Research Proposal

Parental incarceration, attachment and child psychopathology

Joseph Murray a * and Lynne Murray

b

a Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, UK;

b Winnicott Research Unit, School of

Psychology, University of Reading, UK

(Received September 2009; final version received October 2009)

Theory and evidence relating parental incarceration, attachment, and psycho- pathology are reviewed. Parental incarceration is a strong risk factor for long- lasting psychopathology, including antisocial and internalizing outcomes. Parental incarceration might threaten children’s attachment security because of parent– child separation, confusing communication about parental absence, restricted contact with incarcerated parents, and unstable caregiving arrangements. Parental incarceration can also cause economic strain, reduced supervision, stigma, home and school moves, and other negative life events for children. Thus, there are multiple possible mechanisms whereby parental incarceration might increase risk for child psychopathology. Maternal incarceration tends to cause more disruption for children than paternal incarceration and may lead to greater risk for insecure attachment and psychopathology. Children’s prior attachment relations and other life experiences are likely to be of great importance for understanding children’s reactions to parental incarceration. Several hypotheses are presented about how prior insecure attachment and social adversity might interact with parental incarceration and contribute to psychopathology. Carefully designed longitudinal studies, randomized controlled trials, and cross-national comparative research are required to test these hypotheses.

Keywords: attachment; parental incarceration; psychopathology; internalizing; externalizing

Introduction

Prison populations have grown rapidly worldwide in recent decades (Walmsley, 2005), causing an increasing number of children to experience parental incarceration. Between 1990 and 2007, the number of children under 18 years old with an incarcerated parent in the United States increased from 945,600 to 1,706,600, reaching 2.3% of the nation’s children (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). The effects of parental incarceration may be profound and long lasting. In this article we discuss the role that attachment insecurity might play in contributing to child psycho- pathology following parental incarceration. The term psychopathology will be used in this paper as a shorthand for both symptoms and syndromes of affective and conduct disorders (e.g., both depressive symptoms and clinical depression will be considered aspects of psychopathology).

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Attachment & Human Development

Vol. 12, No. 4, July 2010, 289–309

ISSN 1461-6734 print/ISSN 1469-2988 online

� 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14751790903416889

http://www.informaworld.com

The organization of the article is as follows. First, we review evidence on the risk for child psychopathology following parental incarceration. Second, we discuss how parental incarceration might increase children’s insecure attachment, thereby raising the risk for psychopathology. Third, we discuss how mechanisms other than attachment might explain child psychopathology following parental incarcera- tion. Fourth, we examine how children might be affected differently by maternal incarceration compared with paternal incarceration. In the remainder of the paper, we discuss how children’s attachment relations and other life experiences before parental incarceration might influence children’s reactions to the event. We focus on the effects of parental incarceration on younger children rather than on adolescents (for discussion of the effects on adolescents, see Brown, Dibb, Shenton, & Elson, 2002; Eddy & Reid, 2003). We do not discuss the specific issues involved when children are victims of their parents’ crime or when infants stay with their mothers in prison (see Borelli, Goshin, Joestl, Clark, & Byrne, 2010; Byrne, Goshin, & Joestl, 2010; HM Prison Service, 1999) or in a jail-diversion program (Cassidy et al., 2010).

Child psychopathology after parental incarceration

Only a few studies have investigated child psychopathology after parental incarceration using representative samples, suitable control groups, and long-term follow up of children (for a detailed review see Murray & Farrington, 2008a). The focus of these studies has been on antisocial behavior and crime, but internalizing problems (such as depression and anxiety) have also been investigated. Huebner and Gustafson (2007) compared the rates of adult offending behavior between two groups located through the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLYS): 31 children whose mothers had been incarcerated and 1666 children whose mothers had not been incarcerated. The NLYS is a prospective longitudinal survey of males and females in the United States who were aged 14 to 22 years in 1979, and the children of the female respondents (Center for Human Resource Research, 2006). Of children with incarcerated mothers, 26% were themselves convicted in adulthood, compared with 10% of controls. Thus, maternal incarceration in childhood was strongly associated with children’s own subsequent offending. Controlling for background risk variables (including child, maternal, paternal, family, and peer risk factors), maternal incarceration still significantly predicted adult convictions. These results are consistent with the idea that maternal incarceration causes an increased risk for offspring offending.

Murray and Farrington (2005, 2008b) investigated the effects of parental incarceration on boys in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD). The CSDD is a prospective longitudinal study of 411 boys, born in 1953 and living in a working-class area of South London (Farrington, 2003). Outcomes up to age 48 years were compared between 23 boys who were separated because of parental incarceration (between birth and age 10), and four control groups: (1) boys with no history of parental incarceration or parent–child separation (up to age 10), (2) boys separated because of hospitalization or death, (3) boys separated for other reasons (e.g., divorce), and (4) boys whose parents were incarcerated only before their birth. Parental incarceration during childhood was a strong predictor of antisocial outcomes (Murray & Farrington, 2005) and internalizing problems (Murray & Farrington, 2008b) through the life-course. For example, of boys

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separated because of parental incarceration, 55% had chronic internalizing problems through their lives, compared with 18% of boys with no history of parental incarceration or separation (the first control group). Effects of parental incarceration remained even after controlling for other childhood risk factors (including parental criminality), suggesting, as in the NLYS study, that parental incarceration might be a causal risk factor for children’s poor outcomes.

