What it looks like, what to do about it, and how we balance a parent’s needs with a child’s safety and development.
Everyone who knows me, my doctoral research, and spends even a few seconds on this site will tell you I am a tremendous proponent and believer in maintaining and fostering relationships between incarcerated parents and their children.
Most children benefit from maintaining a relationship with an incarcerated parent. Contact can support identity, attachment, stability, and long-term reunification when reunification is appropriate. The research often points in that direction, especially when the parent-child relationship was safe and supportive before incarceration.
But, there is a truth we all have to be able to hold without flinching: this is not always the case.
Sometimes, maintaining contact is the harm. Sometimes the relationship itself is the risk factor. Sometimes the prison environment turns contact into a recurring trauma. Sometimes a parent uses access to continue control, intimidation, or emotional volatility.
A child’s best interests are not the same thing as an incarcerated parent’s desire for connection, redemption, or relief from loneliness. Those interests can and sometimes do, overlap. They can also collide. The problem? The system has to be able to tell the difference.
So today, this post is about that collision.
The Core Principle
A child is not a treatment tool for an adult. Even a parent.
If a relationship is actively harming a child, the goal is not to “preserve contact at all costs.” The goal is to protect the child while offering a pathway for the parent to become safe, if that is possible, and if the child can tolerate it.
Research on parent-child contact during incarceration consistently emphasizes that like many things, context matters: relationship quality before incarceration, caregiver stress, the child’s developmental stage, and the conditions of contact all shape whether contact helps or harms.
That means the right question is rarely “Should children visit incarcerated parents?”
The right question is: What kind of contact is developmentally safe for this specific child with this specific parent in this specific context?
What “more harm than good” can look like
These are patterns that should trigger closer screening, structured interventions, or limits.
1) Contact causes persistent distress that does not resolve with supports
Some kids feel upset after visits and that’s normal. The red flag is when distress is intense, persistent, and escalating.
Examples of this may include:
- nightmares, panic symptoms, nausea, headaches before or after contact
- regression, self-harm, aggression, school refusal
- fear of visits, fear of the parent, fear of retaliation for what the child says
Scholarly work notes that prison and jail contact can be emotionally distressing for children, especially when the setting is rigid and not child-friendly. Research on young children’s contact with incarcerated parents also highlights how contact quality and context matter for children’s adjustment, not just whether contact occurs.
2) The parent uses contact to manipulate, control, or destabilize
Harm is not always screaming or threats. Sometimes it is coercion. Sometimes it is guilt. Sometimes it is adultification. And sometimes, it may even come through as parental alienation.
Examples:
- pressuring the child to deliver messages to the caregiver
- interrogating the child about the other parent or the home
- making the child responsible for the parent’s emotions
- blaming the child for the parent’s situation
- threats of self-harm, abandonment, or retaliation if the child does not comply
This is where “contact” becomes an instrument of power, not bonding.
3) Domestic violence dynamics persist through the child
When intimate partner violence is part of the history, child contact can become a continuation of abuse by proxy. The literature on post-separation abuse is clear that contact can be a flashpoint for ongoing fear and safety concerns, especially when systems default to access without adequate safety planning.
If the incarcerated parent’s violence was directed at a caregiver, the child can absolutely still be at risk psychologically and emotionally through exposure, coercion, or pressure to align.
4) The parent is emotionally unsafe even without physical access
Not every harmful parent is physically violent.
Examples include:
- chronic humiliation, insults, racial slurs, sexualized comments
- boundary violations that the child cannot realistically resist
- unpredictable mood swings that leave the child hypervigilant
- repeated broken promises that create a cycle of hope and abandonment
This is psychological injury. It absolutely counts.
5) The child’s “no” is treated as irrelevant
In many systems, the child’s reluctance is reframed as “gatekeeping” by the caregiver. Sometimes that is true and sometimes it is not.
A child refusing contact can be a signal of fear, shame, loyalty conflict, or trauma. Treating that refusal as misbehavior can deepen harm.
Why benefits for the parent can conflict with benefits for the child
It is not hard to name what contact does for incarcerated parents:
- reduces isolation
- supports motivation and identity as a parent
- improves behavior and reentry outcomes
- may reduce recidivism through stronger family ties
Those are real.
But children are not correctional programming. A child does not exist to improve an adult’s adjustment to incarceration or life in general.
Research on visitation shows mixed findings for children, with results depending on relationship quality and the context of visits. That “it depends” matters. It means the system must be willing to disappoint an adult to protect a child.
Sometimes the healthiest choice for the child is:
- limited contact
- structured, supervised contact
- therapeutic contact
- a pause in contact until safety and stability improve
- in rare cases, no contact
That does not mean the parent is irredeemable. It means the child is not the testing ground.
What interventions may be necessary
Think in levels. The goal is not punishment. The goal is minimum necessary restriction to protect the child.
Level 1: Make contact child-centered and reduce environmental trauma
Before you conclude contact is inherently harmful, check if the system is making it harmful.
