For many, Mother’s Day is filled with flowers, breakfasts in bed, and warm embraces from children and family. But for countless women across the country, it’s a painful reminder of separation, absence, and the ongoing trauma of incarceration.
Whether they are mothers with children behind bars or women whose partners, siblings, or parents are incarcerated, this day can feel less like a celebration and more like a wound being reopened.
A Day of Silence and Distance
When a loved one is incarcerated, holidays amplify the ache of disconnection. Phone calls are limited, visitations are often difficult to arrange, and even if they are possible, they rarely happen on the actual holiday. Facilities may be hours away, with burdensome security protocols and little comfort.
This is a big reason that many people with incarcerated loved ones refuse to celebrate holidays.
For mothers with incarcerated children, Mother’s Day can feel hollow. The day may pass with no call, no card, and no company. For partners of incarcerated fathers, the task of parenting solo while navigating the emotional toll of separation is compounded by society’s silence around their grief.
Holiday preparation often falls on women anyway, and there simply isn’t time to stop and celebrate yourself when you’re already stretched to your limit.
Mass Incarceration is a Women’s Issue
One in four women – one in two if you’re black – have an incarcerated loved one, and suffer from significant financial hardships, stigma, and isolation as a result.
Over 5 million children have experienced having an incarcerated parent, and when we incarcerate parents, we are also putting chains on their children.
Black and Brown women are disproportionately affected, often shouldering the emotional and financial burden of maintaining relationships with incarcerated family members.
We pay for phone calls, send money, write letters, advocate for our loved ones when the DOC is being unreasonable or unfair, and serve as the primary point of contact for everything else, all while also managing households, jobs, and caregiving duties.
This burden is rarely acknowledged publicly. And sometimes, you’ll run into moronic tough on crime types will tell you we deserve it. Of course, they will change their tune if they’re ever impacted. I should probably insert something here about the “leopards ate my face” crowd.
On holidays like Mother’s Day, the media paints a portrait of perfect family moments. It makes me want to chuck my remote at the TV. More often that not, it looks like this:
Because the reality for many women is so different than the marketing executives realize. It often includes heartbreak, loneliness, and the aching uncertainty of a system that thrives on punishment and retaliation; that separates rather than heals.
What We Can Do
- Acknowledge the Grief: Normalize talking about how incarceration affects families, especially women. Social support can ease isolation. Don’t ignore it. Just listen without judgment.
- Support Visitation Access: Advocate for policies that make visitation more accessible and humane. Family visits are a tremendously helpful tool to make life feel normal, if only for a weekend.
- Center Justice in Holiday Campaigns: Brands and organizations really need to step up. Life is not a Norman Rockwell painting, Coca Cola Bear. There is zero reason you can’t include voices of women impacted by incarceration in brand narratives, especially as we are the silent majority.
- Invest in Alternatives to Incarceration: The best way to ease this pain long-term is to reduce the number of people in prison through restorative justice, diversion programs, and sentencing reform. Stop letting backwater judges and prosecutors destroy families.
- Donate to Support Groups: Organizations like Essie Justice Group and The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls offer direct support to impacted families.
Closing Thoughts
For many women, Mother’s Day isn’t joyful; instead, it’s a day of quiet mourning.
The pain of separation, the stigma of incarceration, and the invisibility of their struggle are all too real. This holiday, hold space for those whose love endures through prison walls and metal detectors, and whose stories deserve to be seen and heard.
Not just once a year, but always.
Sources:
- Essie Justice Group. (n.d.). Homepage. https://www.essiejusticegroup.org/
- The Sentencing Project. (2023). Incarcerated Women and Girls. https://www.sentencingproject.org/reports/incarcerated-women-and-girls/
- National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. https://www.nationalcouncil.us/ Kajstura, A. (2023).
- Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2023. Prison Policy Initiative.