Murray, Janson, and Farrington (2007) compared rates of adult offending behavior of 283 children whose parents were incarcerated (between the children’s births and age 19 years) and 14,589 children without incarcerated parents, in Project Metropolitan. Project Metropolitan is a prospective longitudinal survey of children born in 1953, and living in Stockholm, Sweden (Janson, 2000). Parental incarceration was strongly predictive of offspring criminal behavior between ages 19 and 30 years. Of prisoners’ children, 25% offended as adults, compared with 12% of controls. However, when account was taken of parental background criminality, there were no additional effects of parental incarceration itself. This suggested that parental incarceration did not contribute to offspring offending in Sweden; rather, parental criminality explained the association between the two. Murray, Janson, and Farrington (2007) speculated that children in Sweden may have been less affected by parental incarceration than in England because of shorter prison sentences in Sweden, more family-friendly prison policies, a welfare-oriented juvenile justice system, an extended social welfare system, or more sympathetic public attitudes towards prisoners.

Kinner, Alati, Najman, and Williams (2007) compared 137 children whose mothers’ partners had ever been incarcerated with 2262 children whose mothers’ partners had not been incarcerated, in the Mater University Study of Pregnancy. This is a prospective longitudinal survey of 8458 women, who were pregnant in Australia in 1981, and their children (Najman, Bor, O’Callaghan, Williams, Aird, & Shuttlewood, 2005). At age 14 years, children whose mothers’ partners had ever been incarcerated were significantly more likely to have externalizing and internalizing problems than their peers. However, after controlling for other parental and family risk factors, there was no effect of the incarceration on child externalizing or internalizing problems, suggesting that the association was not causal. It is important to note that children whose mothers’ partners had been incarcerated may not have actually experienced the incarceration, because it may have occurred before they were born.

In summary, four recent longitudinal studies show that parental incarceration is strongly associated with later symptoms of child psychopathology (mainly antisocial behavior). However, the evidence on direct causal effects is mixed: studies in the United States and England suggest that there might be causal effects, but studies in Sweden and Australia suggest that there are no causal effects. A major problem is that no study has included measures of child psychopathology from before parental incarceration and tested whether child maladjustment increases from before to after parental incarceration. This would provide a stronger test of the causal hypothesis. Furthermore, cross-national differences in the way in which parental incarceration is managed might be relevant to different patterns of child outcome, and these have not been formally assessed and taken into account. Prison policies differ in ways that may affect children’s attachment relations and later psychopathology: for example, in the nature and quantity of visits allowed between incarcerated parents and their children, and whether

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physical contact is allowed during visits. Although existing evidence is not conclusive, it is possible that cross-national differences in these kinds of policies account for different results between studies.

It should be noted that none of the studies reviewed here measured diagnoses of psychopathology. They measured symptom scores or official crime. Actual diagnoses and measures of other child outcomes, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or specific anxiety disorders, also warrant investigation. Given the evidence to date, a careful theoretical consideration of possible mechanisms linking parental incarcera- tion and child psychopathology is needed to help interpret these findings and suggest hypotheses for future research.

Might parental incarceration contribute to psychopathology via insecure attachment?

Attachment theory, originally formulated by John Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980), states that secure attachment to a caregiver provides children with a secure base from which to explore their surroundings. Bowlby argued that attachment is profoundly influenced by the way children’s parents treat them (Bowlby, 1989), and evidence has accumulated to support this claim (Cassidy & Shaver, 2008; Rutter, 1995; Sroufe, 2005). With experience, children develop expectations, or working models, of their caregiver’s availability and responsiveness (Bowlby, 1980; Main, Kaplan, & Cassidy, 1985). In contexts of affectionate and consistent caregiving, children may develop working models of secure attachment. However, insecure attachment, and the associated working models, can develop following a variety of environmental threats. Importantly, there is evidence that attachment quality can change over time in response to changes in the caregiving environment, with, for example, secure children later becoming insecure in response to new family adversities (Vaughn, Byron, Sroufe, & Waters, 1979).

There is surprisingly little evidence focusing on the attachment relations of children of prisoners. The only direct evidence we know of (except for that presented in this special issue) comes from Poehlmann’s (2005b) study of 54 two–seven-year- old children separated from their incarcerated mothers (with whom they had been living) in the United States. Using the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT; Bretherton, Ridgeway, & Cassidy, 1990), Poehlmann found that 63% of the children had insecure attachment representations of their incarcerated mothers and a similar proportion had insecure attachment representations of their current caregivers. Notably, child insecure attachment was associated with unstable caregiving situations during the mothers’ incarceration.

Insecure attachment may develop in relation to the incarcerated parent or the child’s current caregiver, or may be experienced as a more generalized sense of personal insecurity. The separation itself may have more of an effect on the security of attachment to the incarcerated parent. Many of the family stresses caused by parental incarceration may impinge more on the child’s attachment to the remaining caregiver, whereas wider stresses (e.g., trauma of arrest, stigma) may cause a general sense of insecurity.

To consider the possible effects of parental incarceration on children, we outline the difficulties that children can experience during the arrest, trial, and incarceration of their parent, and point out how these may affect children’s attachment security. The majority of the research we draw upon is small-scale and qualitative. This research has carefully documented the experiences that some children have following

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parental incarceration, although the representativeness of these findings is generally not known.

During parental arrest, children can feel shocked, bewildered, and scared (Fishman, 1983; Nijnatten, 1998; Richards, McWilliams, Allcock, Enterkin, Owens, & Woodrow, 1994). Arrest often occurs at night or in the early morning, when people are likely to be at home with their families (Braman, 2004). The experience is often unexpected and sometimes violent. According to Johnston’s descriptive research (1995 citing Johnston, 1991), approximately one in five children is present at his or her mother’s arrest. In Richards et al.’s (1994) study of 59 incarcerated men and 65 incarcerated women in England, 17% of their young children witnessed their arrest. One incarcerated mother described how, at the time of arrest, ‘‘the front and back door were crashed in simultaneously. The house was full of policemen with hammers looking for drugs. It was very frightening, my son was hysterical’’ (Richards et al., 1994, p. 54). According to attachment theory, children can cope better with parent–child separation by talking about impending separations, and planning for reunions in ways that reassure children of continued availability and responsiveness of the parent (Kobak & Madsen, 2008). By contrast, when separations occur in an angry, frightening, sudden, or unexplained manner, as in the case of parental arrest, this seems likely to disrupt children’s trust in the accessibility of the parent, and may contribute to insecure attachment.

After parental arrest, there may be a process of plea bargaining or parents can face trial in court, which can last for months or even years. Both of these processes may be highly anxiety provoking for family members and children. Uncertainty about the outcome of the trial means that families cannot plan concretely for the future (Fishman, 1983). Children cannot be assured of their parent’s availability, and they may not understand the court processes during their parent’s trial, leaving them more bewildered by the events that surround them. Fishman (1983) suggested that, during the trial, most family members hope for the best, which means that they often react to a custodial sentence with shock and disbelief. Often, alternative care arrangements have not been made for children in advance (Richards et al., 1994). Thus, children’s anxiety and sense of attachment security may be threatened by prolonged uncertainty during the trial and unexpected news of further separation at the time of sentencing.

Parental incarceration itself involves multiple challenges for children that may threaten attachment security. First, it appears that many children are not given honest and developmentally sensitive explanations about the whereabouts of their incarcerated parent. In Morris’s (1965) classic study of 469 wives of English prisoners, 38% of wives said that their children did not know that their father was in prison. In Sack and Seidler’s (1978) study in the United States, and in Shaw’s (1987, 1992) English study, approximately one-third of children were lied to about the whereabouts of their incarcerated father, one-third were told a ‘‘fudged’’ truth, and one-third were told the whole truth. (Children may be more likely to be told the truth about their incarcerated mother’s whereabouts; Caddle & Crisp, 1997.) When children are confused or deceived, they may not be able to integrate their experiences of their missing parent, and the loss may be more threatening to their sense of attachment security (Bretherton, 1997; Kobak & Madsen, 2008). In one study that examined children’s attachment relations according to what they were told about their incarcerated parent, Poehlmann (2005b) found that children who were given emotionally open and developmentally appropriate information about

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their incarcerated mother’s absence were more likely to have secure attachment representations of their current caregivers than other children, although they were not more likely to have secure attachment representations of their incarcerated mothers.

Another major difficulty for children during parental incarceration can be stigma. Incarceration is highly stigmatizing, and this stigma appears to be ‘‘sticky,’’ spreading and adhering to family members, including the children of prisoners (Braman, 2004, p. 173). In some cases, this stigma can lead to peer hostility and rejection. For example, in Boswell’s (2002, p. 19) study, one boy with a father in prison described how ‘‘they bully me, say nasty things. I don’t let them know I care, but sometimes I cry on the way home. The teachers don’t know my dad’s in prison and I don’t want to tell them.’’ The stigma associated with having a family member in prison is likely to explain why families tend to keep the incarceration secret from friends, neighbors, work colleagues, and even children (Braman, 2004). According to attachment theory, open communication between child and parent is important for fostering children’s sense of attachment security (Bowlby, 1989; Bretherton, 1997; Kobak & Madsen, 2008). We suggest that the stigma associated with parental incarceration might contribute to attachment insecurity for three reasons. First, it reduces open communication between children, caregivers, and parents. As Myers, Smarsh, Amlund-Hagen, and Kennon (1999, p. 20) explained, ‘‘Forced silence adds to the trauma experienced by children because they have no one to talk with about their feelings’’ (see also Arditti, 2005). Second, stigma might negatively affect children’s representations of their incarcerated parent. Third, stigma might reduce the social support that could provide caregivers with resources to respond effectively to the child.

Another difficulty for children during parental incarceration is that they are unlikely to have dependable and intimate contact with their incarcerated parent (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008; see also Shlafer & Poehlmann, 2010). Children’s distress while separated from a parent typically can be reduced by reassuring children of their parent’s availability through communication and contact (Kobak & Madsen, 2008). It has been suggested that, if well-managed, visits may have the potential to reassure children that their parent is well and still loves them (Myers et al., 1999). However, it is very difficult for prisoners and their children to maintain close contact. In the United States, although most parents have some contact with their children during incarceration (by telephone, letter, or visits),

1 only 6% of incarcerated parents have

at least weekly visits from their children (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). Visits can be limited because of the long distance and costly travel to prisons and because visiting times can overlap with school hours. Children also might not be able to visit their incarcerated parent because they have no adult who will accompany them. Children’s care providers might not want to visit prisoners, or prisoners and their families might think that children would be adversely affected by going inside a prison (Arditti, Smock, & Parkman, 2005).

Without carefully designed child-friendly visit arrangements, children can find prison and jail visits upsetting (Richards et al., 1994). Visitors often wait 30 to 60 minutes in a visiting area with little to do before being called for a 20-minute visit in a crowded, noisy room (Arditti, 2005). To enter the visiting area of some prisons or jails, children may have to pass through a locked door, a metal detector, be sniffed by dogs, or sometimes be searched. Children can be frightened by these procedures and the officers who enforce them. As one female prisoner in Richards and colleagues’

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(1994, p. 34) study reported ‘‘[The officers] are very insensitive to what kids go through and what it means to kids. They don’t understand how threatening they are with their uniforms and such. My daughter is very intimidated by officers.’’ In some prisons, inmates are restricted to their seat (at times bolted to the floor) during the visit, and sometimes physical contact between prisoners and their visitors is prohibited. Some visits occur through plexiglass. Although visiting conditions vary dramatically by prison and by jurisdiction (Robertson, 2007), it seems that many visiting environments do not facilitate the close contact that might reassure children and promote secure attachment. In fact, in Poehlmann’s (2005b) study, there was a trend for children aged two–seven-years-old who had visited their mothers in prison to have less secure attachment representations of their mothers than children who did not visit their mothers. However, in another study of 58 adolescents with incarcerated mothers, those who had more frequent contact (by visit, telephone, or letter) were considerably less likely to have been suspended or to have dropped out of school (Trice & Brewster, 2004). The variability in outcomes after contact indicate that further research is required to identify under what conditions contact is helpful for children.

A range of caregiving situations can follow parental incarceration, and the provision of alternative care is likely to be a key influence on how children cope afterwards. In a national survey in the United States, of fathers incarcerated in state prisons, 88% had at least one child living with the child’s mother, 13% had a child living with the child’s grandparent, 5% with other relatives, 2% in foster or agency care, and 2% with friends or others (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008).

2 By contrast, for

incarcerated mothers, only 37% had a child living with the child’s father, 45% with a grandparent, 23% with other relatives, 11% in foster or agency care, and 8% with friends or others.

Stable and high-quality caregiving can provide support and resilience for children during stressful life events (Kobak & Madsen, 2008; Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, & Egeland, 1999). For example, in Poehlmann’s (2005b) study, remaining with the same caregiver during maternal incarceration was a key predictor of children’s attachment security with their caregiver. In another study of 69 6–12-year-olds with incarcerated mothers, children who felt more warmth from their caregivers during maternal incarceration reported fewer internalizing and externalizing problems (Mackintosh, Myers, & Kennon, 2006). However, parental incarceration often causes changes in caregiving arrangements and considerable strain for remaining caregivers that might undermine this support for children (Mackintosh et al., 2006; Phillips, Erkanli, Keeler, Costello, & Angold, 2006). Prisoners’ partners can be left depressed, overworked, lonely, and struggling under the burdens of childcare and providing support for an incarcerated partner (Morris, 1965; Murray, 2005; Richards et al., 1994). Thus, children’s attachment relations might also be threatened because remaining caregivers may not have the resources to provide stable and responsive care during parental incarceration.

In summary, many aspects of parental incarceration might profoundly threaten children’s sense of attachment security. According to attachment theory, a key influence on a child’s sense of security is availability of the attachment figure (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978; Kobak & Madsen, 2008). Availability depends on children believing that there are open lines of communication with the attachment figure, that there is physical accessibility, and that the attachment figure will respond sensitively if called upon to help (Ainsworth, 1990). All three aspects of

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availability might be challenged by parental incarceration, in which visits are difficult, communication about parental absence can be suppressed or distorted, and parents are held, against their will, in a situation in which active and responsive parenting is almost impossible to perform. Thus, there are strong theoretical reasons to suppose that separation by parental incarceration may be a particularly threatening kind of separation for children.

If parental incarceration does indeed contribute to attachment insecurity in children, this insecurity does not in itself fully explain why children of prisoners are at increased risk for psychopathology. Next, a link must be drawn between insecure attachment and the development of psychopathology. Although insecure attachment is not a disorder in itself (Rutter, 1995; Sroufe, 2005), longitudinal research shows modest associations between insecure attachment in childhood and later externalizing problems (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, & Roisman, forthcoming) and internalizing problems (Warren, Huston, Egeland, & Sroufe, 1997). These associations appear to be stronger for boys than for girls (Fearon et al., forthcoming) and may be stronger in the context of higher social risk (Belsky & Fearon, 2002). There appear to be some specific associations between types of insecure attachment and types of psychopathology, for example between resistant insecurity and anxiety, avoidant insecurity and conduct problems, and disorganized insecurity and dissociative symptoms (Carlson, Sampson, & Sroufe, 2003; Sroufe, 2005).

