Question

Discuss the challenges children face when trying to maintain contact with their incarcerated parent.

Answer 1

There are approximately 1.7 miilino children in the US with parents who are in jail. Many of these children are at risk of developing behavioural disorders, gonig through tremendous emotional stress, and an overall difficulty in continuing to live a normal life. Maintaining contact with the incarcerated parent is a key issue faced by so many of them today. They face so many hardships, and not having a parent to guide them is something they must live with everyday.

A few of the challenges they face in trying to maintain contact contact are: There are differing policies for visits between the children and the parent, and are based on security and safety concerns and strategies. Some allow 'full' contact visits that allow physical contact, while others are seperated from their parent by some kind of a barrier and allowed to interact only through a window. Some dont even allow the visit to be in person, and it limited to a closed-circuit television system. A study found that more of these limited kind of visits created insecure attachments to develop in children between the ages of 30 months to 14 years. It also resulted in loose family bonds and ties that were not strong enough to stand the test of time.

Even during the meet, the quality of the time spent with each other is very poor, and results in mixed feelings within the child. Most of the fails are not child friendly, and as a result creates a lot of stress within the child. Even many infants seperated from their mothers at the time of birth experience tremendous stress and behavioural problems as they grow up.