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Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we estimate associations of paternal incarceration with three measures of teens’ attitudes and expectations: (1) optimism about the future, (2) perceived importance of college graduation, and (3) perceived likelihood of college graduation. Results suggest that whereas optimism toward the future and the importance of college are resilient in the face of paternal incarceration, teens’ expectations of actual college completion are reduced, particularly for Black youth. An examination of micro-, meso-, and macro-level mechanisms suggests that early consequences of paternal incarceration influence perceptions of future educational trajectories. Our findings point to the complexity of contemporary teens’ college-related attitudes in the wake of the prison boom. Signs of optimism surfaced, yet obstacles associated with paternal incarceration represent a type of racialized constraint. An updating of the educational expectations literature is needed to account for the racialized nature of the era of mass incarceration in the United States.

Mass incarceration is characterized by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment in the United States, which rose drastically from the early 1970s through 2007 or so. Disproportionately affecting young, Black men from neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, many factors contributed to the steady increase in incarceration from the early 1970s forward. While rising crime rates and harsh societal attitudes toward those convicted of crimes played a part, scholars largely argue that increases in both the likelihood of imprisonment for committing a crime and the length of prison sentences drove the increase in incarceration. Supported by more-intensive and place-based forms of policing, individuals and entire communities faced increasing contact with the criminal justice system. Underlying these policy changes lay deeper social, political, and economic drivers, which often varied by state or other jurisdictions. Ultimately, policy changes mandating longer sentences for repeat offenses (such as three-strike laws) and state and federal laws that increased the length of prison sentences for drug-related and violent crime led to a rising incarceration rate, which meant that far more Americans were serving time and for much-longer sentences than ever before. While the rate of incarceration for men has started to decline slightly, rates for women have risen. During the first two decades of the 21st century, researchers have increasingly focused their efforts on understanding and documenting the collateral consequences of mass incarceration. Beyond the individuals directly impacted, incarceration affects the lives of children and families, neighborhoods, communities, and broader society. Individuals and families especially experience detrimental effects in the education, labor market, and health spheres, while communities suffer “spillover effects,” with even those not directly touched by incarceration affected. With nearly one in thirty-six adults living under some form of correctional supervision (whether in prison or jail, or on probation or parole), and many others “marked” by their past experience with the system, mass incarceration has touched the lives of millions of Americans. Further, racial disparities throughout each phase of the criminal justice system, including in policing, arrest, conviction, and sentencing, have resulted in Americans of color disproportionately experiencing incarceration and its attendant effects. As such, mass incarceration is understood to be a major contributor to 21st-century American inequality along lines of race, class, and gender.

We examined if residence in high-incarceration neighborhoods is associated with risk of cognitive, behavioral and physical health problems for young children net of individual-level parental incarceration status. We used regression analysis and linked data from Year 9 of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study and zip code level information on neighborhood prison admission rates from Justice Atlas of Sentencing and Corrections in 2008. Neighborhood incarceration rates appear to have some independent and negative associations with child cognitive outcomes. For behavioral outcomes, individual-level parental incarceration appears to be the most meaningful. For child physical health outcomes as indicated by BMI percentages and overall good health, neither neighborhood incarceration rates nor individual-level parental incarceration experiences show persistent significant associations. Living in a neighborhood with high incarceration may threaten children’s health and wellbeing, suggesting that mass incarceration feeds into a system of inequality that extends beyond those who experience individual-level parental incarceration by exerting a broader public health impact.

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to expand knowledge about the impact of paternal incarceration on fathering in three specific ways: (a) we explore fathers’ involveme...

Research on the collateral consequences of mass imprisonment has focused on the interactions that families and communities have with the criminal justice system. Less attention is paid to interactions that children of the incarcerated have with another important social institution: schools. This article describes the types of schools that children with incarcerated fathers attend. Using newly available data on children’s early elementary environments from a longitudinal birth-cohort sample of urban families, the analyses show that children of the incarcerated are more often in disadvantaged schools and in schools with climates worse than the schools of same-age peers with no histories of paternal incarceration. I offer a first exploratory step toward understanding the interplay among three of America’s most powerful social institutions—families, schools, and the criminal justice system—and the ways that they interact to structure the educational trajectories of what scholars are calling “children of the prison boom.”

