There is wide acknowledgment in the literature that paternal imprisonment has ripple effects on the lives of children and families left behind (e.g., Arditti & Johnson, 2022; Besemer et al., 2019; Breen, 2008; Gilani, 2020; Lee & Wildeman, 2021; Luk et al., 2023; Murray & Farrington, 2008; Poehlmann-Tynan & Turney, 2021; Venema et al., 2022; Zhang & Flynn, 2025) and is considered an adverse childhood experience (Felitti et al., 1998), leading to increased threat, hypervigilance, and dysfunctional social relationships (Miller et al., 2011). Based on statistics from Children of Prisoners Europe (2021) approximately 680,000 children are separated from their fathers due to imprisonment in Europe, indicating a considerable number of children at risk of experiencing poor long-term physical and mental health outcomes. These outcomes may be influenced by expectations and norms around fatherhood, as it often the culturally derived standards and expectations around who a father is and what he does that determines a child's experience of his absence.

Fathering norms and practices

It is important to briefly outline an understanding of fathering norms and practices to consider how failure to meet these, as affected by imprisonment, influences the emotional well-being of the child. These norms can vary and range from breadwinner masculinities, perhaps associated with hegemonic masculinity, to more nurturing masculinities, which involve being present, supporting the mother, and being more emotionally involved than fathers from previous generations (Dermott, 2014; Hanlon, 2012). When fathers fail to live up to their children's standards, as shaped by societal and cultural expectations, this can be experienced by children as traumatic (Brown-Weinstock et al., 2023). Biological fathers can fail to earn the status of “father” in the eyes of their children if they fail to adhere to their expected obligations (Brown-Weinstock et al., 2023). Fathers are often framed as essential for their child's well-being (Randles, 2020), reflecting a gender essentialist ideology that is interlinked with expectations of certain behaviors and practices. However, this essentialist view is not well supported (Randles, 2020), failing to pay attention to the wider factors of race, class, and marginalization in the outcomes of having an imprisoned father. But what seems to matter here is that society and families will often frame or see the father as being essential for the child's well-being, which in turn will go on to affect their experience of his absence due to imprisonment—whether or not a father is actually essential for a child's development.

Although cultural conceptions of fatherhood are moving toward seeing fathers as being increasingly involved in their children's lives, this is not always mirrored in actual fathering practices (Dermott, 2014). The tension set up by this contradiction is likely to accentuate the pain of separation from the father due to imprisonment, creating a greater gulf between ideals and reality. Even for those fathers who wish to be more involved and take on more of a caring role, there can be a tendency for more traditional parenting roles to grab hold, compounded by wider social factors such as work demands and poor paternity leave options (Miller, 2010), suggesting that fathers continue to form their paternal identity around the central idea of being a provider.

Fatherhood cannot be understood apart from constructions of masculinity and how this intertwines with conceptions of care. Fathers (and men in general) inherit models of hegemonic masculinity, which center around assertiveness, aggression, stoicism, and dominance over women (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Fathers have shown the possibility of taking on more caring versions of masculinity (Miller, 2010) that may be impeded by wider societal forces. Hanlon (2012), deriving his findings from a series of in-depth interviews with men in Ireland to explore their idea of “care,” noted the tension between expectations of being employed and productive, while also engaged in involved care. This struggle between balancing hegemonic norms with norms of nurturance, and how fathers reconcile this struggle, affects their involvement with their children (Petts et al., 2018). Considering the prevailing norms of masculinity and fatherhood, in which an apparent tension lies, one can see how absent imprisoned fathers may be doubly wounding for the children left behind, as they “fail” on two fronts: being a provider and being emotionally involved. Imprisonment drastically limits opportunities for fathers to live up to traditional or modern versions of masculinity and fatherhood, therefore increasing the likelihood that children will experience the father's separation as painful due to his inability to provide both emotionally and financially, leading to a range of difficult experiences.

Outcomes of parental imprisonment for children

Children can experience numerous difficulties after parental imprisonment, such as depression, aggressive behavior, withdrawal, and regression (Murray, 2005), significant increases in aggressive behavior and attentional difficulties for children with an incarcerated father (Geller et al., 2012), and disruptions to their academic and cognitive development (Fox et al., 2023; Haskins, 2016). There is also increased risk of child homelessness (Wildeman, 2013), as well as disruption in key developmental processes between parent and child (Arditti, 2016).

A scoping review of young people's perspectives on parental imprisonment (Zhang & Flynn, 2025) described a range of difficult experiences, such as separation and lack of meaningful contact, parentification, secrecy or not sharing feelings, stigma and stereotyping, and perceived powerlessness. Although 12 of the reviewed articles specifically focused on the child's experience of having an incarcerated father, no study specifically focused on the son's experience. Domżalska (2022) noted the following emotional reactions of children to their parent's imprisonment: regret, anger, sadness, and shame, as well as ambivalent feelings about contact. Research indicates that children must learn to manage feelings of secrecy, shame, and stigma in response to their parent's imprisonment (McGinley & Jones, 2018).

