Incarceration and Non-Custodial Fathers' Financial and Relational Investments in Children

Background and Purpose: Parental incarceration is associated with numerous negative outcomes for children, the growing recognition of which has spurred a vast body of research. Incarceration not only physically separates parents from their children, but it also strains family relationships. These strains play a role as barriers to the relationships fathers have with their children and caregivers during incarceration and long after release. Furthermore, a history of incarceration limits an individual’s employment opportunities and is associated with depressed earnings and limited economic mobility. For non-custodial parents, decreased earnings and limited job opportunities can make financial contributions to children, particularly fulfilling child support obligations, more challenging. Despite the importance of these issues, studies have yet to examine these relationships in more detail. In this paper, we differentiate incarceration before versus after children’s birth and the length of the longest incarceration spell as they are related to non-custodial fathers’ financial and relational investments in children to address these gaps.

Methods: We draw on information from fathers in six states who participated in the Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration Evaluation (CSPED), a multisite randomized-controlled intervention targeting low-income non-custodial parents with employment difficulties (N=2,409). We use ordinary least squares and logistic regressions to test for associations between two measures of incarceration history reported at program entry (the timing of prior incarceration relative to children’s birth and the length of an incarceration spell) and four outcomes for fathers' relational involvement with children (contact, relationship quality, engagement, and decision making) measured at the one-year follow-up survey and three child support outcomes (any payments made, amount paid, and compliance) in the year after program entry, controlling for CSPED treatment status and fathers’ sociodemographic and family characteristics.

Results: We find that post-birth and longer spells of incarceration, compared to no incarceration history, are associated with diminished relational quality with children as perceived by fathers but with no other relational outcomes. We also find no statistically significant relationship between pre-birth and short spells of incarceration and all relational outcomes. Post-birth and longer spells of incarceration are strongly and consistently associated with diminished financial investments while pre-birth and shorter spells of incarceration matter for some, but not all, financial investment outcomes. Similar relationships between incarceration and fathers’ investments can be seen among non-Hispanic White and Black fathers.

Conclusion and Implications: These findings provide critical insights for policymakers and social work practitioners who work with parents with incarceration history by highlighting the differential effects of incarceration timing and duration on non-custodial fathers’ relational and financial investments in their children. Policymakers and social work practitioners should consider paternal incarceration history, particularly that which lasts longer and occurs after children are born, to be a considerable risk factor for economic and relational disadvantage for children and work to reduce parental incarceration as a strategy to increase both individual and family well-being.