Parental Absence. There are many reasons as to why a parent can be absent from the home (e.g. incarceration, immigration, divorce, etc.). Regardless of the reason, they all have effects on the rearing of adolescents and can cause negative perceptions of family functioning (Rodriguez et al., 2009). Past research has linked higher rates of delinquency (Huebner & Gustafson, 2007; Uggen, Wakefield & Western, 2005) and incarceration (Harper & Mclanahan, 2004) to parental absence. Barrett et al. (2010) echoed those outcomes amongst the data collected from eight cohorts of 100,000 juvenile records from a South Carolina juvenile justice database where 69% of the adolescents came from families without the presence of a biological father. Harper & …show more content…
Findings indicate that youth with an incarcerated father were more likely to receive placement outside of the home comparison to youth whose fathers were never incarcerated. Interestingly, maternal incarceration was not found to have a significant influence on dispositions (Rodriguez et. al, 2009). In addition to the influence that parental incarceration has on disposition outcomes, Wakefield & Wildeman (2011) found that children of incarcerated fathers significantly experience more mental health and behavioral problems than children of fathers who never experienced incarceration. They noted that these harmful effects not only affect them in childhood in social systems, such as school, but they it can affect them in adulthood where employment opportunities may be compromised and increase their probabilities of committing crime as well. As we can see, parental absence can negatively impact a juvenile’s future in many …show more content…
One of the common patterns among the limitations was sampling sizing. Some mixed methods studies conducted interviews with small sample sizes under 20 participants (Abrahms, 2006; Rodriguez, Smith & Zats, 2009), while other studies that used secondary data also had small sample sizes under 100 participants (Chauhan et. al, 2009; DePanfillis, 2007; Kakar, 2006; Rodriguez, 2007; Rodriguez, 2013). Because these sample sizes were small in numbers, their findings could not be generalized to larger populations and results were limited exclusively to those sampled. In addition, samples of convenience were used for many studies, therefore responses were subject to some bias (Abrams, 2006; Daining & DePanfillis, 2007; Schwalbe, Hatcher & Maschi, 2009). Kakar (2006) noted that as one of the limitations of his study, cautioning readers not to generalize findings from his focus group because participants likely had some bias (i.e. fascination or concern) about DMC, thus resulting in their participation in the