Parental incarceration, attachment and child psychopathology

Abstract

Theory and evidence relating parental incarceration, attachment, and psychopathology 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

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.

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.