Out of the Shadows: Mothers of Prisoners Finding Community in Cyberspace

Abstract

Society tends to blame mothers for the behavior of their children. Yet, minimal research has been conducted on the experience of mothers of prisoners. Using the lens of depth psychology, this study examines the phenomenological experience of mothers who have, or had, an adult child in prison and how they found support from other mothers with children in prison through the internet. Using a heuristic methodology, four members of the Lost Angels list serve, including the author of the study, were interviewed about their experience of their child’s arrest and imprisonment. All of the mothers interviewed experienced trauma upon her child’s arrest and imprisonment. Further, all but one of the mothers experienced blame and shame for the criminal acts of their children and how that caused them to feel like failures for not meeting society’s expectations of raising successful children. Their children’s arrest caused the mothers to experience non-finite grief as the grief began when their child was arrested and continues throughout their imprisonment. Further, this grief is disenfranchised as society does not recognize their loss. Therefore, they are denied normal avenues of support for their grief. The mothers in this study found healing through participation in an online list serve for mothers with children in prison. Lastly, this study found that it was important for all of the mothers to describe the successes and positive attributes of their children in addition to their crimes.