S03.E01: Mother's Day

[random chance]

Can't they just speak well of her and not do the visiting part? Is it really fair to a kid to have to spend X hours of their childhood sitting in a prison visiting room? Or maybe at least wait until she's old enough to choose whether she wants to visit her mom instead of doing normal childhood things.

I know that seems harsh but the kid didn't commit a crime, the mom did.

[Nanrad]

Can't they just speak well of her and not do the visiting part? Is it really fair to a kid to have to spend X hours of their childhood sitting in a prison visiting room? Or maybe at least wait until she's old enough to choose whether she wants to visit her mom instead of doing normal childhood things.

I know that seems harsh but the kid didn't commit a crime, the mom did.

 

I feel as if that'll be counterproductive; they speak well of her, but not visit her. You could also argue is it really fair to the kid to keep them away from their parent? This situation is a lose-lose either way. If the child doesn't visit their mother at all, it's unlikely the'll want to visit her when they get older. They don't have any memory or relationship with her. Visiting her mother once a month doesn't take away the other normal childhood things when they aren't visiting their parent.

 

A child visiting a parent isn't a punishment. 

[smrou]

If the child doesn't visit their mother at all, it's unlikely the'll want to visit her when they get older. They don't have any memory or relationship with her.

Exactly. I think it makes a lot more sense to visit while the child is too young to make their own decision, and if when they get older they decide they want to stop visiting to allow that. 

[Your Aunt Tilly]

I feel as if that'll be counterproductive; they speak well of her, but not visit her. You could also argue is it really fair to the kid to keep them away from their parent? This situation is a lose-lose either way. If the child doesn't visit their mother at all, it's unlikely the'll wan t to visit her when they get older. They don't have any memory or relationship with her. Visiting her mother once a month doesn't take away the other normal childhood things when they aren't visiting their parent.

 

A child visiting a parent isn't a punishment. 

 

This.  Plus I'm sure that I've read that visiting a parent in prison is better for the child's overall well being than not visiting the parent.  No matter what, their childhood is not going to be "typical."  But if visiting the parent can somehow help then the child should be able to visit.  

[random chance]

I was thinking that it was a bad idea because the kid got misplaced amongst the kind of people who will hide their coke in a baby diaper, and then traumatized by whatever they call it when everyone has to lie flat on the ground while alarms are going off. For me, that would have been the end of the visits.

[CleoCaesar]

Every character has been softened so much, that it is no longer believable.

 

I agree for the most part. In season 1 it seemed like every single inmate had a heart of gold and was either harmless or in Litchfield because they met the wrong man (who really did the crime). It took the idea that "prisoners are people too" WAY too far and just seemed very unrealistic that they all had a reason for being in prison that explained or excused their breaking the law. Season 2 fought that somewhat, and made Cindy an unrepentant asshole, a thief, and a horrendous mother. It made Crazy Eyes violent and almost totally unsympathetic. Taystee was awful too - fickle, aggressive, and just an all-around bitch. I never liked any of those three, but season 2 made me hate them. This episode seemed to be more in season 1 style. They're all sob stories and have really good reasons for what they did. It's seeming a little too political for me lately. I hope season 3 has more nuance.

[nodorothyparker]

This is the first episode where I've genuinely liked Big Boo.  Her talk with Pennsatucky about what the reality of having x number of kids while being an unrepentant raging methhead with anger issues likely would have been was quietly effective and displayed real thoughtfulness.  In the past, Boo has struck me primarily as an opportunist and somewhat predatory, so her friendship with Pennsatucky has been bringing out other shades of her that are making her a lot more interesting to watch.

 

I like that we've been eased back into the third season with a quieter episode that checks in with everybody while reflecting on what it means to be a mother and not be a mother in this environment.  The Mother's Day carnival managed to perfectly straddle the line between sweet and profoundly sad.  I like that while we all may love Sophia that Sophia before her transition was kind of a bad dad and generally not good guy.  I like that I could see both sides of Maria and her baby daddy's story.  (Can't remember his name.)  I can feel terrible for Maria that the daughter she's only had a limited access to since birth because prison is being torn away her and still not think he's doing it out of malice but out of a real sense that he doesn't want his daughter to spend her childhood thinking this normal.  I can't even really blame him after seeing the inmate dump her baby on the ground for the drugs out of the diaper and the carnival ending that had kids crying and asking their moms why they were on the ground with sirens going off.

 

It's nice to have this back.

[SeanC]

For the record, the Freakonomics notion about abortion correlating with crime is most likely not correct.  If abortion was the cause of the fall in crime in the early 1990s, the drop in crime rates would have started with the youngest cohort, but that wasn't how it played out (Steve Pinker discusses this in The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined).