When I was ten years old my father, a lawyer, was incarcerated. He was what some people call a "white collar criminal" and spent two years in prison. Because I come from a loving family and because my family had other supports and privileges (i.e. we were white and middle class in a community that rewarded both), my siblings and I fared well despite of my father's incarceration. And so for a long time, decades, really, I didn't discuss my father's history. I didn't know anyone else who had had an incarcerated parent; I was in a world (the university) where nobody really discussed it; and my siblings and I had moved on. Yet, I was always aware and conscious of the plight of families and communities where incarceration was most profoundly felt. At a certain point I realized that I had to be part of the solution â or at least I owed it to others to use the knowledge I had to try to move the conversation forward. So, my co-editor and I researched and wrote Parental Incarceration: Personal Accounts and Developmental Impact.
[For more of this story, written by Megan Sullivan, go to http://phys.org/news/2016-03-p...ted-parents.html#jCp]
Comments (0)