Children suffer when their parents are incarcerated.

SOURCE:  magazine

Charts: Kids Are Paying the Price for America’s Prison Binge

Katie Rose Quandt Aug. 26, 2014 6:00 AM


      This article was very informative in several ways to me.  The one thing that I found most shocking was how having an incarcerated parent, children suffer higher rates of negative physical conditions such as obesity, speech and language problems, bone and joint or muscle problems, and even vision problems.  I am very aware of the fact that stress is bad for your body, but after reading this article, it has really brought to light just how damaging stress can be on ones body.

  In the article from Mother Jones, the charts that are provided comparing how mental health and physical effects differentiate from parental incarceration and no parental incarceration are rather shocking to say the least.  When a child's parent is incarcerated, the lack of control they must feel is probably very overwhelming.  Thus, contributing to a lot of behavioral issues that one might see from such a child.  When a child is separated from what they know to be their family dynamic, then they struggle to find their place and the role they play in their new environment.  I can very easily see how just this one issue can cause anxiety and/or depression in a child.  How sad and heartbreaking to know that at such a young age, a child must go through such things like feeling abandoned and misplaced.

 So what can we do as a community to help these children heal from this trauma and eventually find their place and know their role, in order for them to become stable and secure again?  What kinds of programs and resources are already out their for these children and what kinds of different ideas for newer and improved programs are floating around?

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 The thing that strikes me is that our communities seem to be overlooking this ever raising problem and therefore, the children who are suffering go unnoticed.  So what can be done to raise awareness to this taboo subject matter?  One example from the article in Mother Jones is the recent introduction to how to help kids express their feelings around having an incarcerated parent from Sesame Street .  In the video,  the character expresses his feelings around his Dad being in jail.  Then an adult is their to be supportive and explain to the other characters what incarceration means.  This kind of program that is opening up the communities eyes to the reality of how real this issue is for half the children population is very much needed in my opinion.  After watching the short two minute video, tell others what you think and how it makes you feel?

In a second source from the Children's Mental Health eReview, The authors agree on several viewpoints as far as how having an incarcerated parent impacts parents.  What I especially liked about this source is that they considered developmental needs of children at varies ages.  The point was made that a child's needs change over the years of development.  The example the article used on page six paragraph 2, was that if a child is separated during infancy this could ultimately cause a separation of their primary attachment figure.  The source speaks on ..." how separation of even just a couple years could have extreme consequences."

In my first source from Mother Jones,  the author speaks a lot about the negative and physical effects on children with incarcerated parents.  It is different from the Children's Mental Health eReview  in that this source does not really clarify the different kinds of consequences being at different points in their development bring, but rather the extreme differences on effects on children with incarcerated parents compared to children without incarcerated parents. Both of these sources were very informative.