Parental Incarceration and Sex-Risk Behavior in African American Youth and Emerging Adults Living in Public Housing

Background

The U.S. incarcerates more individuals than any other industrialized country in the world. At the end of 2013, an estimated 2.3 million people were incarcerated in the U.S. African Americans are disproportionately over-represented across all forms of confinement. They represent 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for approximately 40 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons. Two out of every five inmates in state and federal prisons are African American and the vast majority of these inmates are from low-income communities. Accordingly, African American children of incarcerated parents bear the heaviest burden of mass incarceration and its sequelae. Furthermore, this population experiences more severe consequences of substance use and abuse compared to other populations. It is likely that the early onset of sex reported by African American youth in national data is related to mass incarceration and substance use in their communities. Mass incarceration, substance use and adolescent early onset of sex (e.g., initiate sexual intercourse at 13 years of age or younger) are social problems with disparate impacts on low-income African American communities.

Methods

The research team employed a community based participatory research (CBPR) approach and cross-sectional design to collected from African American adolescents living in public housing located in West. Community stakeholders acted as our community advisory board (CAB). The research team (i.e., CAB plus academic researcher) negotiated every phase of the study. At the time of data collection, the partnering community had a median family income of $14,487; however, most families (68.5%) had annual incomes of less than $25,000. Furthermore, most students (99.4%) in the target area were enrolled in public schools that are predominantly African American.

Using a sample of 142 African American youth, this paper assesses whether parental incarceration or substance, or both, are related to the likelihood of initiating sexual intercourse at age 13 or younger. Analytic procedures included chi square, Spearman bi-variate correlations and sequential logistic regression.

Results

The sample reported a mean age of 19 and 36% reported early onset of sex. Results indicated that males had a 44 times higher likelihood of reporting early sexual onset; that father’s incarceration was significantly associated with an eight times higher likelihood of early sexual onset; that mother’s alcohol problem was significantly associated with a 15 times higher likelihood of early sexual onset and that parental drug problems were unrelated to early sexual onset.

Implications

Although it is well documented that the loss of a parent to prison and alcohol problems are linked to behaviors in their offspring including sexual behavior, this paper represents a first to empirically assess how these two parental hardships are related to age of sexual onset. Early onset of sex in minority youth are associated with increased risk of teen pregnancy and contracting STI’s including HIV / AIDS. This paper highlight the need for preventative interventions around sex-risk behaviors the children of incarcerated parents.