Incarcerated Parents Essay

Parental incarceration and its reoccurring effects on children, specifically in the system, is a rising issue with little research done and no current solution to halt the snowballing problem. According to Cynthia Seymour (1998), “current estimates indicate that as many as 1.5 million children have an incarcerated parent; many thousands of others have experienced the incarceration of a parent at some point in their lives”. A large portion of our country is effected by incarceration, especially children, yet nothing is being done to support these children and their families or caretakers.
In the article, “Children of Incarcerated Parents”, the author, Charlene Simmons (2000), discusses the lack of information known about children with incarcerated

Gretchen Newby (2006) attacks this subject in her article, “After Incarceration: Adolescent-Parent Reunification”. Of course, there are a lot of preceding measures to consider before reunification of an incarcerated parent and their child, including how their relationship was before the arrest, how often they were in contact while the parent was in prison, whether this parent attended programs such as rehabilitation or parenting classes, and of course how the caregiver feels about the child and parent relationship. Before reunifying them, it is also important for the child’s caregiver or social worker to talk to the child about the difficulties their parent may have faced while incarcerated, and that they may not act how the child wishes they would at first. It is also important to speak to the parent beforehand about what their child feels and expects. Tons of children experience reunification with an incarcerated parent, but we need to pay closer attention to how they’re being impacted through this. An incredible amount of social and emotional factors are demolished due to parental incarceration and it is of the utmost importance that caregivers, friends, and social workers are watching for these