When considering the specific impact of an imprisoned father, a study of 35 children (of which 19 were male), found that children experienced high rates of posttraumatic stress, and internalizing and externalizing symptoms, ambiguous loss, and boundary ambiguity (Bocknek et al., 2009). Ambiguous loss theory (Boss, 1999) states that uncertainty or lack of information about the status of a loved one as present or absent, alive or dead, can be traumatizing for families as they must live with the “paradox of absence and presence” (Boss, 2007, p. 105). Boundary ambiguity is defined as “a state in which family members are uncertain in their perception about who is in or out of the family and who is performing what roles and tasks within the family system” (Boss & Greenberg, 1984, p. 536). This can lead to a disruption in the family dynamic and subsequent dysfunction and stress (Dyer et al., 2012).

The father's absence due to imprisonment has implications for longer-term development, with paternal incarceration in young childhood being predictive of rule-breaking behavior in adolescence (Del Toro et al., 2023). These findings are mirrored in Bradshaw et al.'s (2021) and Turney's (2022) research that illustrates the association between paternal imprisonment and emotional and behavioral difficulties. A review by Herreros-Fraile et al. (2023) that also documented the negative impact of paternal incarceration on child outcomes highlighted the importance of developmental stage, with young children (0 to 6 years old) experiencing more cognitive and educational difficulties, older children (6 to 11 years old) experiencing more internalizing and externalizing difficulties, and adolescents engaging in more risk-taking behaviors.

As well as exploring this experience from the child's perspective as it is happening, several studies have looked at this experience retrospectively, by interviewing adults and asking them to reflect on the impact of their parent's imprisonment during their childhood (e.g., Deacon, 2023; Kautz, 2017; Luther, 2015). Deacon (2023) found that children had negative prison visiting experiences, inadequate quality of contact with the imprisoned parent, and that children felt judged and received insufficient support. Kautz (2017) focused on the emotional implications of imprisonment, which included disbelief and denial, confusion, fear, sadness, anger, helplessness, ambivalence, and acceptance. King et al. (2024), in their study of adult children with imprisoned parents, described how they grappled with ambiguous loss, negotiated stigma, and made meaning out of their experiences. Luther (2015) found that resilience in children with an imprisoned parent is helped by having the right social support from caring others.

Other factors that promote resilience and positive adjustment in children include sensitive, responsive caregiving, close relationships with caregivers, and good relationships with other adults in their system (Johnson & Arditti, 2023), mirroring the findings of Weidberg (2017; who also included supportive peers as contributing to resilience) and Luther (2015). When children are part of a social group, this mediates the impact of paternal imprisonment, supporting their prosocial development across childhood and adolescence, and buffering against stigma and stereotyping (Bradshaw et al., 2024). Overall, much of the previous research has examined the impact of having an imprisoned father on childhood, including the short-term or more immediate impact of his absence on the child and family, without necessarily considering the in-depth, longer-term impacts.

Unique effects of paternal imprisonment on boys

The research outlined so far has focused on the child's experience, without differentiating gender. However, an imprisoned father can have unique meanings and connotations, as well as effects on boys. Separation due to parental imprisonment is a strong predictor for later antisocial behavior in boys, as well as increased internalizing problems (Murray, 2005; Murray & Farrington, 2008), the former of which was mirrored in Sack's (1977) clinical observations of six families, in which the boys began exhibiting aggressive and antisocial behavior in the context of their father's imprisonment. The author's interpretation was that these boys were identifying with the “negative” aspects of their father as a way of dealing with his loss and sustaining the relationship with their now absent father. Paternal incarceration has effects on boys' attention problems and aggression, over and beyond the effects on girls (Geller et al., 2012), as well as increasing their likelihood of being charged for delinquency (Olsen, 2022).

Theoretical frameworks used to understand effects of parental imprisonment

A comprehensive review of the effects of parental imprisonment on children (Murray & Farrington, 2008) illustrated that, when considering the mechanisms that lead to adverse child outcomes, a range of theoretical perspectives are drawn on that include trauma and attachment theories, social learning theories, and stigma and labeling theories.

However, psychoanalytic theory is not mentioned in this review, though there is a rich literature that examines the role of the father in child development. Psychoanalytic theory offers a unique lens through which to view the experience of having an incarcerated parent, particularly a father. Psychoanalytic theory offers the opportunity to dig deeper into the lived experience of parental imprisonment, by privileging the production of knowledge that occurs in a relational encounter, without overimposition of categories or attempts to quantify what the participant is saying (Kvale, 1999). It does this while still retaining a level of analysis and interpretation, of reflection on how the data is gathered, and questions the validity of the presented knowledge (Kvale, 1999). For this reason, it is a suitable lens through which to explore the experience of having an incarcerated father, as it will likely illumine hitherto untouched on areas of this experience for the children left behind.