Consistent with the possibility that parental incarceration is a particularly harmful form of separation for children, in the Cambridge Study referred to earlier, boys separated because of parental incarceration (primarily incarceration of fathers) were at higher risk for antisocial and internalizing problems compared to boys separated from parents for other reasons (Murray & Farrington, 2005, 2008b). Thus, parental incarceration may be particularly threatening for children’s attachment relations, and this may increase their risk for psychopathology. However, in another study of young children living with custodial grandparents because of parental problems, children whose mothers were incarcerated had similar levels of attachment insecurity (as assessed using the ASCT) compared with children separated from their mothers for other reasons (Poehlmann, Park, Bouffiou, Joshua, Shlafer, & Hahn, 2008). Thus, the risks associated with parental incarceration may be quite different depending on which parent is incarcerated, children’s alternative care arrangements, and the nature of the comparison group.

Other possible causes of child psychopathology following parental incarceration

Parent–child relations are not only a matter of attachment. As Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, and Collins (2005, p. 51) emphasize, parents also provide ‘‘stimulation . . . guidance, limits, and interactive support for problem solving . . . In addition they support the child’s competence in the broader world – for example, by making possible and supporting social contacts outside the home.’’ As described above, parental incarceration can cause many strains and difficulties for families and children, and it is unlikely that attachment is the only mechanism linking parental incarceration and child psychopathology. We briefly consider some other potentially important mechanisms here (for a full discussion, see Murray & Farrington, 2008a), as a basis for a later discussion of the ways in which these factors may interact with attachment in predicting psychopathology.

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First, as already mentioned, children’s anxiety following parental incarceration may be influenced by trauma that occurs during parental arrest, uncertainty during the trial, and by children losing a sense of control as their parents are removed from the family against their will. The mechanism linking these experiences and anxiety is not necessarily attachment. Even in the context of a secure attachment relationship, such experiences are likely to be traumatic, possibly contributing to child internalizing problems (Chorpita & Barlow, 1998; Eley & Stevenson, 2000; Goodyer, Wright, & Altham, 1988). Second, while caregivers contend with other strains following parental incarceration (such as loss of income, increased work, social isolation, and depression), child conduct problems may increase because of reduced supervision, less supportive parenting, and less effective discipline (Farrington, 2004). Third, children may become more likely to develop their own criminal behavior following parental incarceration because their perceptions of the criminal justice system are changed. For example, if children feel resentment towards the criminal justice system (or representatives of it, for example, police, judges, or prison officers), they may develop a hostile attitude toward authority figures and be more likely to commit crimes themselves (see defiance theory; Sherman, 1993). Fourth, police and courts may be more likely to arrest or convict children whose parents have been incarcerated (Cunningham & Baker, 2003, p. 14).

Another mechanism that might link parental incarceration and delinquent development is suggested by criminological strain theory (Agnew, 1992; Agnew, Brezina, Wright, & Cullen, 2002; Merton, 1938). As already emphasized, parental incarceration can induce a range of life stressors, including loss of family income, home and school moves, separation from siblings, and hostility from peers. According to strain theory, events like these tend to increase negative affect, which can cause children to attack or try to escape the source of adversity, use illegitimate means to achieve their goals, or manage the negative affect through use of illicit drugs (Agnew, 1992). Consistent with this theory, Mackintosh and colleagues (2006) investigated the effects of negative life events among 68 children whose mothers were incarcerated. Out of 16 stressors, such as changing schools, witnessing someone being beaten or shot, or serious illness or injury of a family member, 60% of children had experienced four or more stressors in the previous year (see also, Johnson & Waldfogel, 2004; Murray & Farrington, 2005; Poehlmann, 2005a). Children who experienced more life stressors during maternal incarceration exhibited more internalizing and externalizing problems.

Thus, parental incarceration may increase psychopathology for children via many different mechanisms, and the potential influence of attachment insecurity needs to be seen in this context. Figure 1 shows how parental incarceration might affect children indirectly through attachment insecurity and through other life stressors. It also shows that there might be an interaction between attachment insecurity and other stressors in producing child psychopathology, which is discussed below with respect to experiences before parental incarceration.

Different effects of maternal and paternal incarceration

Maternal and paternal incarceration may affect children quite differently. In the United States, as in other jurisdictions, the number of children with an incarcerated mother has grown much more rapidly (up 131% between 1991 and 2007) than the number of children with an incarcerated father (up 77% during this period). Still, the

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vast majority of incarcerated parents are fathers (92% of incarcerated parents in 2007; Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). Although there are no large-scale studies comparing the effects of maternal and paternal incarceration on children, Richards and colleagues (1994) noted that incarcerated mothers tended to report more deterioration in their children’s behavior than incarcerated fathers. There are several reasons to think that maternal incarceration might have more undesirable effects on children than paternal incarceration, on average (Cunningham & Baker, 2003).

First, maternal incarceration is more likely than paternal incarceration to disrupt children’s care arrangements. Incarcerated mothers are more likely (61%) than incarcerated fathers (42%) to have been living with their children before incarceration (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). Among parents who lived with their children, mothers (77%) were almost three times more likely than fathers (26%) to have been providing most of the daily care for their children (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008). Children are more likely to shift between care providers or even enter foster or agency care when their mothers are incarcerated. Hence, maternal incarceration is more likely than paternal incarceration to involve separation from a resident caregiver and unstable caregiving arrangements, and thus may have a greater impact on children’s attachment to their principal attachment figure (Poehlmann, 2005b). Notably, there are different effects of maternal versus paternal death on offspring psychiatric disorder, which arise from differential patterns of subsequent care similar to those described here (Harris, Brown, & Bifulco, 1986).

