“When My Mother Died, I Think a Part of Me Died:” Maternal Fusion and the Relationship between Incarcerated Men and Their Mothers

Abstract

Drawing on theoretical literature on the mothering discourse, I explore how incarcerated men give meaning to their relationships with their mothers. Using 24 in-depth interviews with incarcerated adult men, I argue that adherence to the mothering discourse results in sons holding their mothers’ maternal practices to impossibly high standards while simultaneously feeling obligated to reconcile with their mothers even when doing so is tremendously difficult. I also advance the concept of “maternal fusion”—the process through which the identities of mothers and their children are intertwined—to examine how incarcerated adult sons reproduce gendered mothering ideologies in their narratives of (a) negative early childhood and adolescent relationships with their mothers and (b) reconciliation as they reflect on their relationships with their mothers as adult sons.