How mothers manage the stressor of an adult son's incarceration: The role of coping resources

More than one fifth of U.S. older adults have endured the stressor of a child's incarceration. We use longitudinal in-depth interviews with 69 mothers of incarcerated adult sons to examine mothers' coping resources during and after their son's incarceration. First, mothers report coping with their son's incarceration via activating social support and using self-directed accessible resources (including prayer, distraction, and acceptance), which mitigate some of the deleterious mental health consequences of their son's incarceration. Second, mothers differentially report the salience of some coping resources during their son's confinement and reentry periods. Third, coping resources employed by mothers can occasionally both alleviate the burdens of a son's incarceration and generate new stressors. Aligned with the stress process perspective, with its attention to coping resources as buffering the mental health consequences of stressors, these findings demonstrate how the intergenerational consequences of criminal legal contact extend to mothers of the incarcerated.