Stress Proliferation or Stress Relief? Understanding Mothers’ Health during Son’s Incarceration

Abstract

Social stressors proliferate to impair the health of those connected to the person enduring the stressor, but they can simultaneously offer relief from other stressors. Using in-depth interviews with 69 mothers of incarcerated men, we investigate mothers’ descriptions of how the stressor of their adult son’s incarceration impairs their health. First, mothers overwhelmingly describe how the increased instrumental, emotional, and financial responsibilities following their son’s confinement damage their health. Second, despite these increased responsibilities, most mothers simultaneously describe stress relief following their son’s incarceration, which may offset some of their health impairments. Third, these processes are situated in a broader social context, with increased responsibilities most salient when mothers have caregiving relationships with their grandchildren and stress relief most salient when their sons endure cyclical incarceration. These findings, which expand our understanding of the symbiotic harms of incarceration for mothers’ health, highlight the complexity of responses to social stressors.