Positive , Negative , or Null ? Countervailing Consequences of Paternal Incarceration for Parenting Quality

To date, research on the linkages between paternal incarceration and family life has taken two forms. On the one hand, quantitative research tends to consider effects on child wellbeing and generally concludes paternal incarceration harms children. Qualitative research, on the other hand, tends to consider how incarceration alters relationships between partners and suggests a nuanced combination of positive, negative, and null effects. In this paper, we attempt to rectify these seemingly disparate findings by considering the countervailing consequences of paternal incarceration for both fathers' and mothers' parenting. Using longitudinal data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and an exceptionally rigorous research design, we find that recent paternal incarceration sharply diminishes the quality of biological fathers' parenting, especially for residential fathers. Furthermore, virtually all of this association can be explained by changes in fathers' relationships with their children's mothers. Effects on mothers' parenting, however, are more inconsistent, as recent paternal incarceration is not consistently associated with any measure of maternal parenting across all modeling strategies. Our findings also show that recent paternal incarceration sharply increases the probability a mother will repartner, potentially offsetting some losses in the involvement of the biological father. Taken together, the collateral consequences of paternal incarceration for family life are complex and countervailing. 2 Considering only quantitative research on the effects of incarceration on adult men, it appears incarceration has myriad harmful consequences. Prior incarceration diminishes earnings name just a few negative outcomes. And even the few benefits of incarceration, such as the mortality reduction while incarcerated (e.g., Mumola 2007; Patterson 2010), are offset by the dramatically elevated mortality risks faced upon release (e.g., Binswanger et al. 2007). Quantitative research on family life reports a similar tale for the partners and children left behind. For young children, paternal incarceration is associated with increases in mental health and behavioral problems (e. 2011; Wildeman 2010), as well as a greater risk of experiencing severe hardships such as homelessness (Wildeman 2011). For adolescents and adults, the incarceration of a father is associated with more drug use (Roettger et al. 2010), higher rates of crime and arrest (Murray). And this is to say nothing of how incarceration affects the mothers of these children, as research finds women attached to previously incarcerated men have a greater likelihood of mental health problems (Wildeman, Schnittker, and Turney forthcoming) and financial hardships (Schwartz-Soicher, Geller, and Garfinkel 2011) than their counterparts. In an era …