Where do the babies of imprisoned women go?

An analysis of the kinship and circulation of children from the ethnography in the Maternal and Child Unit (RJ)

Abstract

Most prisoner mothers tend to lose affective bonds with their blood family and companions when they are in prison, and because of this they hardly receive visits when they are inmates with their babies. Based on ethnography and fieldwork at the Mother and Child Unit (UMI) in Rio de Janeiro, this article will address issues of affective bonds, kinship relations, family and ruptures. It was possible to understand new forms of kinship built and established in the institution, in addition to those that confer biogenetic ties (mother-baby), and also the possibility of continued kinship, or, what scholars call the "circulation of children" after the separation of the mother dyad-baby in unit.