Using new methods designed to assess coparenting between incarcerated mothers of preschoolaged children and the maternal grandmothers caring for the children during their absence, we examined relationships between coparenting quality during the mother's jail stay and both concurrent child behavior problems and later coparenting interactions following mothers' release and community reentry. Forty mother-grandmother dyads participated in joint coparenting discussions during the incarceration, with a smaller subset completing a parallel activity at home 1 month postrelease. Both women also participated in individual coparenting interviews during the incarceration, and reported on child behavior problems. Mother-grandmother coparenting interactions exhibited an overall structure similar to that documented in nuclear families, with population-specific dynamics also evident. The observational system demonstrated good interrater and internal reliability, and showed associations with maternal (but not grandmother) reports and descriptions of the coparenting relationship via interview. Greater coparenting relationship quality during incarceration was associated with fewer concurrent child externalizing behavior problems, and predicted more positive coparenting interactions postrelease. Findings suggest that the coparenting assessments were useful for under-standing mother-grandmother coparenting relationships in these families and that importantly, these relationships were tied to children's functioning. Avenues for future research and considerations for intervention efforts are discussed.

Attendant to the exponential increase in rates of incarceration of mothers with young children in the United States, programming has been established to help mothers attend to parenting skills and other family concerns while incarcerated. Unfortunately, most programs overlook the important, ongoing relationship between incarcerated mothers and family members caring for their children-most often, the inmates' own mothers. Research reveals that children's behavior problems escalate when different co-caregivers fail to coordinate parenting efforts and interventions, work in opposition, or disparage or undermine one another. This article presents relevant research on co-caregiving and child adjustment, highlights major knowledge gaps in need of study to better understand incarcerated mothers and their families, and proposes that existing interventions with such mothers can be strengthened through targeting and cultivating functional coparenting alliances in families.

The number of incarcerated mothers has risen steadily in the past 20 years, with a majority of the mothers’ children being cared for by relatives, usually the maternal grandmother (Smith, Krisman, Strozier, & Marley, 2004). This article examines the unique coparenting relationship of grandmothers and mothers through qualitative individual interviews with a sample of 24 incarcerated mothers with children between the ages of 2 and 6, and 24 grandmothers raising their children. The study revealed many different variants of healthy coparenting alliances, achieved against often huge odds. Much variation was also discovered in dyads where coparenting alliances were not as successful. Implications for practice include performing structural family assessments, enhancing jail education programs, and offering extended coparenting treatment after discharge.

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