Parents Behind Bars: What Happens To Their Children: Article Analysis

The article “Parents Behind Bars: What Happens to Their Children?” by David Murphey and P. Mae Cooper emphasizes the impact that the incarceration of parents has on their children. The article states that “Children do not often figure in discussions of incarceration, but new research finds more than five million U.S. children have had at least one parent in prison at one time or another.” What impact does this have on children? Research shows that the outcomes associated with incarceration are almost always negative. The child experiences traumatic stress and loss of “an attachment figure”. The child may also be experiencing continued encounters with law enforcement and the corrections system and similar things which only increase the traumatization.

The incarceration of a parent puts a sever strain on a child’s emotions and causes hurts and experiences that will emotionally affect a child for life. Research show that younger school-age children were more likely to have emotional difficulties if they had an incarcerated parent. Children of an incarcerated parent also face rejection. It is interesting to note that research showed that older youth were less distressed by parental incarceration, perhaps because incarceration was not as recent.

With one parent in jail, the child may end up with a single parent working two and three jobs to make enough money or tossed around among foster homes. So while the child is suffering from the unexplainable and is unable to control the incredible hurt placed upon him, he has no one to instruct him how to handle the emotions he feels. If the child does have a parent caring for him, the parent may or may not care for the child, but is probably struggling with emotional control