Emotional Competence in Children with Incarcerated Parents: Evaluating the Impact of the Milk and Cookies (MAC) Program

While existing literature has emphasized the importance of social-emotional learning (SEL) in early childhood development, few interventions have been tailored specifically to the unique needs of children experiencing parental incarceration. The present study evaluates the Milk and Cookies (MAC) Program, a trauma-informed, school-based SEL intervention designed for elementary-aged children with an incarcerated parent. Using a quasi-experimental design, this study assessed emotion identification accuracy and anger bias among 34 kindergarten and first-grade participants across an academic year. Emotional competence was measured using the facial expression section of the Assessment of Children’s Emotion Skills (ACES) at two time points. Results indicated no significant differences in emotion identification or anger bias between children who had completed a prior year of MAC programming and those who had not. Similarly, no significant within-year changes were observed in emotion identification, though gender differences were noted, with girls displaying significantly higher emotion accuracy scores than boys at baseline (p = .019). Despite a lack of statistically significant program effects, slight reductions in anger bias suggest potential subtle gains over time. These findings underscore the importance of extended and contextually sensitive interventions for high-risk populations. Future research should incorporate larger samples, comparison groups, and multi-informant measures to more fully capture the impact of SEL interventions on children with incarcerated parents. Keywords: parental incarceration, social-emotional learning, emotion identification, anger bias