Sherry Zhang
PhD Candidate in Policy Analysis and Management, Cornell University
Chapter Member: Finger Lakes SSN
Areas of Expertise:
- Children & Families
- Criminal Justice
Connect with Sherry
About Sherry
Zhang completed her bachelor’s degree in economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She worked at the Chicago Department of Public Health and at the Institute for Health Policy and Research before starting graduate school in policy analysis and management at Cornell. As a teaching assistant in Cornell’s Prison Education Program, she became interested in family structure changes due to incarceration and its effects on child outcomes.
Contributions
Understanding the Many Difficulties Faced by the Children of Imprisoned Mothers
SSN Basic Facts Brief,
Publications
"Situating the Experience of Maternal Incarceration: Childhood and Young Adult Context" (with ). 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.
"Maternal Incarceration, Childhood Context and Risky Behaviors in Young Adulthood," American Sociological Association, August 2014.
Argues that children whose mothers were incarcerated report greater exposure to risk factors like abuse and parental substance use and higher levels of delinquency, criminal activity, and relationship violence in young adulthood, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health.