Children Growing Up Behind Bars: Study Reveals Gaps in Care for Kids of Incarcerated Mothers

Every year, thousands of children around the world grow up in the shadow of prison walls, living alongside mothers who are serving custodial sentences. A new qualitative study from northern Ethiopia offers one of the most detailed pictures to date of what daily life actually looks like for these children, and the findings are sobering. Researchers from Injibara University and the University of Gondar examined care arrangements and support systems for children living with incarcerated mothers in two correctional centers in the Amhara Region, and they found that the institutions were characterized by unsupportive care systems and a hostile physical and social environment that undermines children’s physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development.

The research, published as open-access work in Discover Psychology, was led by Kefialew Yenyet Mitiku together with Wohabie Birhan Bitew of Injibara University’s Department of Psychology and Sisay Haile Michael of the University of Gondar. The team set out to explore a question that sits at the intersection of child development science, criminal justice policy, and human rights: when very young children live inside prisons because their mothers are incarcerated, what kind of care do they actually receive, and who is responsible for providing it? The study was approved by the Institutional Research Ethics Review Committee of Injibara University and conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, with written informed consent obtained from the mothers for their own participation and on behalf of their children.

Methodologically, the researchers employed a qualitative descriptive design, an approach well suited to capturing the lived realities of a population that is difficult to reach and rarely studied. Data were collected from twenty mothers in total: eighteen incarcerated mother-child dyads and two mothers who were living with two children each. In addition, the team interviewed two prison managers and one counselor as key informants, giving the study an institutional perspective alongside the maternal one. Three complementary data collection techniques were used: in-depth interviews with the mothers, key informant interviews with prison staff, and nonparticipant observation, in which researchers observed the prison environment and daily routines without directly intervening. The data were then analyzed using thematic analysis, a systematic method for identifying, organizing, and interpreting recurring patterns of meaning across qualitative material.

Four major themes emerged from the analysis, and together they paint a stark portrait of institutional neglect. The first theme was nutritional inadequacy. Children living in the correctional centers did not receive adequate or age-appropriate nutrition, a deficiency with serious developmental consequences. In early childhood, the brain undergoes rapid synaptogenesis and myelination, processes that demand a steady supply of protein, micronutrients, and energy. Chronic undernutrition during this critical window is strongly associated in the broader scientific literature with stunting, impaired cognitive performance, and weakened immune function. The study’s finding that prison food systems failed to meet children’s basic dietary needs therefore represents a direct threat to the children’s neurodevelopment.

The second theme was the absence of educational and developmental services. The correctional centers offered no structured early learning, no daycare programming, and no developmental stimulation appropriate to young children. Developmental science has consistently demonstrated that early cognitive growth depends on responsive interaction, language exposure, play, and progressively enriched environments. A setting that provides none of these inputs effectively deprives children of the scaffolding their brains expect during sensitive developmental periods. The third theme was closely related: there was no specialized institutional care whatsoever. No trained childcare professionals were present, no staff had expertise in early childhood education or psychosocial support, and the children’s welfare was left to their incarcerated mothers, who had limited resources and no formal mandate or training to compensate for the institutional gap.

The fourth theme, hostile physical environment and risks of emotional development, extended the problem beyond services to the prison itself as a developmental context. The researchers observed that the physical and social conditions of the facilities were unsuitable for children, exposing them to risks that undermine healthy socio-emotional growth. Children in the general population develop emotional regulation and secure attachment through predictable, safe caregiving relationships. A carceral environment, by contrast, combines confinement, crowding, and exposure to institutional discipline, and the study indicated that the discipline system did not adequately protect children from violence and punishment. From a developmental psychopathology perspective, such conditions elevate the risk of toxic stress, in which prolonged activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and elevated cortisol exposure can alter the architecture of developing neural circuits involved in memory, emotion regulation, and executive function.

What makes the study particularly significant is its framing of these children as a forgotten population within correctional systems. Prison institutions are designed and funded around the management of adult offenders, not the nurturing of infants and toddlers. When children are permitted, or in some cases effectively compelled, to remain with incarcerated mothers, they often fall into a jurisdictional blind spot: they are not prisoners, yet they live under prison rules; they are children with rights, yet no child-specific budget line, staffing structure, or inspection regime protects those rights. The Ethiopian findings suggest that this blind spot is not an abstraction but a daily reality with measurable consequences for children’s nutrition, learning, and emotional well-being.

The researchers’ recommendations flow directly from their four themes, and they amount to a blueprint for reform. They argue that children living in prison should be formally recognized as rights-holders with access to dignity, healthcare, and education. Basic needs such as adequate nutrition and safe living conditions must be ensured, and daycare services must be established within or alongside correctional facilities. Prisons should employ trained childcare, education, and psychosocial support staff so that children’s developmental needs are addressed by professionals rather than left to untrained institutional staff or overstretched mothers. Prison officers themselves need training in child development and trauma-informed care, an approach that recognizes how early adversity shapes behavior and prioritizes psychological safety over punitive control. The discipline system, the authors argue, should be restructured to protect children from violence and punishment entirely.

Perhaps the most consequential recommendation, however, lies beyond prison reform altogether. The researchers state that alternative sentencing should be prioritized to reduce children’s exposure to prison environments. This recommendation aligns with international guidance on children of incarcerated parents, which encourages non-custodial measures for primary caregivers of young children when appropriate. From a policy standpoint, the logic is straightforward: the cheapest and most effective way to protect a child’s development from the harms of a carceral setting is to keep that child out of the prison in the first place, provided safety considerations allow. The study thus contributes empirical weight to ongoing global debates about whether, and under what conditions, infants and young children should ever reside in correctional facilities.

The research also carries a broader scientific message. Child development is highly sensitive to environmental context, and the environments least studied are often those where children face the greatest risk. By combining in-depth interviews, staff interviews, and direct observation, the Ethiopian team was able to document not just what services were missing but how institutional structures, staffing, and physical conditions interact to shape children’s daily experience. The work, which received no external funding and was published open access under a Creative Commons license, invites researchers in other countries to examine their own prison nurseries and mother-child units with the same rigor. For the children growing up behind bars in northern Ethiopia, the study’s conclusion is unambiguous: they deserve recognition as rights-holders, and their nutrition, safety, education, and emotional development are responsibilities that no correctional system should be permitted to overlook.

Subject of Research: Care arrangements and support systems for children living with incarcerated mothers in Ethiopian prisons

Article Title: Care arrangements and support systems for children living with incarcerated mothers

Article References: Mitiku, K. Y., Bitew, W. B., & Michael, S. H. (2026). Care arrangements and support systems for children living with incarcerated mothers. Discover Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-026-00903-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44202-026-00903-4

Keywords: incarcerated mothers, children in prison, child development, correctional centers, Ethiopia, qualitative research, thematic analysis, nutrition, socio-emotional development, prison policy, trauma-informed care, alternative sentencing