About two thirds of women in prison are mothers of children under the age of 18, and most of those mothers were living with their children prior to their incarceration (Bureau of Justice and Statistics, 2000). Therefore, any researcher who seeks to understand the ‘typical’ woman in prison must consider that she is a mother and, more specifically, a mother to young children. In one respect, my study accords with such an assumption; that is, 27 of the 29 women in my sample, including 25 of the older women, were mothers. However, given the older mean age of my sample, it creates a unique picture of parenting from prison, as 25 of the 27 were mothers of adult children living on their own.

It was very common for the women I interviewed to speak about their children. While several of my prompts directly pertained to issues of motherhood and one's children (for example, Would you tell me about your children?), 26 of the women initiated discussions about their children voluntarily or in response to the generativity-related prompts (for example, Do you think about how you will be remembered?). The frequency with which the women in my sample talked about their children is not surprising given that incarcerated mothers have, in earlier studies, stressed the importance of their children (Owen, 1998) and the pain caused by separation (Morash and Schram, 2002). Advocates for the incarcerated population and, more recently, researchers in academia have become concerned about the challenges posed for people in prison, children, and families by parental incarceration (for example, Fox, 1984; Fletcher and Moon, 1993; Owen, 1998; Enos, 2001; Easterling, Feldmeyer, and Presser 2021). Much of the research on incarcerated parents, primarily mothers, focuses on their children (Baunach, 1985; Bloom and Steinhart, 1993; Siegal, 2011) – generally either their placement during their mother's incarceration or their ability to cope with it. Extensive research has linked maternal incarceration with depression in both mothers and children under the age of 18 (Koban, 1983; Henriques, 1996; Sharp and Marcus-Mendoza, 2001; Siegal, 2011). Family systems are stressed by even short periods of separation. Research primarily illuminates the emotional and behavioural problems of younger children as a result of their mother's incarceration, but it rarely addresses such things as pertain to having adult children on the outside.