Donne detenute con figli in carcere: dalla genitorialità nell’istituzione totale alla responsività di servizi alternativi

This contribution aims to highlight the current situation of women detained with their children, as a fragile social and family category: it explores, on the one hand, the existing institutional structures and services and the critical issues that they still display as to an adequate development of the mother-child relationship and for more conscious parenting (which ensures healthy psycho-physical growth of children); on the other hand, the article explores the ethical dilemmas and pedagogical contexts linked to “children behind bars” and examines some concrete training, educational and transformative possibilities that projects and investigations can open up towards perspectives of responsive parenting, involving operators, women in prison and civil society, and imagining new services.