Father Incarceration and Maternal Child Maltreatment over the Life Span: Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study
The unprecedented boom of father imprisonment has emerged as a common factor for disadvantaged children in fragile families. Paternal incarceration harms children in many ways, missing finances, instability of family structure, stigma, and lack of supervision. The literature is inadequate on longitudinal study and crime classification associated with parental incarceration. Drug offenders have become the single largest catalyst for the increase in the federal prison population since 1998 (BJS 2013).
The study addresses three vital questions. First, how does the prevalence of child maltreatment differ by father incarceration, and by crime classification. Second, what is the impact of paternal incarceration on child maltreatment on various child development stages. Third, how is the change in father incarceration status affect the change in child maltreatment. This study fills the knowledge gap by assessing the crime severity, paternal incarceration, child maltreatment, and longitudinal factors associated with fragile families.
Methods:
The paper uses the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW), a longitudinal birth cohort study following 4,898 children born in 1998-2000 living in cities with populations greater than 200,000. We use the first four waves of core data, occurred at baseline, 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year, respectively, as well as in-home assessment. We stratified the sample, differentiating between father currently in jail, ever in jail, and committed drug offense versus other offenses. Mother’s self- reported acts of spanking and five physical aggression items toward their children are selected as proxy variables of risks for maternal child maltreatment. We report bivariate trends over the study period, as well as presenting logistic regression results and multivariate difference-in-difference results that estimate the association of father incarceration on child maltreatment.
Results:
The prevalence of spanking was astonishing, 26.4% at year 1, 52.2% at year 3, and 46.3% at year 5, similarly increasing with the average score for five physical aggression items. Further, we find that father incarceration plays a role on child maltreatment on various child development stages. Father incarceration significantly increases the odds of maternal child maltreatment by 185% times (p = .002) at year 5, while the findings are not robust at year 1 and year 3. Furthermore, we find children fare relatively better in households with drug offenses compared with other types of offenses. The changes from father in jail to exit of jail reduced the likelihood of maternal child maltreatment by 12 percentage points.
Conclusions and Implications:
Our results indicate that the association of paternal incarceration on child wellbeing varies across the life span. The mother treats children differently based on their developmental stages and status of father incarceration and crime severity. The implications of these findings show the need for social work advocacy, and the creation of institutional programs to educate positive parenting. Since children start kindergarten at age 5, mentoring programs for kids can be established to compensate the missing supervision due to father absence. Programs encouraging paternal communications with children through visits and letters, and specialized programs targeting families with drug offenses can help reduce negative child outcomes.