1999). Although the struggles faced by mothers and fathers behind bars are different, they both have a large impact of the development of the affected

Since the late 1900’s incarceration rates have been rising constantly. Incarceration impacts other individuals that aren’t behind bars locked up in a cell. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.5 million minors deal with parental incarceration every year (Harrison & Beck, 2006).This project will investigate/ observe the effects of parental incarceration on male juveniles. Young juveniles of prisoners appear to suffer from the difficult living environments due to lack of guardianship leading them to commit crimes and violent offenses. The main focus of this project is to validate and observe the behavior of juveniles whose parents are incarcerated. There would be two control groups to be evaluated; Juveniles that haven’t had their parents incarcerated, and those who have been incarcerated throughout their lifetimes. This study will use data from the analysis conducted from the office of state courts administrator juvenile office risk. These children would be observed to analyze if any anti-social behavior is depicted. It is reasonable to predict that juveniles, whose parents have been incarcerated throughout their lifetime, will demonstrate acts of violence and illegal behaviors towards society. Prisoners’ children are more accessible to violence since no parental supervision is acquired when the parents are locked up.

If charges are dropped or alternative sentencing is utilized, an individual may only be away from home for a few days or weeks. However, if an individual is convicted on severe charges, they could be imprisoned for many years. Although varying sentence lengths will have varying effects on families, all sentence lengths for parents will likely disrupt the family structure in ways that negatively affect the incarcerated parents, their children, and/or the parents or guardians caring for the children. Eddy and Poehlmann (2010) argue that, “Each parent-child separation represents moments of childhood that cannot be put on hold and missed life experiences that may be crucial for a child’s well-being and development” (p. xiii). The following literature review delves into research on the effects that parental incarceration has on the family unit and identifies factors which lessen or intensify the impact of such effects. Finally, I conclude the literature review by applying the presented research to the Montgomery County Collaboration Council’s Creating Healthy Bonds program, noting the extent to which areas of the programmatic structure do or do not address the effects of parental

There is little basic research on children and families with incarcerated parents, and thus, there are many unanswered questions. Some of these questions are: the effects of parental criminality and parental absence during incarceration on children; the effect of parental involvement and familial relationships on adult recidivism; and the effect of high rates of incarceration on family and community stability. Answering these kinds of questions would involve undertaking prospective, longitudinal studies that: follow families at risk of incarceration to determine the impact of incarceration, beyond other risk factors such as poverty and exposure to violence; develop and use multidisciplinary approaches; use developmentally appropriate, standardized

Parenting 's Link to Delinquency I researched the connection between “Co-parenting problem and Delinquency” in the social work literature. The literature discussed the challenges faced by those attempting to co -parent after divorce or the end of a relationship, where the raising of children is involved. Scholars suggest that though Co parenting is often a portrait of difficulty or may be viewed as an unobtainable situation effective communication is essential to transitioning into this new parental role, in a manner which is in the best interest of the children. As the article points out, they believe “it is helpful to love your children more than you dislike your former spouse”(Evansville 2015), advocating modeling respectful and effective communication for the child. The article, also mentions another attribute they feel is of importance, “parental interaction is a request based rather than demanding”, proposing this affords children the opportunity to love both parents freely.” More over the scholar suggests healthy parental relationships could lead to better co-parenting and healthy child development. As well, I analyzed how problems in co-parenting are linked to delinquency and what researchers believe to be some of the causation of some youths exhibiting these behaviors and not others. Scholars have mentioned the pros and cons of 4 different parenting style, “authoritative, which is characterized as a supportive and strict, permissive, support and not strict,

Teen delinquency can also arise when a teen’s parent is incarcerated. Teens that have a parent in prison are affected emotionally, behaviorally and psychologically (Johnson 461). The incarceration of a parent can gravely affect an individual because the parent is not prevalent throughout the teen’s life. The teen then becomes angry and acts out because they have so much emotional pain bottled up inside. “The children of incarcerated parents are at a high risk for a number of negative behaviors that can lead to school failure, delinquency, and intergenerational incarceration” (Simmons 10). Teens with incarcerated parents lack the assistance of parental figures. In True Notebooks, Sister Janet says that the incarcerated teens never had anyone to lead them in the right path or show that adults care about them. She says that because of the lack of direction the teens never had the opportunity to do better for themselves (Salzman 26). There is also a major cycle that exists between incarcerated parents and their children that puts these teens at risk. On April 10th of 2008, a conference at Bryant University was held to discuss the concerning issues of teens with incarcerated parents. During the conference, Patricia Martinez, director of the Rhode Island Department of Children: Youth and families stated that “We want to break the cycle of intergenerational crime. I have heard of so many caseloads managing 18-year-olds who had a parent