Pregnancy, attachment and maternity in prisons: Penitentiary and Childhood System
Well, as the first fact we must know that Spain is the EU country with the highest rate of women in prison, according to an article published in July 2016 in Spanish Advocacy “In 2015, about 5 were counted.130 internal, which represents 7.81% of the entire prison population, compared to the more than 60.500 men admitted to Spanish prisons, which means 92.19% of that total ”. In this way, the relevance and actuality of this topic is reflected, but what room does development psychology in this have?
As is known, the first six years of a person’s life are not only the most relevant but the builders of our personality and the fundamental basis of whom we will become greater when being greater. This is why we must not only pay attention to the fetal relationship of women deprived of liberty but the first years of these infants paying a conviction that does not belong to them. Thanks to the last reform of the LOPG it is stated that children can remain with their mothers in the maximum imprisonment centers until three years of age, since thanks to various studies and theories it is until that age where they will not keep traumatic memories ofThe first experiences lived. It was at the end of the 19th century that Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis called "child amnesia" to this inability to remember our early years, this is how we keep the relevant and indispensable learning for life, but we failed to know how we obtained them we obtained them. Researchers like Sheena to. Joselyn and Paul W. Frankland of the University of Toronto, explain “The hippocampus of children under three years of age is not sufficiently developed to store long -term memories."
Much has been discussed and discussed about the pros and cons of children’s permanence with their mothers to early childhood. Many authors have expressed how to keep children together to the mothers up to 3 years would be a great help for them since it would facilitate the "normal" attachment and development of minors as previously mentioned in this work, on the otherSide we get with authors who differ totally, claiming that these experiences, even. These traumas are described as a "lasting trauma". This Traum.
Regarding breastfeeding, Manríquez (2016) exposes the following:
When a woman, who is currently a mother or who will soon be, is in a condition of deprivation of liberty, there will probably be an interference between the link she will generate with her child and also with the development of breastfeeding, whatwhich will negatively affect maternal psychosocial well -being and can potentially compromise childhood health and development.
In relation to this topic, WHO (World Health Organization) promotes breastfeeding up to two years of life through various research. Under this scoop, separating children from their mothers before this age not only constitutes a threat to the development of the child at the level of nutrition and defense mechanisms but also at the psychological level, exposing them to an experience of weaning and physical separationof the mother deeply establishing factors of separation anxiety.
This is how the latent concern not only in psychology professionals but also of the different states is that this issue can be raised as a spiral of exclusion and thus generate more risk groups within society. "Four out of ten women prey in the period between 2000 and 2003 had previously passed through guardianship institutions for minors".
Several studies coincide with this vision and expose as an important proportion of people who are currently deprived of liberty experienced some trauma in childhood, such as home abandonment by some caregiver, abuse or violence.
Manríquez (2016) comments the following:
An important amount of jailed mothers are classified with insecure or unresolved attachment, due to the traumas experienced in childhood and the loss of their representations of attachment in childhood. In addition to this, it has also been observed that many people in their adulthood, and who have been in prison, have a significant difficulty in their "mentalization in relation to their own child attachment relations".
To conclude, we must be aware of the importance that this issue has not only for the psychological community but also for any area with social relevance. We have prisons full of people and coupled with this data already in itself, with many of them we have children paying a conviction that does not belong to them and representing a high risk not only to be involved in the loop of violence and abuse but also ofgenerate in them wounds and traumas hardly repairable in the future.
Just as Manríquez exposes:
Emotional development in the first years of life was only achieved with programs and interventions that generated changes in maternal emotional structures. This type of interventions gave mothers parenting tools and parental strategies to cope with maternity outside the community and without paternal support.
The tools and knowledge exist, it remains to use them or allow the crisis to continue perpetuating.
Bibliography
- Castillero-Mimerza, c. (s.f) Child Amnesia: Why don’t we remember the first years of life? Recovered from https: // psychology andly.com/Psychology/Amnesia-Infantil
- Cortázar et al. (2015) What about the children of jailed mothers? How to cushion the harmful effects for children whose parents are deprived of liberty.
- Kirschbaum, r. (2019, October 13) "Child Amnesia": why you can’t remember anything that happened to you before 3 years. Clarín Psychology, 8592. Recovered from https: // www.clarion.com/Entremujeres/Vida-Sana/Psychology
- Manríquez-Hizaut, m. 2016. Review on emotional development and attachment of sons and daughters of mothers deprived of liberty in the context of transient residences programs in prison enclosures, a look from public health. (Unpublished Master’s Degree Work). Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile, Chile.
- Myers, b. J., Smarsh, t. M., Amlund-Hogen, k., & Kennon, S. 1999. Children of Incarcerated Mothers. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 8, 11–25
- Phillips, s., & Harm, N. 1997. Women prisoners: a framework contextual. Women and Therapy, 20, 1–9.
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