Incarceration Exposure during Pregnancy and Father’s Acknowledgment of Paternity

Incarceration carries consequences for families, including negative impacts on female partners and children of incarcerated men. Whether incarceration that occurs around the time of pregnancy influences a father’s acknowledgement of paternity (AOP) of a newborn has been overlooked. The present study investigates the role of recent incarceration largely of male partners for AOP. Drawing on pooled-cross sectional data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System for 2012–2018 (N = 178,131 in pooled analyses), multinomial logistic regression is used to assess significant differences in the association between incarceration exposure and three possible AOP statuses: married (tacit and automatic AOP), unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP, and unmarried without AOP. Findings demonstrated that incarceration-exposed women were approximately twice as likely to be unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP and over four times as likely to be unmarried without AOP. Results showed that among unmarried women, incarceration exposure still doubles the odds of unmarried without AOP compared to being unmarried with voluntary in-hospital AOP. Study findings highlight the novel ways that incarceration impacts family structure from the earliest stages of the life course by increasing the chances that recent mothers and their newborn children will be without legal recourse to paternal resources and support.