June 27, 2022
What Happens to Children Who Lose a Parent?
By Lisa Herforth-Hebbert
A child with an incarcerated parent suffers disadvantages that are as bad, or worse, as those faced by a child with a parent who died.
By Ariana Torres, Chrisann Timbie and Gaby Sierra
EDITOR’S NOTE: In the fall of 2021, a group of students at Wake Forest University took part in a class on data-driven advocacy. Their objective was to find a question that was broadly relevant to inequality, answer that question using basic tools of data science, and convincingly communicate that answer clearly to a broad audience in a partnership with the Puffin Nation Fund Writing Fellowships. This article is the third of the final products that came out of that course. The authors sought to understand how the academic achievement, mental health, and future income of children of incarcerated parents compare to those with deceased parents.
If a parent dies, the burden created on their children is substantial. A bereaved child loses access to their deceased parent’s financial, emotional, and social support. This is also true if a parent is incarcerated, but it can come with additional emotional and social burdens that are less obvious.
When a child loses a parent to incarceration, they spend significant days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day mourning the absence of an individual who is still alive or navigating the barrier that keeps them apart. The household may need to pay for communication with the jailed parent and support them during and after their sentence, while simultaneously maintaining a single parent household. Due to the shameful implications surrounding incarceration, these children may be socially stigmatized because of their incarcerated parent. Eric Martin uses the term “hidden victims” to describe the family members harmed by their relative’s incarceration, and argues that these family members receive insufficient emotional support and lack support systems and safety nets.
