The Carceral Contradictions of Motherhood: How Mothers of Incarcerated Sons Parent in the Shadow of the Criminal Legal System

The expansion of the U.S. carceral system profoundly shapes motherhood for marginalized women, yet little is known about how mothers navigate a child’s incarceration. We use in-depth interviews with mothers of incarcerated men ( n = 69), most of whom identify as Latina, to understand how jail incarceration shapes women’s motherwork practices throughout the duration of their sons’ incarceration. Building on theories of decarceral motherwork, we find that women with incarcerated sons engage in multiple practices—including crisis, collective, and hypervigilant motherwork—similar to those of formerly incarcerated Black mothers. We advance these insights, revealing how motherwork operates among a different population of system-impacted mothers—those with sons incarcerated in jail. First, we highlight the temporal process of motherwork by documenting the specific practices mothers adopt before, during, and after their son’s incarceration. Second, we reveal how this motherwork process engenders substantial parenting role strains. Third, we find that cumulative parenting strains commonly lead mothers to engage in an additional motherwork strategy, distanced motherwork, which we define as the proactive—although often temporary—withdrawal of emotional, financial, and instrumental support to children. Thus, by illuminating patterns of motherwork in the context of a child’s jail incarceration, and by systematically linking motherwork to parenting role strains, we advance an understanding of parenting in the shadow of the criminal legal system.