REDUCING THE EFFECT OF PATERNAL INCARCERATION ON JUVENILE DELINQUENCY: THE ROLE OF PROSOCIAL FRIENDSHIP NETWORKS

Abstract

Paternal incarceration is associated with a wide array of negative developmental outcomes for children who are reared in this context, thus perpetuating intergenerational patterns of cumulative disadvantage. Recent scholarship from Giordano et al. (2019) has called for research investigating factors associated with intergenerational discontinuities in the life-course trajectories of children with incarcerated parents. There is reason to believe that prosocial peers may serve as a potential protective factor capable of ameliorating the negative developmental consequences of paternal incarceration. This thesis uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to explore whether prosocial friends can attenuate the elevated risk of delinquency and substance use which are often associated with paternal incarceration. The results suggest that prosocial friends are generally related to decreased propensity for delinquency and substance use, but they do not buffer the effect of paternal incarceration on adolescent delinquency and substance use. In the end, prosocial friends show promise as a universal protective factor among adolescents, which has meaningful implications for future research and interventions designed to set youth on more positive developmental trajectories.