A psychoanalytic overview of the father's role

In her review of the impact of father absence from a psychoanalytic perspective, Jones (2007) outlined the key functions of the father for the developing child: serving as another attachment figure, facilitating separation and individuation, becoming integrated as part of the child's self, providing a containing function for the mother–child dyad, helping to regulate aggressive and sexual impulses, and developing the child's ability to tolerate and navigate multiple relationships. With his absence, it is likely that these processes and functions would be affected. Father absence can lead to father hunger (Herzog, 2013), a state in which there can be an intense unconscious yearning for a father figure alongside a sense of there being a void in the internal world. This can co-occur with the experience of a “father wound” (Miller, 2013). This impacts sons in a unique way, as they lack a template for how to be a man in the world, which can lead to difficulties in intimate relationships and forming a sense of positive self-worth (Balcom, 1998), in enacting their gender roles, and in navigating key developmental thresholds, such as adolescence, young adulthood, and eventually fatherhood (Miller, 2013). As adults, they tend to respond to this loss in two ways: through repudiation, disavowal, and denial of their father and what he stands for; or overidentification with the idealized father (Balcom, 1998).

The current study

Previous studies have either explored the impact of an imprisoned father through the lens of attachment and trauma (e.g., Poehlmann-Tynan et al., 2017), or stigmatization and economic strain (e.g., McGinley & Jones, 2018; Shaw, 2023), or else have looked at the experience from the child's perspective as they negotiate ambiguous loss and boundary ambiguity (e.g., Bocknek et al., 2009). Research has tended to focus on children's experiences (as it happening or retrospectively), or general behavioral, emotional, social, and cognitive outcomes. However, little research has explored the specific experience for the adult son of growing up with an imprisoned father. We know that a father's imprisonment can have detrimental impacts on a child's development, with unique effects for the developing boy. Yet previous research has tended to explore this issue from a cognitive or explicit perspective, which privileges overt meaning over latent meaning, using surveys, measures, observations, or a brief interview process. It has tended to focus on the more immediate impact, in childhood, of the imprisoned absent father. The question posed by this research is how does the absence of a father due to imprisonment affect the son's development, their inner world, and their relationships with themselves and others, as they reflect on this in adulthood? It is concerned with the medium- and long-term impact of this experience. This study focuses on the meaning-making these participants engaged in, utilizing a psychoanalytic approach with multiple interviews to tap into the implicit meanings and relational patterns that underlie this experience.

METHOD

Participants

Participants were not recruited through a specific service or organization. Recruitment was open to people in both the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland) and the Republic of Ireland, due to their similarities in culture, geographic proximity, and shared language. The research was advertised using online forums, posters in the university, social media, and through various organizations that supported families of prisoners. People were eligible to participate if they met the following criteria: (a) They were adult males who had experienced the absence of their father (who himself was an adult at the time of imprisonment) during childhood or adolescence for a period of at least 1 year, (b) were based in either the United Kingdom or Ireland, and (c) were open to participating in three 1-hour interviews. The threshold for paternal absence was set at 1 year, as increased duration of absence seems to contribute to increased negative effects for the children left behind (Swisher & Shaw-Smith, 2015), with a year constituting a significant period in a child's development. In total, six individuals expressed interest in participating. To preserve anonymity, pseudonyms were given: Robert, Ben, Fiachra, Glen, Paul, and Harry. The age range was 30 to 66 years old. Two participants were based in the United Kingdom and the rest were based in Ireland. Although none of them were recruited through a service, they reported histories of drug and alcohol abuse, both past and current, experiences of multiple traumas, mental health difficulties, and suicidal ideation.

Of the six, Ben and Glen still had a living father. Prior to the event of imprisonment, all the participants' fathers bar one (Glen) were living at home and in a relationship with their mother. After imprisonment, Robert, Fiachra, and Harry's parents separated, whereas the parents of Ben and Paul remained together. Two participants did not have children of their own (Robert and Ben). Fiachra has three sons, Glen has two stepchildren, Paul has two children, one deceased, and Harry has three children. See Table 1 for a description of time and age of imprisonment. For some participants, their fathers were imprisoned on multiple occasions.

At the time of the interviews, Robert was single, Ben was in a long-term relationship, Fiachra was divorced, Paul was never married, but separated from the mother of his children, and Harry was in a long-term relationship (not with the mother of his children).

Ethical considerations

The study received ethical approval from the university research ethics committee. Each participant was offered the choice of a debriefing session with a clinical advisor (a qualified clinical psychologist and the third author). However, none availed of this. A list of supports was also provided at the end of the process. Informed consent was received from each participant at the beginning of the study, as well as their consent for the research to be published in an academic journal.

