Allison Dwyer Emory

Assistant Professor, University at Buffalo

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About Allison

Dwyer Emory’s research agenda incorporates three related streams. The first addresses how contact with legal and criminal justice systems shape families, the second examines the role of fathers in diverse family structures, and the third examines how public policies can mitigate or exacerbate inequality. Together, these areas address the broader question of how families and communities respond to the constraints imposed on them by formal systems, particularly those with the authority to both surveil and punish. This work draws on the fields of family demography, criminology, social stratification, and both rural and urban sociology using a variety of research methods.

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Contributions

What Children Experience when Mothers, Fathers, or Both Parents are Sent to Jail or Prison

Basic Facts Brief, May 2015

Publications

"Situating the Experience of Maternal Incarceration: Childhood and Young Adult Context" (with Allison Dwyer Emory). Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research 9 (2015): 219-254.

Argues that individuals whose mothers were incarcerated during their childhoods experienced greater hardships in both childhood and young adulthood than those whose mothers were not incarcerated.

"Understanding the Mechanisms through Which Paternal Incarceration Affects Children’s Behavior", American Sociological Association, 2013.

Argues that the collateral consequences faced by families with an incarcerated father, the economic hardship and depressed social support, are most consequential for explaining externalizing behavior in children.

"Parents Apart: Differences between Unmarried and Divorcing Parents in Separated Families" (with Maureen Waller). Family Court Review 52, no. 4 (2014): 686-703.

Explores how the circumstances and relationship histories of separated parents based on their relationship with one another at the time of their child’s birth. Argues that never married parents, a growing population in family courts, face more barriers to father involvement and co-parenting than divorced parents and have fewer social and financial resources at their disposal.