Mothering Through Barbed Wire and Literacy Barriers: The Role of Literacy in Incarcerated Motherhood
Keywords:
maternal incarceration, jail, literacy, letters, intensive motheringAbstract
This article examines the presence of intensive mothering within incarcerated motherhood and how mothers in jail manage the constraints this ideology imposes on their mothering practices. Analyzing questionnaire data collected from mothers in a Texas county jail through a feminist maternal framework reveals that these mothers have been influenced by the ideology of intensive mothering to serve as their children’s educator. Considering the standard to educate one’s children reinforces the idea that mothers must apply an autonomous model of literacy to childrearing, this article examines the ways in which mothers feel compelled to seek further instruction in order to mother and communicate with their children effectively. This article also examines incarcerated mothers’ simultaneous use of literacy to (re)appropriate intensive mothering and (re)claim agency as mothers.
References
Works Cited
Adams, Elizabeth A. “Intensive Parenting Ideologies and Risks for Recidivism among Justice-
Involved Mothers.” Women and Criminal Justice, vol.30, no. 5pp.316-335. doi:10.1080/08974454.2020.1741487
Allen, Suzanne, et al. “Throwaway Moms: Maternal Incarceration and the Criminalization of
Female Poverty.” Journal of Women and Social Work, vol. 25, no. 2, 2010, pp. 160-172. doi: 10.1177/0886109910364345.
Barrett, Larry, et al. “More than Transformative: A New View of Prison Writing Narratives.”
Reflections, vol. 19, no. 1, 2019, pp. 13-32.
Berry, Patrick. Doing Time, Writing Lives: Reconfiguring Literacy and Higher Education in Prison. Southern Illinois University Press, 2017.
Berry, Phyllis E., and Helen M. Eigenberg. “Role Strain and Incarcerated Mothers:
Understanding the Process of Mothering.” Women and Criminal Justice, vol. 15, no. 1,
, pp. 101-119. doi: 10.1300/J012v15n01_06.
Betram, Wanda, and Wendy Sawyer. “Prisons and jails will separate millions of mothers from
their children in 2021.” Prison Policy Initiative, 5 5, 2021, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/05/05/mothers-day-2021/. Accessed 10 06, 2021.
Callahan, Sarah. “Reducing Economic Disparities for Female Offenders: The Oxford House
Model.” Alcohol Treat Q, vol. 34, no. 3, 2016, pp. 293-302. doi: 10.1080/07347324.2016.1182814
Cavallaro, Alexandra. “Making Citizens Behind Bars (and the Stories We Tell About It): Queering Approaches to Prison Literacy Programs.” LiCS vol. 7, no. 1, 2019.
Chesney-Lind, Meda, and Lisa Pasko. The female offender: Girls, women, and crime. Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2004.
Compton-Lilly, Catherine, et al. “Analyzing Epistemological Considerations Related to
Diversity: An Integrative Critical Literature Review of Family Literacy Scholarship.” Reading Research Quarterly, vol 6., no. 1, 2012, pp. 33-60. doi: 10.1002/RRQ.009.
Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. “From Private Violence to Mass Incarceration: Thinking
Intersectionally About Women, Race, and Social Control.” UCLA Law Review, vol. 59, no. 6, 2012, pp. 1218-1472.
Douglas, Susan J. and Meredith W. Michaels. The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of
Motherhood and How it Has Undermined All Women. Free Press, 2004.
Enos, Sandra. Mothering from the Inside: Parenting in a Women’s Prison. SUNY Press, 2006.
“Early Literacy Connection to Incarceration.” Early Literacy Foundation.
https://governorsfoundation.org/gelf-articles/early-literacy-connection-to-incarceration/#:~:text=Over%2070%25%20of%20inmates%20in,above%20a%20fourth%20grade%20level.%E2%80%9D. Accessed 06 03, 2022.
Fixmer-Oraiz, Natalie. Homeland Maternity: US Security Culture and
the New Reproductive Regime. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019.
Granja, Rafaela, et al. “Mothering From Prison and Ideologies of Intensive Parenting: Enacting
Vulnerable Resistance.” Journal of Family Issues, vol. 36, no. 9, 2015, pp. 1212-1232. doi: 10.1177/0192513X14533541.
Haney, Lynne. “Motherhood as Punishment: The Case of Parenting in Prison.” SIGNS, vol. 39,
no. 1, 2013, pp.105-130. doi: 10.1086/670815.
Hays, Sharon. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. Yale University Press, 1996.
Hayden, Sara. “Michelle Obama, Mom-in-Chief: The Racialized Rhetorical Contexts of
Maternity.” Journal of Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 40, no. 1, 2016, pp. 1-18. doi: 10.1080/07491409.2016.1182095.
Jacobi, Tobi. “Speaking Out for Social Justice: The Problems and Possibilities of US Women's
Prison and Jail Writing Workshops.” Critical Survey, vol. 23, no. 3, 2011, pp. 40-54. doi: 10.3167/cs.2011.230304.
Jensen, Vickie, and Jill DuBeck-Biondo. “Mothers in Jail: Gender, Social Control, and The
Construction of Parenthood Behind Bars.” Ethnographies of Law and Social Control Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, vol. 6, 2005, pp. 121-142. doi: 10.1016/S1521-613(04)06007-5.
JWells. “’This Video Call May Be Monitored and Recorded’: Video Visitation as a Form of
Surveillance Technology and Its Effect on Incarcerated Mothers.” Screen Bodies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2019, pp. 76-92. doi: 10:3167/screen.2019.040206.
