Implications of In-Person Visits for Incarcerated Parents’ Family Relationships and Parenting Experience

Abstract

Using data from 69 incarcerated parents, we examine the associations of in-person visitation frequency and problems with offender-child closeness, offender-caregiver relationship quality, and offenders’ parenting distress and coparenting. Visitation problems, but not frequency, were associated with greater offender-child closeness, visitation frequency and problems were associated with offender parenting distress, and there was a trend association between visit problems and coparenting. Neither visitation frequency nor problems were associated with offender-caregiver relationship quality. Results highlight the importance of in-person visitation for offender-child relationships and offenders’ parenting experience during incarceration as well as the need to distinguish between the frequency of those visits and the problems that occur during them.

KEYWORDS:

• family relationships
• in-person visitation
• parental incarceration
• parenting

Notes

^a Treatment group indicates they were enrolled in the treatment condition of the intervention and may have participated in enhanced visits.

^b Treatment and control groups are significant different, t =− 2.86, p < .01.

^a Items were reversed coded when used to create the coparenting score.

^aIncarceration length is in months served, () is the number of observations for the correlation.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

***p < .001.

Note. All models computed with 1000 bootstrap replications, BC CI = biased corrected confidence interval,.

**p < .01,.

***p < .001.

Note. All models computed with 1,000 bootstrap replications, BC CI = biased corrected confidence interval.

^† p < .10.

*p < .05.

**p < .01.

***p < .001.