Interviews and procedure

The approach used in this study was qualitative, informed by the psychoanalytic consultation format (Cartwright, 2004; Holmes, 2013; Kvale, 1999), underpinned by a range of psychoanalytic theories that have been concerned with how material arises within the context of an open consultation. It consisted of three approximately 1-hour interviews, spaced across an interval of 3 to 15 weeks. Repeat qualitative interviews have been demonstrated to facilitate rapport and trust, generate reflexivity, contribute to more nuanced data, and make the research more ethical as it increases researcher care for participants (Goyes & Sandberg, 2025). Multiple interviews allow for creation of a liminal space in which new meanings can be coconstructed (De Luca Picione & Valsiner, 2017). Interviews were conducted in a mixture of mediums and in several contexts: in-person and online, in the university, and some in the participants' homes or a nearby location. Strong feelings can still be elicited via an online medium (Eichenberger & Boswell, 2024; Sayers, 2021), making it appropriate for this study. Both online and in-person interviews were used to increase accessibility for participants and to facilitate their preferences. However, the preferred medium was in-person, as online settings may be less evocative of a deeper emotional connection and have difficulty replicating the in-person experience (Maroti et al., 2026).

Once participants had expressed interest in participating, they were given an information sheet and consent form to review and sign prior to the first interview. At the first interview, participants were informed about the purpose of the research and informed that there would be three open-ended interviews without a set format. They were then asked for demographic details. After this, they were encouraged to speak about whatever thoughts and feelings came to mind in relation to the research topic. Questions were used to guide exploration if participants appeared stuck. Notes on thoughts, feelings, and impressions were taken immediately after each interview, but not during. The second interview involved asking the participants whether they had reflected on the material from the first interview and to continue sharing what came to mind. Questions and comments were used to foster exploration. For example, “how did your father's imprisonment affect you and the family?” or “tell me more about what this experience was like for you in childhood.” However, it is important to note that it is not aligned with the epistemology of this research (i.e., knowledge produced relationally, unique to each encounter) to provide standardized prompts and questions—these arose organically during each interview. Similar to the idea of active interviewing (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995), this method views knowledge as something that is created in a particular interaction between the researcher and participant. The knowledge does not lie waiting in the participant to be drawn out by the right questions but is something that is collaboratively produced. There is a focus on the process of how meaning and knowledge are arrived at. Finally, in the third interview, participants were asked to reflect on the research process and what it was like to talk about this subject at length, as well as anything else that came to mind that they had not shared yet. Where necessary, they were provided with a debriefing sheet and linked in with the clinical advisor. Ideally, interviews were conducted within 1 to 2 weeks of each other, however this was not always possible due to participant circumstances.

The data collected included verbal content, emotional responses, and nonverbal communication, as well as transference–countertransference reactions, which refers to the feelings and reactions stirred up in both the interviewee and researcher. The lead researcher conducted the interviews and completed the write-up. The second coauthor was critical in assisting with the analysis and the interpretation of the gathered data.

Analysis

The analysis was psychoanalytically informed (Cartwright, 2004; Holmes, 2013; Kvale, 1999). The key aim of the interview format was to allow for the possibility of the analysis of implicit meaning, relational dynamics, and intrapsychic processes that may not be available through other interview formats. Several theoretical assumptions underlie the analysis (Cartwright, 2004): (a) the construction of meaning, (b) the associative nature of interview material, (c) context, and (d) inchoate transference–countertransference impressions. Construction of meaning refers to how meaning is coconstructed around a certain topic in a relational encounter. The associative nature of the interview refers to how thoughts and affects are often linked together, often unconsciously. The context is critical in interpretation; in this case, the interview format focuses attention on a particular topic and facilitates discussion of associations around this. Context refers to how the interview is experienced in the room by the interviewer (i.e., how things are heard in the moment vs. how they are heard when listening to a recording) as well as the way the interview context (i.e., any internal and external factors) come to bear on the way a participant communicates and the way they are understood. This can be thought of as the familial, social, and cultural context in which the participant is embedded, as well as the unique context of the interview. Finally, transference–countertransference impressions refer to the use of feeling states in the interviewer to make sense of interview material, even in the short span of interviews available.

