Controlled and Excluded: Reproduction and Motherhood Among Poor and Imprisoned Women (From Women at the Margins: Neglect, Punishment, and Resistance, P 253-270, 2002, Josefina Figueira-McDonough and Rosemary C. Sarri, eds. -- See NCJ-197190)

• NCJ Number: 197193
• Author(s): M. A. Bortner
• Date Published: 2002
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Haworth Press, Inc
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Reproduction and motherhood among poor and imprisoned women is about the cultural matrix of gender, class, and race, as well as the pervasive web of sexism, classism, and racism.

Abstract

Women and children are most systematically affected by poverty and increasing rates of women's imprisonment (almost 400 percent since 1980), reflecting the "surplus punishment" that characterizes disenfranchised women's lives within contemporary society. Socioeconomic structures and dominant ideologies play crucial roles in rendering poverty acceptable and large-scale imprisonment acceptable and profitable within a society that purports to be committed to democracy and social justice. The impacts of daily financial struggles, violence against women, and imprisonment are interrelated forms of "punishment," and they are all dimensions of the social control and exclusion that are integrally related to women's reproductive capacity and roles. The parallels between the life situations of poor and imprisoned women are myriad, including economic exclusion, subjection to multiple forms of gender-based punishment, targeting by policies that minimize support services and enhance surveillance, and vulnerability to efforts to remove their children from them and to terminate their parental rights. Welfare mothers, particularly single women of color, are portrayed in the popular culture as hypersexed and excessively reproductive, and imprisoned women are systematically stripped of their identities, not only as contributing members of society but as women and mothers; they are branded not only as "bad women," but as "unworthy mothers." The lives of many poor and imprisoned women seem virtually untouched by the gains of the women's liberation movement. Change will be possible only when a vision of their complex personhood is embraced, including their potential as human beings who are capable and desirous of changing their own and their children's life chances within society. Fundamental economic and ideological change is essential to alter the fate of poor and imprisoned women. 33 references