"You're Never Too Old for Ice Cream.": The Parenting Experiences of Older Formerly Incarcerated Black and Latine Parents across the Life Course

Abstract

Background and Purpose

The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world. Black, Latine, and Native American men and women make up a disproportionate number of incarcerated people in the United States. Compounding these racial and ethnic disparities is the fact that most incarcerated people are parents. The U.S. prison population, much like the overall U.S. population, is aging. In fact, the aging population in our nation’s prisons and jails is projected to account for nearly one third of the of incarcerated people in the U.S. and the number of older citizens being released from prisons and jails continues to rise. Older and aging formerly incarcerated parents from racial and ethnic minority groups have needs that are unique and different from younger formerly incarcerated parents from racial majority groups, older never-incarcerated peers and older formerly incarcerated peers who are not parents. Given the fact that older adults are at lower risk of engaging in criminal acts, successful reentry becomes less defined by recidivism and desistance and more defined by the quality of life formerly incarcerated older adults experience. While research on the impact of parental incarceration on children is plentiful, few studies have focused on the psychosocial needs of older formerly incarcerated parents and even fewer studies have focused on the parenting experiences of older formerly incarcerated parents from racial and ethnic minority groups.

Methods

To better understand the parenting experiences of older formerly incarcerated Black and Latine parents and how these experiences impact their overall quality of life, a narrative research study was used to collect parenting narratives from older, formerly incarcerated Black and Latine parents. Snowball sampling was used to recruit formerly incarcerated Black and Latine mothers and fathers fifty years of age or older who participated in semi-structured, in person interviews about their parenting experiences across the life course. The primary objective of the study was to create knowledge that could be used to inform policy makers, social work practitioners, and social service providers in their efforts to meet the needs of currently incarcerated parents and older formerly incarcerated parents.

Results

Themes identified included resiliency via informal kinship networks, parental identity transformation across the life course, the role of education in parenting efficacy, and gender disparities in pre-incarceration traumas and adversity. Findings shed light on the shifting roles, responsibilities, and relationships that emerge as parents and children age and try to overcome the impact of parental incarceration.

Conclusion

Particularly powerful insights regarding the needs of older formerly incarcerated parents and their children were derived from the narratives of participants who served lengthy sentences and those that served sentences for violent crimes. The transformative benefits of healing-centered narrative research with formerly incarcerated trauma survivors is also discussed.

Key words: reentry, older incarcerated parents, life course study, narrative research