![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.gif)
Over half of all women in US prisons are mothers, and 80% of women in jails are mothers to minor aged children. Incarceration deeply impacts parenting, and has long-term and intergenerational effects on communities, families, and children. Existing scholarship demonstrates that women’s parenting practices are punished and regulated within the prison context. Still, incarcerated mothers repeatedly report that parenting and kinship relations are of central importance in their lives. Few studies investigate the ways in which mothers continue to maintain relationships with and parent their children while navigating the carceral conditions which regulate and punish mothering. Therefore, this study investigates the ways in which incarcerated mothers experience constraints to parenting within prison and actively find ways to parent from the inside.
METHODS:
We conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews with 42 incarcerated women about their parenting experiences while incarcerated in a multi-security level Midwestern state prison. Women in our purposeful sample were on average 32 years old (range 23-52 years old), had 2 children (range 1-9 children), and were predominantly White (48% white, 40.5% Black/African American, 9.5% Latine, and 2% Asian American). On average, women had spent four years in prison (range 1-16 years). Data were analyzed inductively using constant comparative analysis and grounded theory techniques. We conducted open and axial coding to identify themes related to parenting strategies, experiences, and constraints.
RESULTS:
We found that mothers face multiple paradoxes while parenting from prison -- the contradictions between their parenting desires and institutional parenting constraints. Paradoxes emerged around three main dualities: 1) safety vs danger, 2) closeness vs distance, and 3) reunification vs loss. We found that prison conditions constrain mothers’ capacity to protect their children from danger, maintain physical and emotional closeness, and reunify after incarceration. Mothers engage in active strategies to navigate the paradoxes between their desires and institutional constraints. These strategies include: 1) leveraging their parental authority to protect their children while acknowledging the limits of their parenting capacity in prison; 2) seeking connection with their children while intentionally maintaining emotional distance as a form of self-protection; and 3) planning for reunification while embracing the possibility of child loss.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION:
Ultimately, we argue that parenting from prison is itself a paradoxical endeavor. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on the regulation of parenting in carceral contexts and offers a framework for understanding the challenges incarcerated mothers face while parenting from the inside. We draw attention to the active strategies incarcerated women employ to maintain relationships with their children and highlight the importance of relationality as a form of resistance, care, and survival for incarcerated mothers. These findings have implications for anti-carceral social work praxis that centers the desires, needs, and strengths of incarcerated mothers.