Kajstura, Aleks. “Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019.” Prison Policy Initiative,
10, 2019, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019women.html. Accessed 07 01, 2020.
Kennedy, Deseriee A. “’The Good Mother’: Mothering, Feminism, and Incarceration.” William
& Mary Journal of Women and the Law, vol. 18, no. 2, 2012, pp. 161-200.
Kennedy, Stephanie C., et al. “’I took care of my kids’: mothering while incarcerated.” Health
Justice, vol. 8, no. 12, 2020, pp. 1-14. doi: 10.1186/s40352-020-00109-3.
Kohler-Hausmann, Julilly. “Welfare Crises, Penal Solutions, and the Origins of the ‘Welfare
Queen.’” Journal of Urban History, vol. 41, no. 4, 2015, pp. 756-771. doi:
1177/0096144215589942.
Levine, Robert A. et al. Literacy and Mothering: How Women’s Schooling Changes the Lives of
the World’s Children. Oxford University Press, 2012.
Marlow, Lana. Mothers in Prison: Women’s Autobiography and Activism. VDM Verlag Dr.
Muller, 2009.
Michalsen, Venezia, Jeanne Flavin, and Tanya Krupat. “More than Visiting hours: Maintaining
Ties Between Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children.” Sociology Compass, vol. 4, no. 8, 2010, pp. 576-591. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9020.2010.00291.x.
Middleton, Logan. “Prisons, Literacy, and Creative Maladjustment: How College-in-Prison Educators Subvert and Circumnavigate State Power.” LiCS vol. 10, no. 1, 2022, pp.1-24. doi:10.21623/1.10.1.2
Morrissey, Megan Elizabeth, and Karen Y. Kimball. “#SpoiledMilk: Blacktavists, Visibility,
and the Exploitation of the Black Breast.” Women’s Studies in Communication, vol. 40, no. 1, 2017, pp. 48-66. doi: 10.1080/07491409.2015.1121945.
O’Brien Hallstein, Lynn. “She Gives Birth, She’s Wearing a Bikini: Mobilizing the
Postpregnant Celebrity Mom Body to Manage the Post-Second Wave Crisis in Femininity.” Women’s Studies in Communications, vol. 34, 2011, pp. 111-138. doi: 10.1080/07491409.2011.619471.
O’Brien Hallstein, Lynn. “Introduction to Mothering Rhetorics.” Women’s Studies in
Communication, vol. 40, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1-10. doi: 10.1080/07491409.2017.1280326
Pasko, Lisa and Meda Chesney-Lind. “Under Lock and Key: Trauma, Marginalization, and
Girls’ Juvenile Justice Involvement.” Justice Research and Policy, vol.12, no. 2, 2010, pp. 25-49. doi:10.3818/JRP.12.2.2010.25.
Plemons, Anna. Beyond Progress in the Prison Classroom: Options and Opportunities.
National Council of Teachers of English, 2019.
Ed. Richey, Amanda B. and Linda Shuford Evans. Mothering and Literacies. Demeter Press,
-Crooks, Stacey. “’You Are Your Child’s First Teacher’: The Construction of Maternal
Subjectivity in Family Literacy Programs”
-Saavedra, Cinthya M., and Cara L. Preuss. “Rethinking Literacy Research/Training with Marginalized Mothers”
-Smythe, Suzanne. “Advising for Inequity: Literacy Advice to Mothers”
-Wilson Toso, Blaire. “’My Girls are Going to Make It in the Future’: Intertwined Discourses of Mothering, Literacy and Desire”
Rivera, Lorna, and Nicole Lavan. “Family Literacy Practices and Parental Involvement of Latin
American Immigrant Mothers.” Journal of Latinos and Education, vol. 11, no. 4, 2012, pp. 247-259. doi:10.1080/15348431.2012.715500.
Roberts, Dorothy. “Marginalized Mothers and Intersecting Systems of Surveillance: Prisons
and Foster Care.” Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World. Ed. Yasmine Ergas, Jane Jenson, and Sonya Michel. Columbia University Press, 2019, pp. 185-
Shamal, Michal, and Rinat-Billy Kochal. “’Motherhood Starts in Prison’: The Experience of
Motherhood Among Women in Prison.” Family Process, vol. 47, no. 3, 2008, pp. 323-340.
Sparks, Leigh, et al. “Letters to Children project: A letter-writing group designed to help
incarcerated women develop or reinforce their roles as mothers.” Journal of Offender
Rehabilitation, vol. 56, no. 5, 2017, pp. 349-372. doi:10.1080/10509674.2017.1327920.
Street, Brian. “Implications of the ‘New Literacy Studies’ for Literacy Education.” English in
Education, vol. 31, no. 3, 2008, pp. 45-59. doi:10.1111/j.1754-8845.1997.tb00133.x.
Sufrin, Carolyn. “Making mothers in jail: carceral reproduction of normative motherhood.”
Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online, vol. 7, 2018, pp. 55-65. doi: 10.1016/j.rbms.2018.10.018.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 JWells
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
LiCS is committed to an online open-access publishing model that encourages collaboration, innovation, and a broader dissemination of research and ideas. Submissions should be original, previously unpublished work not currently submitted for publication elsewhere. We do not charge authors publication fees. Authors retain the copyright to their work as well as an exclusive right to publishing without restrictions; readers may use the work following the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported license.
