The COVID-19 pandemic occurred at a time when families of prisoners were gaining visibility in both academia and policy. Research exploring the experiences of families of prison residents has tended to focus on intimate partners and children, despite parents of those in prison being more likely than partners or children to maintain contact. The small body of work focusing on parents has identified their continued care for their children and highlights the burden of providing this care. With the ethics of care posing an ideological expectation on women to provide familial care, the care for adult children in custody is likely to fall to mothers. However, with restricted prison regimes, the pandemic has significantly impeded mothers’ ability to provide this ‘care’. Adopting a qualitative methodology, this paper explores the accounts of mothers to adult children in custody during the pandemic across two UK prison systems, England and Wales, and Scotland; exploring the negotiation of mothering in the context of imprisonment and the pandemic and highlighting important lessons for policy and practice.

COVID-19 大流行发生在囚犯家属在学术界和政策上都越来越受到关注的时候。尽管在狱中的父母比伴侣或孩子更有可能保持联系，但探索监狱居民家庭经历的研究往往侧重于亲密伴侣和孩子。以父母为中心的一小部分工作确定了他们对孩子的持续照顾，并强调了提供这种照顾的负担。由于照料伦理对女性提供家庭照料的意识形态期望，对在押成年子女的照料很可能落到母亲的肩上。然而，由于监狱制度受到限制，这种流行病严重阻碍了母亲提供这种“照顾”的能力。采用定性方法，本文探讨了在大流行期间，英格兰和威尔士以及苏格兰这两个英国监狱系统中母亲对在押成年子女的描述；探索在监禁和大流行的背景下进行母爱的谈判，并强调政策和实践的重要经验教训。