Love, Marriage, and Father-Son Relationships Among Male Prisoners

• Author: Alice M. Propper
• Date: 01 October 1989
• DOI: 10.1177/003288558906900208
• Published date: 01 October 1989
• Subject Matter: Articles

Love, Marriage, and Father-Son
Relationships Among Male Prisoners
Alice M. Propper*
Both male and female prisoners are faced with the task of sexual adaptation in
prison. Because masturbation and abstinence have limitations, some inmates also
participate in homosexuality. Reports of male patterns of homosexual behavior general-
ly differ from female patterns, with the emphasis being on rape in male prisons and the
emphasis being on noncoercive lesbianism and make-believe families in female prisons.
Theoretical explanations of these gender differences typically focus on the differ-
ent orientations of male and female sex role socialization beginning in childhood outside
of prison. The presumed gender differences could also result from different conditions
in male and female prisons. It is, for example, more common to build cottage-style
housing for girls and women. A
home atmosphere is encouraged by calling staff house-
mothers and housefathers. A third, less commonly cited, but possible cause of the pre-
sumed gender differences could be the biases built into research methods used to study
male and female inmates. There has been a strong tendency for women to research
prisons for women and girls, and for men to research prisons for men and boys. Since
male researchers may elicit and interpret data differently than female researchers, both
male and female investigators need to be employed in well-designed studies of inmate
subculture.
Theory emphasizing gender differences in socialization point out that males
receive greater training in instrumentality, and females greater training in expressive-
ness. Men
are expected to be rational, efficient breadwinners while women
are expected
to be more nurturing and family-oriented. In prison, these socialized gender differences
may
result in males having stronger norms against informing on peers, being less willing
and able to have good relationships with correctional staff and participating in more
coercive forms of prison homosexuality than females.
Several writers suggest that women engage in more tender, loving, consensual
affection and less coerced homosexuality than men in prison. Reproductions of love
letters, marriage ceremonies, and marriage documents abound in the literature on
women’s and girl’s prisons (Ford, 1929; Giallombardo, 1966; 1974; Propper,1981), but
are unusual in the literature on men’s and boy’s prisons. It appears, therefore that women
generally write more love letters, form stronger emotional bonds, and form more quasi-
marriage relationships in prison than men.
What has not generally been recognized is that there are many prisons where
no women
do these things. At least four studies explicitly report that no quasi-kin rela-
tionships were found among the female inmates. These include Ward and Kassebaum’s
(1964) study of a large California women’s prison, Dobash, Dobash, and Gutteridge’s
(1986) study of a Scottish women’s prison, Mawby’s (1983) study of a British women’s
prison, and Feld’s (1977) study of girls in a juvenile correctional institution in Massachu-
setts.
Further, numerous male inmates also have deeply affectionate relationships and
write love letters. In addition, male inmates, in many countries, in many time periods,
sometimes form father-son and husband-wife quasi-kin relationships that many had
*Alice Propper is associate professor of sociology and senior tutor of McLaughlin College
at York University, Ontario, Canada.
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believed were exclusively female adaptations to imprisonment (Bowker, 1981; Giallom-
bardo, 1966, 1974; and Shover, 1979).
Both in prison and out, men and women are both expressive and instrumental,
and both value close, loving family relationships. Violent coercion is not the only form
of male prison sexuality.
Exam,,roles of Quasi-Kinship Among Male Inmates
Some observers of Canadian prisons have reported that men engage in father-son
dyads. A director of the maximum-security St. Vincent Penitentiary in Quebec esti-
mated that 15 percent of the inmates there engaged in homosexual father-son dyads
(Penitentiaries/Cover Story, 1974). Father-son relationships were also reported in
Mann’s (1967) study of inmate subculture at Guelph Reformatory in Ontario. The rela-
tionships were sometimes, but not always, overtly homosexual. The kinship terminology
of father-son sometimes reflects an incest taboo, but it more typically functions to express
closeness, reciprocal caring, dependability, and greater authority of the father over
&dquo;the kid&dquo; or &dquo;the sweet kid.&dquo; The father and son benefit by doing favors for one another
and from their mutual enjoyment of being...