Maternal Mediation in the Context of Fathers' Incarceration and Reentry

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Joyce A. Arditti,Casey McGregor,Susan Dennison,Shawnice Johnson,Kirsten Besemer
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12526

J A. A  C MGVirginia Tech

S DGrifth University

S JVirginia Tech

K BGrifth University

Maternal Mediation in the Context of Fathers’

Incarceration and Reentry

Objective: We sought to develop grounded the-

ory regarding how mothers who share children

with an incarcerated father mediate between

men and their offspring.

Background: Mothers’ mediation can be sit-

uated at the intersection of their motherwork

and their prison work.Motherwork (Collins,

1994) refers to the paid and unpaid labor that

mothers on the margins do to support their

families and foster their children’s survival.

Prison work (Codd, 2007) involves the invis-

ible labor of supporting persons during their

incarceration and reentry. A focus on mater-

nal mediation as a proximal process that bears

on justice-involved families acknowledges the

inherent tension between these domains.

Method: We conducted a secondary analysis of

interview data from 16 Australian mothers who

had at least one child whose father had a history

of incarceration.

Results: We identied four patterns of maternal

mediation: facilitation, monitoring, constraint,

and disengagement. These types connected to

aspects of women’s motherwork,aswellasthe

Department of Human Development and Family Science,

311 Wallace Hall, Blacksburg,VA 24060 (arditti@vt.edu).

KeyWords: children with incarceratedparents, gatekeeping,

motherwork, paternal incarceration, prison work, reentry.

intensity of their efforts to support children’s

fathers.

Conclusion: Mediation is a form of women’s

prison-motherwork, which reects complex and

shifting strategies that are inuenced by chil-

dren’s developmental needs and preferences,

mothers’ feelings about children’s fathers and

their importance in children’s lives, and time.

Implications: Womenwould benet from having

specialized support and counseling throughout

their partner’s (or former partner’s) carceral

connement and reentry.

Increasingly, family is relied on to support

prisoners during incarceration and upon release

from connement. The provision of fam-

ily support often falls on women in families

who are typically burdened with prison work

(Codd, 2007), which refers to the emotional

and nancial costs of caring for incarcerated

and reentering family members. Several stud-

ies have pointed to the importance of strong

family ties in supporting desistance among

prisoners and preventing recidivism (Cochran &

Mears, 2013). Yet successful reentry discourse

rarely considers the challenges female kin may

face in navigating the needs of reentrant partners

in relation to other family responsibilities.

A central aspect of women’s prison work

involves facilitating visits and other forms of

146Family Relations 70 (February 2021): 146–161

DOI:10.1111/fare.12526

Maternal Mediation During Fathers’ Incarceration and Reentry147

contact between children and their incarcerated

(and subsequently reentrant) fathers. Caregivers

have been described in the research as the gate-

keepers of children’srelationships with the other

parent (Tasca, 2016) in that they are in a cru-

cial position to facilitate or prohibit such con-

tact (e.g., Cecil et al., 2008; Nesmith & Ruh-

land, 2008; Roy & Dyson, 2005). Traditionally,

maternal gatekeeping has been dened as con-

scious or unconscious behaviors that weld chil-

drearing to mothers and restrict fathers’ involve-

ment (McBride et al., 2005). Such actions are

believed to deect and exclude fathers (Allen

& Hawkins, 1999). Here we extend work that

recognizes “gatekeeping” as a nuanced media-

tion process inuenced by maternal ambivalence

about children’s fathers and caregiver concerns

about whether contact is in children’s best inter-

est (Arditti et al., 2019; Hoffmann et al., 2010).

The present study sought to develop a grounded

theory about mothers’ gatekeeping or maternal

mediation (Arditti et al., 2019) as it pertained to

their motherwork (Collins, 1994) as well as their

prison work (Codd, 2007).

B  S

Maternal gatekeeping is typically comprised of

mothers’ attitudes regarding the importance of

father’s roles and involvement. These attitudes,

in turn, are believed to inuence the frequency

of father involvement (DeLuccie, 1995) by

inhibiting or enhancing fathers’ opportuni-

ties for engagement with children (Allen &

Hawkins, 1999). Gatekeeping literature tends

to highlight mothers’ control over parenting

decisions, information, and fathering behav-

ior and is dened as a means for women to

be indispensable to their children and partners

(Hauser, 2012). Feminist scholars have critiqued

the conceptualization of gatekeeping as a means

to limit fathers’ involvement (Sano et al., 2008;

Walker & McGraw, 2000) and articulated the

need for research that explores gatekeeping

methods as well as mothers’ motivations for

engaging in such behavior.

Theoretically, gatekeeping has been iden-

tied as a key proximal process in terms of

understanding paternal involvement and spe-

cic outcomes related to parental incarceration

(Arditti et al., 2005; Roy & Dyson, 2005).

Proximal processes are dened as enduring

interactions between developing persons and

their immediate environment that drive growth

and change (Bronfenbrenner, 1999). Evidence

from diverse family scenarios suggest that many

mothers actually promote fathers’ involvement

with children rather than inhibit it (cf. Seery

& Crowley, 2000) and even in challenging

circumstances, play a pivotal role in integrat-

ing fathers in their children’s lives (Arditti

et al., 2019). For example, when examining

how single mothers kept nonresidential fathers

involved, Roy and Burton (2007) noted that

mothers did not “give up” on the father of their

children and encouraged their efforts even when

they were unable to depend on the fathers for

any forms of support. Therefore, gatekeeping

must be understood in context, particularly with

regard to family constellations and settings in

which fathers are absent, unavailable, or unsafe

(Arditti et al., 2019).

M G W

J-I F

In the United States, fathers comprise approx-

imately 54% of the prison population, making

men the largest population of parents in prison

(Glaze & Marushak, 2010). Further, of the 67%

of incarcerated people who are parents, roughly

50% receive visits from their children within

prisons; thus, contact maintenance is a major

concern during incarceration periods (Glaze &

Maruschak, 2010). In Australia, an exact count

of how many prisoners are parents is unavail-

able. However,the Australian Institute of Health

& Welfare (2019) published a recent survey of

adult prison entrants revealing that 38% of new

entrants reported having an average of two chil-

dren who depend on them for basic needs. With

a total adult prison population of around 43,000

(Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019), a ratio

of two children to each adult could mean that on

any given night, about 86,000 children have an

incarcerated parent. Given decade-long upticks

in incarceration rates in Australia (Australian

Bureau of Statistics, 2019), increasing numbers

of children are experiencing parental incarcer-

ation and contact processes between incarcer-

ated parents and their families is of growing

concern (Saunders, 2017). Because children are

unable to visit their parents on their own accord,

caregivers are tasked with “gatekeeping,” which

can inuence the consistency and amount of

times children are able to visit their incarcer-

ated parent. In this role, caregivers facilitate the

parent–child relationship or restrict contact. The