Foster Care Risk.
The incarceration of either parent increases a child’s chance of encountering the foster care system. This risk increases when a mother is incarcerated.
The brief identifies the statistically significant findings from the Fragile Families Study; more than 4,800 children were followed for 5 years. The researchers examined the impact of the incarceration of fathers and mothers of these children and compared how the outcomes were different for each parent’s incarceration.
The incarceration of a child’s father or mother increases a child’s risk. While a father’s incarceration increases the most number of risk factors across economic, family stability and child wellbeing outcomes, a mother’s incarceration increases the risk of a child’s contact with the foster care system and in experiencing residential moves.