Our Bodies, Our Crimes: Bad Mothers

I had mixed feelings about the "Bad Mothers" chapter of Our Bodies, Our Crimes. On the one hand, I think Flavin makes several good points about how a woman's substance abuse or past mistakes should not automatically make her ineligible for parenting. I had never thought before about what it would be like to have the right to parent your child completely stripped away, and cannot imagine the pain this would cause a mother.

However, I think the way that Flavin portrays social workers, government agencies and foster families as the "bad guys" who are trying to strip away incarcerated mothers' rights to their children is wrong. As one woman she quotes says, "Don't go throwing words around like 'partnership'. Because no one who has the power to take away my child is my partner." (Flavin 156).

Though I'm sure there has been several cases where the rights to their children have been stripped from mothers unjustly, and foster families have not taken care of children of incarcerated mothers as well as they should have, it is unfair to portray these people as simply wanting to take children away at all costs. Foster parents and social workers make many sacrifices and receive extremely low compensation for putting the rights of these children first.

While Flavin makes many references to the rights of women being breached, she makes little reference to the rights of the children in question- such as the rights to a permanent and stable home and adequate care. While there may be instances where permanency should be sacrificed for reunification, as Flavin suggests in the end of the chapter, often it is difficult for incarcerated women to secure things like housing after release.

Flavin also fails to bring up the rights of the child when it comes to visitation rights of the mother in prison. Children who are old enough should have the right to discern for themselves whether or not they want to visit their mothers in prison. In some cases, the lack of reunification or keeping in touch with their mother while she is incarcerated, especially in cases of neglect or abuse by the mother, may end up being beneficial for the child in the long run.