An Intersectional Analysis of Justice-Involved Parents Navigating Parenthood in Jai

Although parental incarceration has garnered increased scholarly attention, most of this work centers on prison settings, leaving the experiences of parents in local jails significantly underexamined. This dissertation draws on in-depth interviews with 41 detained/incarcerated mothers and fathers in a Mid-Atlantic jail to explore how parents navigate their roles and identities while detained in an institution not designed for long-term confinement or family preservation. Guided by identity theory and an intersectional framework, this study asks how parents sustain (or struggle to sustain) connections with children under conditions marked by uncertainty. Findings reveal that jail disrupts parental identity in profound and often invisible ways. Parents described parenting through distance and constraint, attempting to remain emotionally present while physically separated from their children. Barriers such as restrictive visitation policies, expensive communication methods, and caregiver gatekeeping further complicated their efforts. These challenges were not experienced equally, as race, gender, class, and sexual orientation shaped access to parenting programs, external perceptions of parental fitness, and parents’ own sense of worth. Yet, parents often found ways that challenged these constraints through methods that allowed them to affirm their caregiving roles and maintain a sense of parental identity despite their current realities. This dissertation positions jail not merely as a site of confinement, but as a space where caregiving is fractured and contested. It challenges prevailing assumptions that short-term confinement carries minimal consequences for families and calls for equity-driven approaches to supporting justice-involved parents.