A life course perspective on parental incarceration and other forms of childhood adversity

Abstract

Prior research on childhood adversity has revealed that exposure to multiple adverse childhood experiences (ACE) is relatively common, and that failure to consider these experiences in tandem may misattribute their effects to a single adversity. Yet attempts to isolate the effects of a given ACE are quite common, particularly in the burgeoning body of research on parental incarceration. Guided by recent theorizing in the parental incarceration effects tradition, and key insights from prior work on ACEs, the current investigation situated parental incarceration within broader contexts of childhood adversity. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we drew on person-centered analyses to consider associations between different constellations of risk, well-being, and other important life course considerations. Additionally, we centered the experience of parental incarceration to explore its prevalence across the different constellations identified and to examine its independent and interactive effects on problematic behavioral outcomes and successful adult transitions. Our findings revealed that 1) ACEs tend to cluster, 2) certain constellations may pose greater developmental risks, and 3) the effect of parental incarceration may depend, in part, on the unique set of ecological risks to which children are exposed.