The analysis consisted of the following steps, as outlined by Cartwright (2004). Before, during, and after each interview, careful attention was paid to feeling states (Holmes, 2013) and perceptions (as this may have pointed to significant material). For example, the interviewer noticed a strong feeling of sadness when listening to one participant talk about difficult experiences in their childhood in a detached way. Though they did not seem to be experiencing sadness when sharing, the interviewer noticed this feeling of sadness (a countertransference reaction) and wondered if it pointed to potentially significant material—potentially the unmet and unprocessed sadness. This method of matching significant countertransference impressions with verbal material was used with all participants, supported by the use of a reflexive journal, as well as individual and group supervision. Then, familiarization with the interview material occurred through transcribing, repeated listening, and repeated reading of the transcripts. Throughout this process, core narratives were searched for, which involved repeated exposure to the totality of the interview material and then matching this with significant countertransference–transference impressions. Finally, there was an exploration of the interviewee's internal representation of the world, and how the self has internalized certain experiences and key figures, providing a window into their intrapsychic processes. A reflective diary was kept throughout the research process (interviews, analysis, and write-up), to document any arising thoughts and feelings and to note any researcher bias (Cartwright, 2004). Group and individual supervision were instrumental in developing and clarifying emergent themes through discussion of thoughts, feelings, and impressions elicited during the interview and analytical process. This development of themes arose from repeated readings of the transcripts and consultation of notes taken before and after each interview, both individually and in supervision. Particular attention was paid to significant and evocative words or phrases, emerging central messages or narratives across and within participants' accounts, and the developing relationship between interviewer and interviewee (Cartwright, 2004), with a curiosity about any thoughts or feelings elicited through this relationship (i.e., transference and countertransference). For example, if a certain idea, feeling, or narrative repeatedly arose throughout the analysis, this was noted as a possible emerging theme, which was then contrasted with other participant accounts, discussed in supervision, and compared against initial thoughts and impressions noted in the reflexive journal.

Reflexivity

To minimize observer bias (Cartwright, 2004), the lead researcher bracketed his motivations, interests, and life experiences (Tufford & Newman, 2012), noting that he had previously worked in a prison setting, with fathers, so naturally had an interest in father–son dynamics and how they are affected by imprisonment. Equally, the lead researcher was interested in masculinity and how it manifests or changes over time. As a male researcher with a father figure, he was approaching this research from an insider perspective in some respects but remained on the outside due to his life experiences (i.e., his father was never imprisoned and never absent). Observer bias was mitigated through individual and group supervision, as well as the use of a reflective journal. To be mindful of his own interest in his relationship with his father and how this might color the research process, he engaged in regular personal therapy throughout to increase awareness of and bracket off these personal conflicts and feelings.

RESULTS

For each participant, the impact of growing up with an imprisoned father was reflected in range of intrapsychic and interpersonal experiences. Whether their father was someone who participants identified with or disidentified from, he appeared to haunt or dictate their lives in diverse ways. With an experienced lack of a secure base at home, participants appeared to seem lost in the world, on its margins, and looking for a place of psychological safety. Participants described the need to power through the psychological impact of their father's absence, to grow up quickly and in the process experienced a loss of their childhood innocence. Both the content and process of the interviews was used to inform the analysis, resulting in the identification of four main themes, which are outlined below. However, primarily verbal data are presented, as it is important to ground the themes in what participants actually said to ensure their voices are adequately represented. Interpretation of these quotes, with links to relevant research and theory, will be provided in the Discussion.

Theme 1: The Liminal Father: The Painful Absence and Psychological Presence

This theme conveys the presence of the father in each of the participants' lives, of the person he was, that could have been, or that should have been, an afterimage that appeared to haunt their lives in the present. The father seemed to occupy a liminal space in participants' accounts; a state of ambiguity brought about by his status as prisoner. Participants described efforts to make sense of their father's absence and the effect it had on their unique life paths, with some identifying with or disidentifying from who their father was in the world, including his sanctioned actions. Some participants described a more benevolent image that may not have always reflected their father in his entirety.

Participants spoke of their father in varied ways. Robert provided a rich description of his father, describing how he kept him at the forefront of his mind and often used him as a guide: “I often use him to make decisions. How would he do this? Why did he react that way?” (Robert, interview 1). Yet at the same time he highlighted how he “went the opposite way” to his dad, “trying to break that cycle” (Robert, interview 3). Robert tended to focus on the admirable qualities in his father and highlighted the specialness of the relationship they had: “I was extremely attached to him even though I didn't get to see him much” (Robert, interview 1). However, he also distanced himself from the worst aspects of his father—reflected in his use of “you” when describing his father's “reactiveness or aggression, you don't like that, you hate that in a way” (Robert, interview 1).

Fiachra described a negative image of his father, an “abuser” who, though he “[made] amends within his own mind, he never tried to make amends in regard his family” (Fiachra, interview 2). Fiachra viewed his dad as “the opposite of anything that I was or I became. That he wasn't somebody who I could look up or that I could say that was my dad” (Fiachra, interview 3). Fiachra tended to highlight his own positive qualities but did not mention his own flaws, as if he was trying to emphasize all the ways in which he wasn't shaped by his father's legacy. This appeared to influence how he wanted his own children to see him: “And I remember having a conversation with them … have you ever heard anybody say anything bad about me? And they said, no I haven't, and I said, well maybe that tells you about … who I am and my character” (Fiachra, interview 2).

