Risk and Resilience Among African American Children of Incarcerated Parents

The current literature indicates that children of incarcerated parents are negatively responding to parent-child separation and vulnerable to myriad adverse psychological, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. African American children are the most greatly impacted by this social issue as they account for over 50% of all children of incarcerated parents. Despite the risks, many of these youths appear to cope with parent-child separation. There is a paucity of literature that employs a risk and resilience conceptual model to explicate the variability in developmental trajectories. This article reviews the literature on risks and resilience among African American families. An interpersonal-ecological conceptual model that emphasizes the reciprocal interaction between the person and social context is employed. Moreover, African American resilient factors that potentially mediate the relationship between parental incarceration and environmental risks and developmental outcomes are discussed. (C) 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.