Anna R
By Anna R. Haskins
On Father’s Day, just like any other day in the United States, approximately 2.7 million children are estimated to have a parent in prison or jail. Over the past four decades, the United States has sent high numbers of its citizens to prison, especially poor minority men. The price has been paid by young children. Nearly one of every 10 US residents under 18 has been affected by parental imprisonment. This has important consequences for children’s educational development.
One measure of early educational development, “school readiness,” suggests how prepared children are to learn in formal classrooms. Readiness involves skills such as problem solving, word knowledge, and number recognition as well as a child’s ability to pay attention, follow directions and control their anger and frustration. Readiness has been shown to affect success in kindergarten and early grades and predict success in college and the workplace. Readiness also affects decisions by teachers and school counselors — such as whether to assign children to special education classes — that affect children’s future paths and opportunities.
Why might paternal incarceration affect school readiness? Children can be traumatised by separation or by social stigma. As a result, they may become more likely to suffer from emotional or behavioural problems and setbacks in physical or mental health. My study probed such possibilities by tracking development for a large number of urban US children and their parents. Looking at children who in other ways were similarly at risk for poor educational development, I compared children whose fathers did and did not go to prison between ages one and five. Here is what I found:
Paternal incarceration does not have any clear-cut effects on children’s cognitive readiness for school. But it does hurt young children’s emotional and behavioral readiness — and the setback is equivalent to a loss of nearly two months of schooling. Children of imprisoned fathers arrive at kindergarten less able to pay attention or obey teachers and more likely than other youngsters to be hyperactive, aggressive, or easily frustrated.
Boys were set back most by such emotional and behavioral unreadiness — which helps to explain why, overall, researchers find that boys are less prepared for school than girls.
Having a father sent to prison leads to similar setbacks for white and black children, but of course black children are much more likely to have their fathers imprisoned.
The harmful impacts of paternal incarceration also matter for the longer run, in part because emotionally and behaviourally unprepared boys are often assigned to special education classrooms. I found that boys whose fathers are incarcerated during their preschool years are more likely to be placed in special education by age nine.
Special education placement has been linked to later shortfalls in academic achievement and research has shown it is associated with higher incidence of dropping out of school, trouble with the law, and unemployment.
WP-BLOOMBERG
By Anna R. Haskins
On Father’s Day, just like any other day in the United States, approximately 2.7 million children are estimated to have a parent in prison or jail. Over the past four decades, the United States has sent high numbers of its citizens to prison, especially poor minority men. The price has been paid by young children. Nearly one of every 10 US residents under 18 has been affected by parental imprisonment. This has important consequences for children’s educational development.
One measure of early educational development, “school readiness,” suggests how prepared children are to learn in formal classrooms. Readiness involves skills such as problem solving, word knowledge, and number recognition as well as a child’s ability to pay attention, follow directions and control their anger and frustration. Readiness has been shown to affect success in kindergarten and early grades and predict success in college and the workplace. Readiness also affects decisions by teachers and school counselors — such as whether to assign children to special education classes — that affect children’s future paths and opportunities.
Why might paternal incarceration affect school readiness? Children can be traumatised by separation or by social stigma. As a result, they may become more likely to suffer from emotional or behavioural problems and setbacks in physical or mental health. My study probed such possibilities by tracking development for a large number of urban US children and their parents. Looking at children who in other ways were similarly at risk for poor educational development, I compared children whose fathers did and did not go to prison between ages one and five. Here is what I found:
Paternal incarceration does not have any clear-cut effects on children’s cognitive readiness for school. But it does hurt young children’s emotional and behavioral readiness — and the setback is equivalent to a loss of nearly two months of schooling. Children of imprisoned fathers arrive at kindergarten less able to pay attention or obey teachers and more likely than other youngsters to be hyperactive, aggressive, or easily frustrated.
Boys were set back most by such emotional and behavioral unreadiness — which helps to explain why, overall, researchers find that boys are less prepared for school than girls.
Having a father sent to prison leads to similar setbacks for white and black children, but of course black children are much more likely to have their fathers imprisoned.
The harmful impacts of paternal incarceration also matter for the longer run, in part because emotionally and behaviourally unprepared boys are often assigned to special education classrooms. I found that boys whose fathers are incarcerated during their preschool years are more likely to be placed in special education by age nine.
Special education placement has been linked to later shortfalls in academic achievement and research has shown it is associated with higher incidence of dropping out of school, trouble with the law, and unemployment.
WP-BLOOMBERG