Parents play important roles in their children’s lives, and parental involvement in elementary school in particular is meaningful for a range of child outcomes. Given the increasing number of school-aged children with incarcerated parents, this study explores the ways paternal incarceration is associated with mothers’ and fathers’ reports of home- and school-based involvement in schooling. Using Fragile Families Study data, we find that a father’s incarceration inhibits his school- and home-based involvement in schooling, but associations for maternal involvement are weaker. Results are robust to alternative specifications of incarceration that address concerns about selection and unobserved heterogeneity. Findings also hold across levels of father-child contact. We also conducted a test of the system avoidance mechanism and results suggest it partially explains reductions in school involvement for fathers following incarceration. Given the reoccurring interest in the interconnection between families and schools and how this translates into success, this study suggests that paternal incarceration is associated with lower parental involvement in schooling and highlights the role of system avoidance in this association. Attachment to social institutions like schools is quite consequential, and this work highlights another way mass incarceration influences social life in the United States.

Within the last few decades our understanding of the importance of non-cognitive skills for socioeconomic success has grown along with our knowledge of the deleterious impacts of paternal incarceration for child wellbeing. Given the importance of early skills and that elementary-aged children constitute the majority of children with incarcerated parents, understanding the connection between paternal incarceration and the socio-emotional component of children's non-cognitive development is pressing. Using matching models, data from the newest wave of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, and exploring a larger range of behavioral skills than previous literature, this paper provides estimates of the impact of paternal incarceration on children's behavioral functioning at age 9 using children's own self-reports. Comparisons to oft-used parent reports are made and heterogeneity by gender is explored. Findings suggest the incarceration of a father increases the antisocial behaviors children self-report, but has null effects on prosocial skill development.

A growing number of American school-aged children have incarcerated or formally incarcerated parents necessitating a more comprehensive understanding of the intergenerational effects of mass imprisonment. Using the Fragile Families Study, I assess whether having an incarcerated father impacts children's cognitive skill development into middle childhood. While previous studies have primarily found effects for boys' behavior problems, matching models and sensitivity analyses demonstrate that experiencing paternal incarceration by age 9 is associated with lower cognitive skills for both boys and girls and these negative effects hold net of a pre-paternal incarceration measure of child cognitive ability. Moreover, I estimate that paternal incarceration explains between 2 and 15 percent of the Black-White achievement gap at age 9. These findings represent new outcomes of importance and suggest that paternal incarceration may play an even larger role in the production of intergenerational inequalities for American children than previously documented.

A growing literature documents the myriad penalties for children of incarcerated fathers, but relatively little is known about how paternal incarceration contributes to educational outcomes in early and middle childhood. In this article, we use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to provide the first estimates of the relationship between paternal incarceration and children’s grade retention in elementary school. Propensity score matching models indicate that children of incarcerated fathers are more likely to experience early grade retention than their counterparts. This relationship is not driven by test scores or behavior problems; preliminary evidence suggests this relationship may be driven by teachers’ perceptions of children’s academic proficiency. These findings suggest that elementary school teachers may play an important role in the lives of children experiencing paternal incarceration and, more generally, highlight yet another way in which the large-scale incarceration of men limits their children’s potential.

Scholars suggest that racial/ethnic and class disparities in school-based social capital contribute to educational inequalities. Previous studies demonstrate that social capital (relations of trust, mutual expectations, and shared values) between parents and schools supports children's development. Yet we know little about the emergence of social capital, that is, the processes through which it develops. In this study, we explore mechanisms of social capital emergence in predominantly low-income Latino school communities. We draw data from an experimental study that manipulated social capital through an after-school family engagement program. Based on interviews and focus groups with participating parents, teachers, and program staff in two elementary schools, we identified four types of interactions that act as mechanisms of social capital emergence: (1) responsive communication; (2) reciprocal communication; (3) shared experiences; and (4) institutional linkage. The article connects these mechanisms to theoretically linked sources of social capital and discusses implications for theory and practice.

Student turnover has many negative consequences for students and schools, and the high mobility rates of disadvantaged students may exacerbate inequality. Scholars have advised schools to reduce mobility by building and improving relationships with and among families, but such efforts are rarely tested rigorously. A cluster-randomized field experiment in 52 predominantly Hispanic elementary schools in San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, tested whether student mobility in early elementary school was reduced through Families and Schools Together (FAST), an intervention that builds social capital among families, children, and schools. FAST failed to reduce mobility overall but substantially reduced the mobility of Black students, who were especially likely to change schools. Improved relationships among families help explain this finding.