“My son is in prison and I grieve him while he's alive”
When a son goes to prison, a parent may grieve him in ways that feel like bereavement: the empty room, the missed birthdays, visits across a table with guards watching. Many also carry shame, questions about how he was raised, and a mix of love and anger at what he did. Friends may not know what to say, so they say nothing. Researchers have described what families of people in prison go through using Pauline Boss's idea of ambiguous loss, for example in a study of 61 loved ones of people held on remand in England and Wales (Masson and Booth, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2024), where the unknowns made it more painful.
What to check first
It helps to check what the person knows about the sentence, the release date and the rules for contact, since uncertainty adds to the strain. It also helps to notice who knows where the son is, and whether anyone can be told the full story. If there are grandchildren or a partner involved, their needs may pull on the parent as well.
What could be going on
Ambiguous loss (Boss): Fits if he is alive and out of reach, and the loss has no clear shape.
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): Check whether your grief goes unrecognized because nobody has died.
Shame: Fits if you hide where he is, or feel judged as his parent.
Parental guilt (‘mom guilt’): Check whether your mind keeps searching his childhood for where it went wrong.
Telling them apart
Ambiguous loss (Boss): The son is alive and out of reach: calls are timed, visits are short, his days are hidden. The parent may grieve and then feel the grief is wrong because he will come out. The loss has no clear shape or end.
Grief (complicated, disenfranchised, anticipatory): The grief may be real and unrecognized, because nobody died and others may think he deserves it. The parent may have nowhere to say how much they miss him. Grief that others won't acknowledge is often called disenfranchised.
Shame: The parent may hide where the son is, or feel judged at church, at work, among neighbors. The shame may spread from what he did to the parent's sense of self. It can cut the parent off from support.
Parental guilt (‘mom guilt’): The mind may keep going back over his childhood: a divorce, a school, a time the parent wasn't there. Every choice can look wrong looking back. Many things outside a parent's hands shape what an adult child does.
Questions to carry
- The last time I felt the loss of him sharply, where was I and what set it off?
- Who in my life knows where my son is, and what has telling or hiding cost me?
Also said as
- my son went to prison and i feel like he died
- mother of an inmate
- my daughter is incarcerated and i'm grieving
- ashamed my son is in jail
- my son got a long sentence
- how to cope when your child goes to prison