A second reason that maternal incarceration may be more disruptive for children than paternal incarceration is that children with incarcerated mothers are more likely to have experienced multiple risk factors, such as the mother ever having used

Figure 1. Multiple processes by which parental incarceration might contribute to child psychopathology.

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heroin, crack, or cocaine; the mother having a mental health problem; or the mother receiving public assistance before arrest (Dallaire, 2007; Glaze & Maruschak, 2008; Johnson & Waldfogel, 2004). These pre-existing risk factors may exacerbate the undesirable effects of parental incarceration on children, or even directly account for child psychopathology (Shanahan, Copeland, Costello, & Angold, 2008) (see the importance of experience before parental incarceration).

In addition, because there are fewer women’s facilities, incarcerated mothers are more likely to be held further away from home, making it harder for children to visit (Fishman, 1983; Hagan & Coleman, 2001; Koban, 1983). Having said this, in a national prison survey in the United States, Glaze and Maruschak (2008) found that incarcerated mothers were somewhat more likely than incarcerated fathers to report weekly visits from their children (8% vs. 6%), telephone calls (22% vs. 17%), and mail contact (35% vs. 23%). Maternal incarceration is also usually shorter than paternal incarceration (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008), which may help children to cope better with maternal incarceration. Large scale studies comparing children’s experiences before, during, and after maternal and paternal incarceration are required to properly investigate these issues.

It is important to note that there are many other individual, parent, and family characteristics that might also moderate the effects of parental incarceration on children (Murray, 2005; Murray & Farrington, 2008a). In the next section, we discuss the significance of pre-prison attachment relations and social adversity for understanding child psychopathology following parental incarceration. For a review of other possible moderators, such as child age, sex, race, and IQ, and family, neighborhood, and national context, see Murray and Farrington (2008a).

The importance of experiences before parental incarceration

We have considered how difficulties following parental arrest and incarceration might contribute to child psychopathology via multiple mechanisms, including attachment. In this section, we discuss how the effects of parental incarceration on children might differ according to children’s experiences of attachment and social adversity before parental incarceration. Children’s experiences before parental incarceration might influence their outcomes in three quite different ways. First, prior attachment insecurity or adversity might be the main cause of later psychopathology for children, such that parental incarceration has little additional effect. Second, insecurity and adversity before parental incarceration might interact with, and exacerbate, undesirable effects of parental incarceration on children. Third, if incarcerated parents have previously been very disruptive influences in their children’s lives, it is possible that children’s outcomes will actually improve following parental incarceration. These possibilities are represented in Figure 2 and discussed in;

1. Prior adversity might be the main cause of psychopathology following parental incarceration

Children of prisoners may have already experienced insecure attachment and high levels of social adversity, even before their parents are incarcerated, and this might explain their increased risk for psychopathology. We are not aware of any study that shows the rate of attachment insecurity among children before their parents are

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incarcerated. However, there are several reasons to think that children might already have high rates of attachment insecurity and social disadvantage even before their parents are incarcerated.

Many children of prisoners have already experienced separation from a parent before parental incarceration. As mentioned earlier, only 42% of fathers and 61% of mothers were living with their children before incarceration (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008; see also Murray, 2007). Thus, children may have already experienced difficult separations that contributed to attachment insecurity before parental incarceration occurs. Or indeed, they may have failed to establish any attachment to their incarcerated parent (as in, e.g., the case of children experiencing multiple placements).

As one would expect, incarcerated parents are much more likely to have a history of antisocial and criminal behavior than the general population. In the United States, 46% of parents in state prisons reported that they were repeat offenders with either a current or past violent offence, and most (54%) incarcerated parents were using drugs in the month before their offence (Mumola, 2000). This likely indicates risk for poor parenting practices that may contribute to insecure attachment and children’s own antisocial outcomes (Serbin & Karp, 2004; Smith & Farrington, 2004).

Prisoners are also much more likely than the general population to have lived in severe social and economic disadvantage. In England and Wales, 52% of male prisoners and 71% of female prisoners had not passed any school-leaving exams, compared to 15% of the general population; 67% of prisoners were unemployed before incarceration, compared to 5% of the general population; and 72% of prisoners were on benefits before incarceration, compared to 14% of working-age people in the general population (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002). Indeed, several recent, large-scale studies confirm that children of prisoners are exposed to considerably more individual, parent, family, and socioeconomic risks than their

Figure 2. Three models of the influence of prior experience on the effects of parental incarceration for child psychopathology.

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peers (Huebner & Gustafson, 2007; Murray & Farrington, 2005; Phillips et al., 2006). Although being multiply disadvantaged is not deterministic, it does indicate an increased possibility of children experiencing abuse and neglect, lower parental involvement, poor discipline practices, and other adverse child-rearing environments that may increase both insecure attachment and child psychopathology (Eddy & Reid, 2003; Johnson & Waldfogel, 2004; Murray & Farrington, 2008a; Serbin & Karp, 2004).

As various prison surveys show, many incarcerated parents have had very deprived upbringings themselves which may compromise their ability to provide the responsive care that children need to be securely attached. For example, prisoners in England and Wales are much more likely than other adults to have been placed in care in childhood (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002). In the United States, 17% of incarcerated mothers and 14% of incarcerated fathers reported living in a foster home, agency, or institution at some time during their youth (Glaze & Maruschak, 2008), and 54% of incarcerated mothers and 13% of incarcerated fathers reported having been physically or sexually abused (Johnson & Waldfogel, 2004).

