When a mother goes to jail, the impact on her family can be devastating. Most moms are the primary caretakers for their children at the time of their arrest, and the sudden absence of a mother leaves a void in a child’s life that is almost impossible to fill. In most cases, relatives step forward to care for and support the child, and while we know that parental incarceration places children at unique risk for low self-esteem and behavior problems, with family support and ongoing contact with their moms, many of these children do well and even thrive.
