Article Review: Motherhood As Punishment By Lynne Haney

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In the reading by Lynne Haney, “Motherhood as Punishment: The Case of Parenting in Prison”, Haney decided to focus on analyzing a facility that allows mothers to parent from prison. She analyzed what it meant for mothers to have to parent in prison. Specifically she wanted to investigate why it seemed that this program seemed to promise a new alternative, in order to reunify family. However, through her observations she saw that motherhood was being undermined and if anything the mothers had less power, even though the program promised more. She specifically discusses four main points in the article that are as follows: Motherhood is undermined, subsumed, punished, and finally how she observed parenting from mass incarceration. In regards to her discussion, I found that her first strong point was when Haney talked about how these female prisoners were recruited to enter this program with a video that showed a suburban home and a warm environment, However, when they arrived they were thoroughly disappointed because it was nothing like what they were promised. In fact, four …show more content…

My train of thought is that they lost the privilege of privacy when they broke the law. However, reading this article and seeing how the program is run, I think it is excessive. The article mentions how these woman have to go through pre-screening and are checked for history of certain abuses. Also, when simply just looking at the logic, one has to wonder if being in the program is more detrimental in terms of mental health. At least in prison, the woman do not have their children present and observing how their parents basically have to be reprimanded and monitored. I think, that being in the program and having your children so close to you, makes it hurt more when these mothers realize that they cannot actually

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