I had just returned to the United States when I received the call. In January 2004, after studying literature for a semester in Italy, I was further away than ever from my mother and her 15-year-old brother, both emotionally and geographically. I was still thinking in Italian when I received a call from a family friend. Friends said her mother set fire to her home and was being held in the county jail on a charge of felony arson.
Questions ran through my head, but I was so shocked that I said, “Can't you set your own house on fire?”
My mother's friend chuckled, deflecting the absurdity of the question. “No honey,” she said. “Apparently, that's a felony.” She was just days away from starting her final semester of college, but she emailed her professor and told him to fly home and pick up her brother in time for visiting hours. I did.
In the visiting room, the three of us sat hunched over in shell chairs on either side of a plexiglass wall, phones pressed to our ears, oscillating between confusion and heartbreak as my mother told us what had happened. Ta. In her fugue state she sets the house on fire, but regains consciousness as the house goes up in flames. When she realized what she had done, she called the fire department and she ran out of the house. She was waiting on the lawn when they arrived. But instead of being provided care, she was escorted into a police car and driven 20 minutes down California's Interstate 5 to the county jail, where she was immediately booked.
What she needed was mental health treatment. What she got were cells.
Her story is not unique. The March 2024 Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) report on women and incarceration concludes that 80% of women in state prisons are mothers, and most are their primary caregivers. Also, 76% of women have past or current mental health problems, a rate significantly higher than men of the same demographic. Over the past few decades, women have been incarcerated at twice the rate of men. There is hypocrisy in the way we treat our mothers. As Mother's Day approaches and we want to send flowers and memorials to our mothers, we honor and culturally revere them. However, single mothers remain stigmatized both politically and ideologically. Many mothers, especially single mothers, live in poverty or have little safety net or community to support them, so they don't report warning signs for fear of losing their child. , do not report any warning signs. Asking for help comes at a cost and is often too dangerous.
Later, I came to understand that what my mother experienced that day was psychotic. It didn't happen overnight. The signs were there. For years, even decades. In fact, she was struck by a similar illness in her 20s and she was hospitalized for several months. By the time her brother and I were born, she was white, traditionally attractive, educated, and with a healthy dose of natural charm, making her well-functioning enough to move freely through the world. and had plenty of privileges. She wanted to be a mother more than anything, so she valued autonomy and her right to be a parent over stability, cut back on her work and moved frequently to stay home with us. Did. She raised us single-handedly, surviving on part-time work, child support, and occasional government assistance. She knew how to escape the hidden eyes of society that looks down on all poor single mothers.
Every single parent carries a lot of weight, but in the United States, single mothers, femininity-expressing people, or non-binary people carry different expectations than fathers or masculinity-expressing parents. They experience higher rates of psychological distress, often for economic reasons. And they are perceived differently. A 2021 Pew Research survey tracked Americans' attitudes toward single mothers. In 2018, when asked if it was bad for society for women to raise children alone, 40% of respondents said yes. In 2021, she was at 47%. It doesn't matter because the right to abortion is being taken away, albeit step by step, at a dizzying rate.
A government that forces people into custody and imposes penalties when they ask for help in a struggle is a no-win dead end, and for some, not only a U-turn, but the possibility of prison is looming. The risks are significantly worse by class and race.
read more: My first year as a mother was excruciating because of my mental illness.She was lucky that the worst didn't happen.
According to the PPI report, 2.6 million children have a parent in jail or prison. The image of my mother in a state-issued orange jumpsuit was dissonant, but for many families it's an unfortunate consequence of living in a system that criminalizes poverty. A 2022 joint report by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU on the effects of family separation found that families living in poverty have “no access to resources, services, and social support for the kinds of issues that many parents struggle with.” Access is often limited or not at all.”Mental health, human relationships, services for children with disabilities, response to behavioral problems, etc.s. ”
My mother told me that when I was young, I had attended a government agency's free counseling services, and shortly thereafter received a home visit from Child Protective Services. She hasn't spoken to anyone since. Parents who have the foresight to recognize their own warning signs should be supported, not punished. However, the system is not equipped to assess the nuances of these situations. In fact, an HRW/ACLU study found that many caseworkers in the child welfare system who are responsible for reporting perceived neglect have no training in mental health at all.
Children must be protected. But by removing mothers' ability to protect their children while getting help, we put resource-rich communities at greater risk of losing their children forever. In a way, my mother, like many others, put us and herself at risk to protect her family.
Three months later, she was released on a so-called deferred judgment. The ruling meant that her record would be expunged if she attended mandatory counseling and stayed out of further legal trouble for three years. Since she had never been charged before, she is unlikely to be charged again. But if she had, for whatever reason, her mother would have been charged with a felony charge of insanity. And a felony conviction makes it harder to find work, increases the likelihood of continued poverty, increases the fear of recidivism, and perpetuates an endless cycle of punishment. Still, she was one of the “lucky ones”. What she went through was multiplied by her mother, who is a person of color.
Unfortunately, she passed away from technically unrelated causes before the three-year period was up.
Today marks about 20 years since my mother passed away. But every year around this time, I wonder what would have happened if she had gotten the care she needed without threatening her parental rights. How can we focus on care and support interventions rather than punitive measures? First, what if we assume that the mother is the best? I am primarily wondering how I can help a parent living with mental illness keep her family safe.
I know there are many opinions and no easy solutions. Moving away from punishment and toward compassion and complexity requires not only major policy shifts, but also major cultural shifts in how we understand the family and what it means to protect its sanctity and sanity. A transformation will be necessary. But when talking about who deserves help, you need to consider how much it costs to ask. Prices are not the same for everyone.
