2004 - School of Social Service Administration - University of Chicago

Advocate’s Forum
SEPARATION OF INCARCERATED MOTHER
FROM CHILD: THE IMPACT ON
CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT AND
THE CALL FOR GREATER CLINICAL AND
POLICY INTERVENTIONS
By Alana Gunn
Many children live in physical and emotional poverty during and after the
incarceration of their mothers. This deprivation can impact their academic
performance, ability to handle stress, receive and give love, or abstain from
delinquent and violent behavior. This article argues that the separation of
mother and child, as a result of imprisonment, can have a detrimental impact
on a child’s life. Social workers and policy makers must implement alternatives
to policies and practices that perpetuate harm to these victims.
While the overall prison population in the United States has swelled, the rise
in the population of incarcerated women has been most alarming. From 1990
to 2002, the number of women in state and federal prisons increased 121 percent,
to 97,491 from 44,065, while the number of men rose 84 percent in that
period from 729,840 to 1,343,164 (Butterfield, 2003). Also significant to note
is that the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2000) reports that over 75 percent of
female inmates are single mothers, and 66 percent of their children are under
the age of 18. In this population, 75 percent of the women had legal custody
of their offspring at the time of arrest (Enos, 1997). These statistics indicate
that the majority of women in prison are not only mothers but also the primary
caregivers of their children at the time of arrest. Therefore, it is imperative
to examine the incarceration of mothers, because their imprisonment will
certainly have an overwhelming impact on the lives of their children. To fully
contextualize why these children are at risk, we must briefly address the lives
of their incarcerated mothers and the circumstances in which these children
grow up.
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