Loving Through Bars: Children with Parents in Prison

by Cynthia Martone

An estimated 2.3 million children in the United States have a parent in prison-children whose lives are filled with a unique kind of instability and uncertainty.

These children are themselves victims of their parents' crimes, members of a neglected segment of our population who are potentially damaged by stigma and shame and who are at risk of being pulled into a vicious cycle of future criminality and deviant social behavior. Such children are child prisoners-kids who must learn to understand living and loving through bars.

In Loving Through Children with Parents in Prison , Cynthia Martone offers a searing and poignant view of these unfortunate kids, presenting their particular plights through a series of stories.

Among the people readers will meet are a little girl who chats with murderers at Attica Prison while visiting her father, the recently released prisoner who has seven children by five different mothers, and the second-grader whose dad regularly calls him from jail and encourages him to put a pillow over his mother's head at night in order to kill her.

Written by an experienced public school administrator-Martone has been awarded the Outstanding Educator Award for the State of New York-this examination of the instability and uncertainty that plague children of prisoners chronicles their attempts to cope and presents a possible starting place for societal response.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loving Through Bars: Children with Parents in Prison is a different book than the ones I usually read. The genre of this book is leaning more towards Social Science rather than Fiction, Non-Fiction, or Romance. This book talks about children with parents that are in prison. The author, Cynthia Martone, expresses her feelings about this situation throughout her book. She brings up many good points, such as, children will not only loose their parents from their lives--but also a sense of stability. She also emphasizes that these children could eventually become future criminals because they weren't exposed to the necessities parents had to offer. However, she also talks about a solution for these children. She mentions ways that these children could learn to become great people although their parents are in prison. This book is also powerful because Martone had experienced something like this--not directly though. She encountered a situation where a father of 2 was in prison and their father is trying the best he could to be in their lifes although they're separated by bars. Although these words might have a bad connotation to it, Martone believes they can also have some good connotations with some love. This book is also very powerful because she describes her journey very vividly and you can tell that this adventure was amazing. I'd recommend this book to those who doesn't mind reading long personal essays because this book was pretty much like a personal essay using narrative and non-narrative.

[Melissa Hallinan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was very meh for me. The author to me seemed really high on herself & loved talking about how great people thought she was for all that she was doing. It would've been nice to hear more about the children & less about what an awesome person she thinks she is.