WHAT MAKES A MOTHER? PREDICTORS OF (NON)MOTHERHOOD AMONG WOMEN SERVING LIFE SENTENCES

Abstract

Being a non-mother is a unique experience for women with long sentences, especially life sentences, because it is likely that they will not be able to have children once released. What factors may have prevented them from having children before their incarceration, though? This quantitative study uses crosstabulations and binary logistic regression to determine what factors predict motherhood among a sample of 214 life-sentenced women in Georgia. The findings suggest that age at incarceration and marital status are the most important predictors of whether a woman serving a life sentence is a mother or non-mother. Women who were under 18 when first incarcerated and women who had never been married were less likely to have living children, our proxy for motherhood, compared to women who were older than 18 when first incarcerated and had ever been married. In addition, many of the non-mothers in a follow-up survey noted that their age at incarceration was a factor in them not having children, but only a few women felt that not being married was a reason they did not have children. Overall, while this research does contribute to the small amount of research on non-mothers and women serving life sentences, further research needs to look at the experiences of non-mothers serving life sentences. Questions remain as to how their experiences both inside prison and after their release are different than mothers. In addition, a deeper understanding of the experiences and emotions of non-mothers serving life sentences is missing from the literature.