Paternal Incarceration and Child Housing Status: The Role of Support Networks

Background and Purpose: Incarceration disproportionately affects low-income, minority populations in the United States and can have lasting consequences for families and child wellbeing. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between paternal incarceration and child housing status, as well as the impacts of two distinct types of social support.

Methods: Data came from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The sample was limited to mothers who reported having custody of their children all or most of the time at Wave 4 (N = 3,962). A series of binary logistic regression models predicted child housing instability in the full sample, an African American only sample, and a White only sample. The main independent variable was a dichotomous measure of whether a father had ever been incarcerated by the time the child was three years old. The dependent variable was a dichotomous measure of mother-reported child housing stability at the 5-year interview. Two types of maternal social support were tested as mediators: perceived support was a continuous measure of available resources such as small loans or emergency childcare from friends or family (α = 0.72), while utilized support was a dichotomous measure of whether mothers had recently borrowed money from friends or family.

Results: Children of fathers with a history of incarceration were significantly more likely to experience housing instability than children of never-incarcerated fathers (OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 1.05-1.46). Loss of social support explained some of the effects of fathers’ incarceration histories on child housing stability. Mothers with greater perceived support were protected (OR = 0.88, 95% CI = 0.81-0.95), while those who had borrowed money were significantly more likely to report housing instability (OR = 1.92; 95% CI = 1.64-2.26). Other significant predictors of child housing instability in the full model included lack of housing assistance receipt, maternal depression, exposure to violence, lack of a college degree, and not being married to the child’s father. Additional analyses revealed greater rates of utilized social support among families who did not receive formal housing assistance.

Conclusions and Implications: Mass incarceration is destabilizing to families with children. Criminal justice involvement may disrupt social networks and erode supports available to families within their neighborhoods. Housing assistance such as the Housing Choice Vouchers Program is effective at reducing housing instability and homelessness among families with children, but fail to reach a significant number of vulnerable households. At-risk families may rely heavily on their social networks in the absence of formal assistance, but informal supports are frequently inadequate to prevent housing instability. Furthermore, maternal safety and wellbeing are crucial to child housing stability. Policy and practice recommendations include revisions to sentencing laws to address the scope of mass incarceration, implementation of reentry programs that better support former inmates and their families, investment in maternal human capital development, and expansion of housing assistance programs.