Paternal Incarceration and Family Functioning

Abstract

This article extends research on the association between paternal incarceration and family functioning by differentiating between families with fathers who have been incarcerated in local jails, state prisons, federal prisons, and unknown types of facilities. Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW) enable this finer grained analysis. We show that there are few observable differences between families with fathers incarcerated in a local, state, or federal facility and the 53 percent of families with fathers incarcerated in an unknown facility type. We test the association between facility type and family functioning using a series of fixed effects models, showing strong associations between facility type and only two of seven family outcomes. The evidence presented here suggests that family functioning does not markedly vary by type of facility, but this finding needs to be substantiated in future research.