Paul, like Robert, noticed the similarities between him and his father, though he seemed to view this with more ambivalence. Initially, he expressed strong judgment about people leaving their familial responsibilities behind when doing dangerous work: “why the fuck are you getting married man ' we could be ended … and it's selfish of you to have a family and be in that line of work” (Paul, interview 1). Yet by the time of the third interview, he recognized that “then again I abandoned my family,” framing it as something he did to protect his children from being “damaged and fucked up” (Paul, interview 3) and recognizing the way in which his actions mirrored his father's perceived abandonment of the family when he went to prison, when “[they] should have been the priority” (Paul, interview 1). Perhaps because of this, and his lack of “paternal instinct” (Paul, interview 3), he seemed to be trying to prevent the transmission of dysfunctional fathering, something mirrored also by Harry: “there was aspects where I felt I was damaged from my upbringing that I didn't want to impose upon [my children]” (Harry, interview 3). Their experience of being fathered shadowed their attitude to fathering.

Participants recounted how they became “wild” (Harry), “destructive” (Robert), “violent” (Ben), and “anti-police” (Glen), mirroring some of their father's more antisocial behaviors and attitudes. It seemed that most participants could see echoes of their fathers in themselves, despite his relative absence from their lives: “I believe nurture is much more foundational than nature. However, there's lots of things that reflect that kind of … genetic transfer from him to me, which is mad” (Glen, interview 1). Whether or not participants wanted their father's presence (or absence) to influence them, it did, even if it was something to be moved away from: “He was totally the polar opposite of everything that I stand for” (Fiachra, interview 1). Participants seemed to describe their father as a guide, in both what to do and what not to do: “I seen what the opposite of freedom is when my dad was banged up in [prison] … and I thought … fuck that, I'm not going there” (Paul, interview 1).

Participants experienced a mixture of feelings toward their father's presence and toward his role as the “father.” For Glen and Harry, though they were at different life stages and ages, with one father alive and one dead, both related to their father not as a father, but as either a “weird uncle” (Glen, interview 1) or as a “stranger” with a “huge distance” between them (Harry, interview 1). For Harry, the beginning of that “stranger” relationship began from the moment of imprisonment, when he described the newly created gulf between them, knowing “that you're going to be leaving that [visiting] room there and he won't be coming with you” (Harry, interview 1). He was unable to close this gap postimprisonment, noting the “huge distance between [them]” and acknowledging that “once that bond was broken … it would never be repaired” (Harry, interview 1).

Glen experienced ambivalence in relation to his father, saying that he “respected him as a man” (Glen, interview 1), that he “[likes] him in a weird way” (Glen, interview 1) but that he was a “horrible person” (Glen, interview 3) who he felt in the “shadow” (Glen, interview 1) of during his younger years. Robert expressed a similar ambivalence, of contradictory feelings of both anger and love: “Knowing some of the things he did to my family, he's probably the only person I'd hit … [laughs] and then give him a hug” (Robert, interview 2). Even Fiachra, despite “[blaming] him for the family breakdown” (Fiachra, interview 1), acknowledged the way his father influenced his life path: “has my father helped me? Yes massively, but in ways that he would never know” (Fiachra, interview 2).

The father's presence diminished when imprisonment began, with participants recalling how they noticed feelings of loss and distance when visiting him: “the oddest thing in the world is sitting down with your father … then you go again. You don't make that contact, all that's now gone, all the things that you had” (Harry, interview 1). The use of physical barriers or dividers, meaning “you weren't allowed to cross to give him a hug” (Ben, interview 2) prevented the father's presence from being physically experienced. Paul described how his father was “always in a cage” when they visited him, and they needed to use “the phone and just talked through that” (Paul interview 1). His presence appeared to fade or be harder to engage with, even though they could see and talk to him: “it was almost as if my dad had died but I wasn't allowed to mourn him” (Ben, interview 1). It was as if the act of being caged extended also to the participants, such that both father and son were “beyond the bars” in a sense, unable to properly reach other. It seemed that the aforementioned feelings of loss and distance, as exemplified by the bars of the prison cage, continued to constrain the father–son relationship even after imprisonment, forcing a level of distance between father and son that, for some participants, seemed unbridgeable. Participants spoke of being unable to engage with their father fully, with the cage standing in as a representation of the psychological barrier that now stood between them.

Theme 2: Guarding the Interior: Navigating Emotional Pain and Distancing Strategies

This theme conveys the process of distancing used by participants in relation to their inner emotional worlds and the ways in which they protected themselves from that which was too painful to experience. This distancing or disconnection was accomplished in different ways. Participants described how this impacted on their intimate relationships by causing them to distance from others or embroil themselves in dysfunctional relationships. It seemed that, at times, participants wanted to shelter themselves behind a psychologically protective wall, revealed in both how they recounted their experiences and how they were experienced in the relational interview encounter. However, there were moments in which participants were able to recognize this process and touch into the emotional pain that had appeared to be long buried.

