When Are You Coming Home?: How Young Children Cope When Parents Go to Jail

The vast majority of incarceration in the US occurs in locally operated jails, disproportionately impacting families of color, those experiencing poverty, and rural households. When Are You Coming Home? Helps answer questions about how young ones are faring when a parent is incarcerated in jail, presenting findings related to children's stress, family relationships, health, home environments, and visit experiences through the eyes of children and families.

Format: Hardback
Length: 228 pages
Publication date: 17 March 2023
Publisher: Rutgers University Press

As the United States approaches its 50th year of mass incarceration, an unprecedented number of children have witnessed the imprisonment of a parent. The vast majority of incarcerations occur in locally operated jails, disproportionately impacting families of color, those experiencing poverty, and rural households. However, our understanding of how children cope with the incarceration of a parent, particularly young children who are most at risk and most detrimentally affected, is still in its early stages.

To address this issue, When Are You Coming Home? provides valuable insights into the experiences of young children when a parent is incarcerated in jail. Built upon a resilience framework of development, the book offers a child-centered perspective, capturing the stress, family dynamics, health, home environments, and visit experiences through the eyes of the children and their families. This humanizing and social justice-oriented approach emphasizes the critical need to support children and their families before, during, and after a parent's incarceration, while also grappling with strategies of reform and decarceration in the country.

The book's findings shed light on the stressors children encounter during their parent's incarceration, including feelings of anxiety, fear, and loneliness. It highlights the importance of maintaining strong family relationships and providing support to children during this challenging time. The authors also explore the impact of incarceration on children's health, including physical and mental well-being, and the challenges they face in maintaining stable home environments.

Furthermore, When Are You Coming Home? delves into the experiences of children during visits with their incarcerated parent, including the logistics, emotions, and benefits of these interactions. It emphasizes the importance of maintaining regular communication and building trust between children and their parents, even when physical distance is a factor.

The book concludes by emphasizing the need for comprehensive support programs that address the unique needs of children and their families during and after incarceration. It calls for policies that prioritize prevention, early intervention, and rehabilitation, as well as efforts to reduce the over-incarceration of individuals and address the root causes of crime.

In conclusion, When Are You Coming Home? is a groundbreaking work that sheds light on the experiences of young children when a parent is incarcerated in jail. Through a resilience framework of development, the book provides a child-centered perspective, highlighting the stress, family dynamics, health, home environments, and visit experiences of children and their families. By emphasizing the critical need to support children and their families before, during, and after incarceration, the book contributes to our understanding of the complex challenges faced by these families and offers valuable insights into strategies for reform and decarceration.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781978825710