Thus, although children of prisoners are at increased risk of psychopathology, this may be the result of pre-existing attachment insecurity and other social adversities, rather than causal effects of parental incarceration itself. As discussed earlier, the empirical evidence on whether parental incarceration increases the risk for psychopathology independently of background risks is inconclusive. There is a particular need for longitudinal research that traces child adjustment from before to after parental incarceration to rigorously investigate this issue.

2. Prior adversity might intensify undesirable prison effects

As Sroufe (2005) argues, ‘‘New experiences are framed by, interpreted within, and even in part created by prior history of adaptation.’’ Thus, rather than ‘‘explaining away’’ child psychopathology after parental incarceration, prior attachment insecurity and social adversity might interact with and exacerbate undesirable effects of parental incarceration on children. Eddy and Reid (2003, p. 241) hypothesize that when children are already at risk for other reasons, parental incarceration may serve as a ‘‘tipping point’’ toward more severe problem behavior. According to Greenberg (1999), child psychopathology is caused by an interaction among four domains of risk: insecure attachment; children’s own characteristics (temperament, biological vulnerability, neurocognitive function); ineffective parent- ing; and family adversity. He argues that, although none of the four domains of risk factors alone causes later problems, a combination of risks is particularly predictive of psychopathology (Greenberg, 1999, p. 485; see also Rutter, 1979; Sameroff, 2000). Consistent with this model, data from the NICHD study of early childcare suggest that attachment security is more strongly related to psychopathology in high-risk contexts than in lower risk contexts (Belsky & Fearon, 2002). Thus, the combination of prior insecure attachment and adversity following parental incarceration may be a particularly potent mix for child psychopathology. Several different mechanisms might account for such an exacerbating effect.

Insecure attachment might exacerbate the effects of stress during parental incarceration because insecurely attached children are more likely to respond to loss or stress with dysfunctional thoughts and emotions (Kobak & Madsen, 2008; Sroufe et al., 1999). In the Minnesota longitudinal study (a prospective study of

Attachment & Human Development 301

approximately 200 children born in an urban environment in the mid-1970s), psychopathology was predicted best by a combination of early attachment insecurity and later life stresses (Sroufe, 2005). (This seemed to be particularly true for children with disorganized attachment.) As such, children who already have insecure attachment may be especially vulnerable to developing psychopathology following parental incarceration.

If attachment insecurity does intensify undesirable effects of parental incarcera- tion on children, a corollary would be that secure attachment might serve as a protective factor, providing children with more resources to deal with the separation. In the Minnesota study, children with a secure attachment pattern reacted to family stress with dramatically fewer behavior problems compared to those with anxious attachment histories (Sroufe, 2005). This may be because attachment security instills positive expectations concerning self and others and provides a base from which to establish close relationships and a supportive social network (Sroufe, 2005). However, at very high levels of contextual risk, secure attachment may not have the same buffering or resilience effect (Belsky, 2005).

Prior social adversity may also exacerbate the undesirable effects of parental incarceration on children. For example, Johnson and Waldfogel (2004) found that in contexts of high adversity children were less likely to live with their other parent during parental incarceration and were more likely to live with a grandparent, another relative, in foster care, or be placed with an agency (see also Poehlmann, Shlafer, Maes, & Hanneman, 2008). In his ethnographic study, Braman (2004) reported that families who were already struggling under economic and social strain found it particularly difficult to cope during parental incarceration. Thus, in several ways, prior insecure attachment or prior social adversity might intensify undesirable effects of parental incarceration on children.

3. Prior adversity might mean parental incarceration has beneficial effects

A third way that prior adversity might interact with parental incarceration is that, under some circumstances, parental incarceration might actually decrease the risk for child psychopathology. Several researchers (Cunningham & Baker, 2003; Eddy & Reid, 2003; Hagan & Dinovitzer, 1999) have suggested that there might be positive effects on children of separation resulting from parental incarceration, if parental antisocial behavior has been particularly disruptive in the home. Parental antisocial behavior might increase risk for child psychopathology via harsh and coercive discipline, poor supervision, parental conflict, child and spousal abuse, or exposure to drug or alcohol misuse (Patterson, 1995; Smith & Farrington, 2004; Thornberry, Freeman-Gallant, Lizotte, Krohn, & Smith, 2003). Thus, incarceration of an anti- social parent might actually reduce children’s risk for psychopathology. For example, according to Eddy and Reid (2003), ‘‘If a substance-abusing parent who regularly invites other abusers into the home and who also spends a great deal of time on the streets is incarcerated for drug dealing, then the children may be moved to a safer environment, positive parenting may increase, and adolescent conduct problems may not be a significant issue’’ (p. 241).

We are not aware of any direct tests of whether children’s outcomes can improve as a result of the separation resulting from parental incarceration. However, some relevant evidence comes from a study of 1100 English families with twins, in which connections were investigated between paternal antisocial behavior, length of time

302 J. Murray and L. Murray

living with the father, and child conduct problems at five years old. Jaffee, Moffitt, Caspi, and Taylor (2003) found that when fathers exhibited low to moderate antisocial behaviors, children had fewer conduct problems the longer that they lived with their father. In contrast, when fathers were high in antisocial behavior, children had more conduct problems the longer that they lived with their father. Thus, it is possible that incarceration of an antisocial parent might sometimes reduce child problem behavior, although this would depend on the balance between the beneficial effects of not living with an antisocial parent and undesirable experiences caused by parental incarceration, as well as other factors such as the quality and stability of the alternative caregiving environment.