This theme is perhaps best encapsulated in the idea of the “fortress of solitude” (Paul, interview 2), referring to Superman's place of solace, away from the demands of civilization, where no hurt can touch you: “I have this unique ability to kind of push things, put it in a box, push it to the back and leave it there until I'm ready to deal with it or not” (Paul, interview 2). The interviewer felt himself coming up against a fortress wall at times with some participants—where they could go no further when probed, commenting on the “brick wall inside my head. I just don't want to go beyond that point” (Ben, interview 2). For others, this blocking off was more subtle, such as Paul's tendency to laugh whenever we moved toward emotionally difficult topics: “I don't know how to express myself here, don't know what I'm … you have to give me a pointer, point me in some direction that I can aim at [slight laugh]” (Paul, interview 3) or Glen's tendency to view talk about his father's sanctioned behaviors in an amused and light-hearted manner: “if I don't fucking laugh at my life experiences, I'm gonna start crying at some point” (Glen, interview 2). Ben commented that the interview was like an interrogation: “I feel like it might be better suited to a white room … I've been interviewed by the cops quite a bit as well, it's far more similar to that than a journalist” (Ben, interview 3). This elicited strong feelings of guilt in the interviewer, as well as an increased wariness about probing beyond the “brick wall.”

Participants spoke of the outcomes of distancing from their interior worlds. Robert mentioned that he “checked [himself] into a psych ward” in his early adulthood, noting that “if you bottle it up, you're just a big glass bottle and then it'll smash” (Robert, interview 1). Paul too recognized the way in which he repressed his emotional life: “the problem is when you have so many of these little compartmentalized Pandora's boxes, one day they're going to have to bust open” (Paul, interview 2). It seemed that with this interior distance came a need to present the self in a manner that was not always reflective of inner experience: “And sometimes we believe ourselves when we put on faces, that's part of the problem” (Ben, interview 3). This self-guarding seemed to extent to intimate relationships, with emotional dependence spoken of as threatening and restrictive: “I can't … settle down, I can't do it … I was climbing the fucking walls” (Paul, interview 1). Robert spoke about his own wariness of relationships, linking it to his fears of embodying his dad's behaviors: “I'm … not in a relationship … wouldn't want the control a woman would have” for fear of “[reacting] maybe the same [as his father]” (Robert, interview 2).

The interview format confronted participants with the degree of distance and silence they had placed between themselves and their painful early experiences. Talking at length about themselves appeared to diminish this distance: “You're pushing me towards the uncomfortable parts that I don't want to think about. Just the silence itself can do that” (Ben, interview 3). Fiachra realized, during the interviews, that he “had suppressed that much stuff,” that he had “compartmentalized” (Fiachra, interview 2) his experiences, but was only realizing the extent of this when talking to the interviewer. Participants spoke of how they had “blanked” (Robert, interview 1) or “blacked out” (Paul, interview 1) painful memories, sometimes “[wanting] time to pass by” and “[wanting] that to be a distant memory away” (Harry, interview 2). The need to distance from painful experiences appeared to lead participants to “build [their] own cages” (Harry, interview 2), indicating that this distance and disconnection came with a restrictive cost.

The provision of space to talk about the experience of their father's imprisonment, though difficult, seemed important for participants in giving voice to something they had previously unarticulated or been unaware of: “Being at the opposite side of the table talking so much it's hard … when I just hit those walls, it was the first time I kind of actually realized the wall was fully almost impenetrable” (Ben, interview 3). Even if the space to talk was experienced as uncomfortable or threatening, participants seemed to want to articulate their experiences so that “some other kid isn't sat … here, like I am now in 20 years, talking to someone like you, saying the exact same thing” (Ben, interview 3). Participants appeared to want to move past this defensive wall and contribute to positive change for people going through a similar experience: “if this stuff keeps getting swept under the carpet, if stuff gets consigned to history and never scratched over, there'll never be a time where people perhaps know how to deal with it in a more fluent way” (Harry, interview 2). The need to remain distanced changed as the distance from childhood increased: “you go through these periods of maybe you blank it out and you push it aside. And then you have to just actually talk about it one day” (Robert, interview 2).

Theme 3: Pushed to the Edges: Confronting Carceral Stigma and Processing Social Rejection

This theme describes the ways in which participants felt alienated, detached, and isolated from others. Participants described being pushed to the edges of things, which was both experienced as an imposition and as something to be embraced. The shadow of their father's imprisonment and the resultant experience of stigma hung over their childhood and carried through into adulthood. With this came a sense of mistrust and suspiciousness, rooted in their own experiences of being pushed away.

Participants discussed feeling alienated from society, either through choice or through being forced to the edges, particularly after their father's imprisonment. However, this sense of being “on the rim of life” (Harry, interview 2) preexisted their father's imprisonment for some, in which “there was never any normality as a family” (Glen, interview 2), related to the family's general way of life as dictated by their father's influence: “everyone we kind of knew was living outside of what you call a normal life … we weren't normal” (Ben, interview 1). This was further amplified after the imprisonment, as participants described being unfairly “labeled” and “ostracized” (Ben, interview 1) and made into “pariahs” (Harry, interview 1), instead of being seen for themselves.

Some participants took the “wild” (Robert, interview 1) path after their father's imprisonment, embracing being on the margins: “I … got labeled and I … bought into that label myself. People just assumed that I was going to be like my dad. So, I started behaving like him even though I had never done that up until that point” (Ben, interview 1).

The interviewer noticed feeling like an “outsider” in relation to participants' experiences of being on the edge, as if being positioned as a conventional insider who belonged to “normal” society and would not necessarily understand: “Where it's weird, probably from your perspective, [absent fathers] wouldn't be a normal thing” (Robert, interview 3). This feeling of being “othered” in relation to participants seemed to point to a felt sense of what it was like for them feeling othered after their father's imprisonment.

Paul and Harry both felt highly stigmatized for being the sons of political prisoners: “We had protesters outside the school giving us shit during my father's trial … We were only fucking kids” (Paul, interview 3). Harry recounted how his life was “brought under scrutiny and into disrepute” despite being a child who had “never done a thing wrong. And suddenly now you're all wrong … you're suddenly persona non grata” (Harry, interview 1). Paul shared a similar sentiment: “I genuinely don't feel like I've ever fit into normal society” (Paul, interview 1). They responded by getting away from these stigmatized places: “I went off to sea at about 17 … that was a nice way of putting distance between myself and that place” (Harry, interview 2). Paul spoke of periods of belonging, where he founds groups on the margins of life: “The punk scene was always very accepting” (Paul, interview 1). Both Harry and Paul described finding spaces where they were able to develop a sense of themselves outside of the confines of other people's judgments, instead of being “suffered” and “endured” (Harry, interview 2) by the people around them: “You start to find that you're not that nasty little Irish fucker that those people scream at you” (Harry, interview 2). However, Harry still felt as if he carried this burden of stigma with him: “you carry that through your life … and as much as you'd like to let it go, you cannot help but retain some of it” (Harry, interview 1). This left Harry “always coming from a defensive position … that's carried through to [him] to this day” in relation to what others might say or think of him, due to the legacy of his father's imprisonment, a sentiment shared by Ben as he shared his fear of “the feeling of being different once again” (Ben, interview 2).

Ben spoke of the way in which he felt stranded between two worlds, not feeling at home in either: “But here there's a constant feeling that I still have to play this person of two parts … I love being a nobody, a face in millions of people, it makes it all so much easier” (Ben, interview 1). Ben wanted to escape from his history and felt that physically moving abroad was the way to do that, but at the time of the interviews felt “completely lost” as if he was “out in space” (Ben, interview 3).

These experiences of being pushed to the edges were accompanied by an increased “distrust for anybody in authority” (Ben, interview 1) and disillusionment about people they had previously looked up to: “I guess I mean you see them as father figures, but they're not father figures” (Robert, interview 2). Paul recognized that it was “unhealthy being on [his] own” but also became “disillusioned very quickly” when socializing with others (Paul, interview 3). It seemed that participants expected something more of the people they looked up to, both in their childhood and adulthood, with some having to reckon with the disappointment of disillusionment: “it was very disappointing to realize that these people were just different forms of an asshole” (Ben, interview 1).

However, not all participants felt pushed to the margins.1 Glen's responsive social “network of people” (Glen, interview 2) and his grandfather “who was like [his] dad” (Glen, interview 1) appeared to buffer against the sense of social isolation that pervaded other participants' accounts, reflected in his current state of belonginess: “I've only got people that really kind of support me, love me and contribute something positive to my life” (Glen, interview 2). Though Ben felt stranded between two worlds, he had found a place of belonging in his long-term relationship: “I always kinda put a wall between me and pretty much everybody else up until I met my girlfriend, she helped me break all of that down” (Ben, interview 2). Although Robert felt like the “oddball” at times in his community as a child, he remained living there, noting that “it's the road you always go back to for some reason” and now feeling “close to people” (Robert, interview 1); however, he still remained wary of intimate relationships.

In contrast to their early experiences of being pushed to the edges, some participants seemed to remedy this as they got older. Fiachra's account of the importance of his own children and of creating a nurturing, welcoming environment was emphasized strongly: “I've always tried to make sure that that I provided for them as and when they've needed something. And probably that's because of the poor relationship I had with my father, that I haven't wanted that for them” (Fiachra, interview 2). With the participants who had found their place in the world, the interviewer noticed strong feelings of contentment: “I've put my anchor down there and done it all and I'm building things, and I think I'm living a fairly good life” (Harry, interview 2). Conversely, for those who were still drifting or not quite settled, a flicker of loneliness and uncertainty pervaded their narratives: “Yeah just lost, just lost at the moment. