From the folks at Sesame Street, an eye-opening look at the lives of 5 young filmmakers whose parents are incarcerated.
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We normally never question the idea that a child wants and needs to be with their mom or dad. Yet for 2.7 million kids in the US with incarcerated parents, it’s not so simple. There are many traumas and challenges that kids face when their parents are in prison, but one of the most basic is fighting the perception that just because a parent has been accused or convicted of a crime, the child is better off without them. This perception persists for caregivers, teachers, counselors, social workers, even family court judges. The research however says the opposite: that in the vast majority of cases, contact with a parent increases support and minimized trauma. A crew of young filmmakers with incarcerated parents teamed up with Sesame Street to create this short video about the issue of visiting.
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If I read this correctly, 1.3 million men and 125 thousand women. Yet the film was about kids with incarcerated mom’s. Sorry that I’m harping on this but it goes to show that men/fathers are dispensable. I’ve run across guys that have gone through my unit that turned their lives around because they had kids. Kids to these guys are just as important as they are with the mom’s.
Nonetheless, I comment your efforts.
I have a lot of empathy for these kids but what really bothers me is that the film concentrated on the “mom” in prison. I would venture to say that these family centers are more prone to be developed for the mom’s and their kids and not the dad’s.
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/genderinc.html.