Interventions:
- pre-visit preparation for the child and caregiver
- post-visit decompression rituals and support
- child-friendly spaces where possible
- shorter contact periods with predictable structure
- shift the primary modality to letters when visits overwhelm
Level 2: Structured contact with clear boundaries
If the parent is emotionally volatile, manipulative, or destabilizing, contact absolutely needs guardrails.
Interventions:
- scripted topics and time-limited calls
- monitored communication with clear consequences for boundary violations
- prohibition on using the child as a messenger
- explicit rules against disparaging caregivers or interrogating the child
This is not about creating a sterile relationship. It is about protecting the child from adult conflict and adult emotional load.
Level 3: Supervised visitation or supervised exchanges
When risk is credible but connection may still be possible, supervised access is a common harm-reduction tool in high-conflict and violence-adjacent cases. Scholarly and legal analysis of supervised access highlights both its role and its limitations, especially when family violence is present.
In incarceration contexts, this often requires coordination across corrections, child welfare, and caregivers. It also requires a supervisor trained to recognize coercion, not only overt threats.
Level 4: Therapeutic visitation and clinical support for the child
Some children are carrying trauma symptoms related to parental incarceration and associated adversity. Trauma-focused interventions, including TF-CBT, have been discussed as relevant for children impacted by parental incarceration and trauma symptoms.
Interventions:
- child therapy focused on safety, boundaries, and emotional regulation
- caregiver coaching on how to support the child’s mixed feelings
- therapeutic visitation where a clinician helps structure contact and monitor impact
Level 5: Pause contact until defined conditions are met
Sometimes the right intervention is time and distance with a plan.
Conditions can include:
- the parent completes batterer intervention or trauma treatment
- the parent demonstrates sustained behavioral change
- the parent stops using contact to harass or control the caregiver
- the child’s therapist confirms readiness for limited reintroduction
- the child requests or consents to contact in an age-appropriate way
This is not vague. It is measurable.
Level 6: No contact in extreme cases
Unfortunately, there are situations where contact is not safe, and no amount of supervision makes it safe enough. Research has directly addressed the legal and social consequences of visitation determinations involving incarcerated perpetrators of extreme violence, emphasizing a “do no harm” approach.
No-contact decisions should always be evidence-based, reviewed periodically where appropriate, and grounded in the child’s safety and developmental wellbeing.
A balancing framework that does not lie to itself
Here is a practical way to hold both truths at once.
1) Start with the child’s developmental needs, not adult fairness
Ask:
- What does this child need to feel safe, stable, and unburdened?
- Does contact strengthen security or destabilize it?
2) Assess relationship quality, not relationship status
Ask:
- Was the parent a source of comfort or a source of fear?
- Does the child feel seen, pressured, or used?
3) Treat coercion as a safety issue
If contact is used to control a caregiver or a child, that is not “coparenting conflict.” That is risk.
4) Use the least restrictive option that protects the child
This is where many systems fail. They jump from “full access” to “termination,” or they maintain full access because anything else feels politically hard.
A better approach is stepped care: adjust the type of contact until the impact on the child is safe.
5) Build a pathway for the parent that does not run through the child
If the parent needs rehabilitation, they need services, accountability, and support. Parenting programs exist, and reviews have assessed their effectiveness for incarcerated parents, even as the evidence base continues to evolve.
But again, the child is not the program.
What the system should stop doing
- treating all contact as automatically good
- treating a child’s distress as an inconvenience
- assuming caregivers are always the barrier
- forcing “normal” family interaction into punitive environments without support
- using reunification timelines as a substitute for individualized wellbeing assessment
Pulling It All Together
Balancing what is good for an incarcerated parent and what is good for a child means refusing to confuse adult needs with child needs.
Sometimes, healthy connection is possible and should be protected. Sometimes, contact has to be limited, structured, supervised, or paused. In a smaller set of cases, contact should end because it is actively damaging.
A child’s wellbeing is not collateral. It is the standard.
Sources
- Poehlmann, J. “Children’s Contact With Their Incarcerated Parents.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry(2010).
- Martin, E. et al. “Dissecting the Issue of Child Prison Visitation” (NIJ, 2016). Office of Justice Programs
- Kremer, K. P. et al. “The role of visits and parent–child relationship quality in promoting positive outcomes for children of incarcerated parents.” Child & Family Social Work (2022).
- Pritzl, K. et al. “Young Children’s Contact with their Parents in Jail and Prison” (2022).
- Tutty, L. M. et al. “I Worry About My Kids’ Safety When They Visit” (IPV and child contact concerns) (2024).
- Hunter, R. “Introduction: contact and domestic abuse” (2018).
- Conner, D. H. “Do No Harm” (incarcerated perpetrators of extreme violence and visitation determinations) (2008).
- Morgan-Mullane, A. “TF-CBT with children affected by parental incarceration” (2017).
- Obus, E. A. et al. Scoping review of interventions for children with incarcerated parents (2024).
- Urban Institute, “Parent-Child Visiting Practices in Prisons and Jails” (2017).
