Getting under the skin: Physiological stress and witnessing paternal arrest in young children with incarcerated fathers

Abstract

U.S. jails see nearly 11 million annual admissions, rates that disproportionately affect men of color-more than half of whom are fathers. An estimated 7% of U.S. children experience the incarceration of a parent, increasing their risk for poor developmental and health outcomes. Although stress processes are often suggested as an underlying mechanism linking paternal incarceration to child well-being, few studies have examined such links. To study how witnessing a father's arrest prior to incarceration in jail relates to children's stress processes, we collected data on 123 individuals from 41 families with young children whose father was in jail, including collecting hair from 41 children, and analyzed their cumulative stress hormones, cortisol, and cortisone.Results indicate that children had higher cumulative stress hormone concentrations when they witnessed their father's arrest. Moreover, there was evidence of a blunted stress reaction in children who witnessed the arrest and who also had high levels of ongoing behavioral stress symptoms, similar to findings in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder studies. Long-term exposure to stress can have deleterious effects on children's brain development, further increasing risk for developmental psychopathology.Findings have implications for criminal justice approaches that safeguard children during parental arrest.

The Health and Development of Young Children Who Witnessed Their Parent’s Arrest Prior to Parental Jail Incarceration

“…Even though we did not directly measure toxic stress in this study as has previously been done [ 20 ], we examined how a stressful experience--witnessing the parent’s arrest--related to missed developmental milestones in early childhood, including academic delays, following a parent leaving for jail. We found that witnessing the parent’s arrest and exhibiting distress about it predicted more missed developmental milestones, especially in early academic skills.…”

“…Dallaire and Wilson [ 19 ] found that children with incarcerated parents (CIP) who witnessed their parent’s arrest, crime, or sentencing were more likely to have lower one-word receptive vocabulary, more symptoms of anxiety and depression, and lower self-regulation months after the event occurred compared to CIP who did not witness such events. Exposure to fathers’ arrests has been found to be associated with elevated physiological distress, except in the case of those children who see the high behavioral stress symptoms who actually see a blunted glucocorticoid response—trends mirrored in studies of PTSD [ 20 ]. The potential trauma of witnessing the parent’s arrest, combined with the experience of loss related to losing a parent to incarceration—especially when the parent is engaged or co-resident--could increase children’s stress levels and disrupt their development in multiple domains, especially emotional development, social development, health, and early learning.…”

“…Dallaire and Wilson [ 19 ] indicated that 26% of CIP between the ages of 7–17 had witnessed their parent’s arrest. However, other than Poehlmann-Tynan, Burnson, Runion, & Weymouth’s [ 24 ] and Muentner, Kapoor, Weymouth, Poehlmann-Tynan’s [ 20 ] study, the experiences of young children who have been present for their parents’ arrest has not been well-documented.…”

“…Sometimes children are allowed to say good-bye to the parent, whereas in other cases children are not; additional differences include whether children are left at home with another parent, picked up from the arrest site by a relative, or transported to foster care in a police car or social worker’s vehicle [ 24 , 29 ]. Recent evidence has also pointed to the ways in which these experiences “get under the skin” of children, finding significant concern for physiological stress after witnessing fathers’ arrests [ 20 ]. Coping with witnessing parental arrest can be challenging for children and contribute to the ambiguity and stress surrounding parental loss, especially without implementation of child-sensitive police protocols.…”

“…Despite parents perceiving their incarceration negatively influencing their children’s health [ 40 ], this consequence of parental imprisonment tends to receive less attention despite some health effects being documented in young children (e.g., [ 41 , 42 ]. Pointedly, younger children see increased odds of adverse sleep and eating behaviors as a result of their parents’ incarceration [ 43 ], elevated physiological distress [ 20 ], and ultimately face higher risk for psychopathology [ 44 ]. Studies focusing on adolescents [ 45 ] and adult retrospective reports of adverse childhood experiences have found links between childhood experiences of a household member’s incarceration and poor physical and mental health outcomes, including poor health-related quality of life [ 46 ], health behaviors [ 47 ], diabetes [ 48 ], and elevated depressive symptoms [ 49 ].…”