Conclusions

Parental incarceration is a strong predictor of certain symptoms of child psychopathology. However, the evidence is mixed on whether parental incarceration contributes to these problems or merely marks other causes of child psychopathology. Parental incarceration might contribute to attachment insecurity via parent–child separation, poor communication about the separation, lack of availability of the attachment figure, and compromised alternative care arrangements. Attachment insecurity following parental incarceration could, in turn, contribute to child psychopathology, particularly when children are exposed to other social and economic strains. However, given that parental incarceration can also affect child supervision, family poverty, and other stressful life events, there are likely to be multiple pathways linking parental incarceration, attachment insecurity, and child psychopathology.

We considered three ways in which prior attachment insecurity and social disadvantage might moderate the effects of parental incarceration on children. Given the extreme disadvantage that many children experience before parental incarceration, it seems unlikely that parental incarceration is the main cause of psychopathology in this population. However, there is reason to suppose that prior adversity and insecure attachment might interact with and exacerbate some of the undesirable effects of parental incarceration on children (Belsky & Fearon, 2002). Thus, the fact that children are often exposed to multiple risk factors before parental incarceration might intensify negative prison effects, rather than nullify them. Another hypothesis about pre-prison adversity was that, under some circumstances, incarceration of an antisocial parent might have positive effects on children and reduce their risk for psychopathology. Research focusing on children of prisoners has always started after parental arrest and incarceration. Given the likely impor- tance of pre-existing experiences for understanding children’s outcomes, there is a great need for research that follows children prospectively from before parental incarceration until afterwards (Murray & Farrington, 2008a).

Conducting a large-scale longitudinal study starting before parental incarcera- tion would involve several key challenges. First, it would be necessary to involve enough high-risk families, such that parental incarceration would occur frequently enough for quantitative investigation. Including a large number of families with known correlates of incarceration, perhaps living in high-risk neighborhoods, could generate sufficient numbers of families in which a parent might experience incarceration over the course of a study. Perhaps mothers with prior arrest (but not incarceration) records could be over-sampled in order to include enough children experiencing maternal incarceration and compare the effects of maternal and

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paternal incarceration on children. From the start, detailed measures of multiple influences on child development would be needed, including careful examination of children’s attachment relations, individual characteristics, parenting styles, caregiv- ing arrangements, parental antisocial behavior, and neighborhood context.

Another major challenge for an informative prospective study would be conduct- ing frequent enough interviews so that when parents are incarcerated, detailed contemporary information could be collected about the event and children’s reactions to it. Ideally, large numbers (probably thousands) of families with young children should be followed regularly, tracing the effects of parental incarceration (among other influences) on child development over many years. Such a study would require major financial backing and the support of key public institutions. The great number of children currently experiencing parental incarceration and the possibility of long lasting undesirable effects mean that such research should be a priority.

Studies using a randomized control design could also be used to more accurately estimate the causal effects of parental imprisonment on children by rigorously controlling for background disadvantage in children’s lives. If convicted parents (who agree to participate in the study) were randomly assigned to prison (the usual treatment) or other (e.g., community) sentences, the causal effects of parental incarceration on children could be estimated with greater validity than has been possible to date. Such experiments have been used to study the effects of incarceration on offenders (e.g., Killias, Aebi, & Ribeaud, 2000; Killias & Villetaz, 2008), and they should also be used to establish the effects of incarceration on families and children of offenders.

Focused cross-national comparative studies should also be used to identify the effects of different prison policies on children of prisoners. For example, by investigating child adjustment and attachment following parental incarceration in different social and penal contexts, and by carefully assessing the quantity and quality of contact allowed between prisoners and their children, specific recommen- dations might be made about prison policies to minimize children’s distress during and after parental incarceration. Moreover, randomized treatment interventions, of the kinds described in other articles in this special issue, could also determine whether it is possible to improve children’s outcomes after parental incarceration by systematic interventions.

Depending on the causes of children’s difficulties after parental incarceration, different interventions will be required to protect children of prisoners (Murray & Farrington, 2006). Currently, there is a general lack of understanding of and concern for children’s psychological well-being following parental incarceration. Until Bowlby and Roberton’s seminal research on the effects of parent–child separation during hospitalization, parents were routinely excluded from visiting their children in the hospital (Alsop-Shields & Mohay, 2001). It is to be hoped that carefully designed research on parental incarceration could also provide a solid evidence base with which to implement social and penal policies that benefit the children of prisoners.

Acknowledgements

Joseph Murray is supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and an Economic and Social Research Council grant (RES-000-22-2311). Lynne Murray’s research is supported by a Medical Research Council grant (G0600990) and an Economic and Social Research Council grant (RES-062-23-0645). We are very grateful to Jude Cassidy for her help with this paper.

304 J. Murray and L. Murray

Notes

1. Telephone communication can be limited by the high costs of calls, particularly in the United States where calls must be made collect by prisoners. Many families have their phones disconnected within two months of an incarceration because of the cost of calls (Braman, 2004).

2. Note, totals add to more than 100% because some parents had multiple children living with multiple caregivers. Moreover, caregiving situations change over time.

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