Motherhood in the Challenging from Prison

The number of women prisoners is rapidly increasing in the world as well as in Turkey. In the prison sphere, talking about women means primarily talking about mothers. A fundamental difference with men is that most women in prison are mothers. Women prisoners incarcerated – with or without their children – are attached to their identity as a mother even if they are not in an ideal situation for motherhood. The prison radically complicates the exercise of motherhood yet their “condition as mother” provides material and symbolic resources for the daily life of women prisoners. It is a source of hope and motivation for personal change, as well as causing feelings of guilt, suffering and failure which are shared without exception by all incarcerated mothers. Based on fieldwork conducted between April 2011 and May 2012 in the only women’s prison in Istanbul, the prison of Bakirköy, the article analyses how women exercised their motherhood, using penal sociological means.