While a great deal of literature has focused on the effect a father’s
incarceration has for children, much less has explored how children react
to maternal incarceration. This paper looks at the long-term implications of
childhood maternal incarceration for a set of negative outcomes in young
adulthood: intimate partner violence, delinquent behavior, contact with the
criminal justice system, and substance use. We hypothesize that a young
adult whose mother was incarcerated during his or her childhood is more
likely to be in abusive and aggressive relationships, report more delinquent
behaviors and arrests, and have higher substance use as an adult. Using
data from wave I and wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of
Adolescent Health as well as OLS and logistic regression models, we find
that maternal incarceration is associated with higher levels of contact with
the criminal justice system, delinquent behavior, and substance use in young
adulthood. While maternal incarceration is also associated with higher
levels of relationship abuse and aggression, these associations disappear
upon introduction of other risk factors faced by children whose mothers are
incarcerated. We conclude that maternal incarceration can have lasting
implications for grown children, contributing to the intergenerational
transmission of disadvantage.