This chapter argues that mass incarceration is an insidious mechanism to limit equal opportunity to freely and optimally ‘do family’. Indeed, research documents a host of negative family outcomes associated with parental incarceration and children seem to be particularly vulnerable. This chapter introduces a ‘Family Inequality Framework’ (FIF), which builds on research and theory that conceptualizes parental incarceration as an ongoing family stressor that influences critical parenting processes and indices of family functioning. Based on family stress theory and ecological frameworks, the FIF points to material hardship as the main conduit through which parental incarceration contributes to and reproduces family inequality. Moreover, an FIF represents a shift in emphasis from how mass imprisonment contributes to inequality among incarcerated adults, to how parental incarceration contributes to inequality among children.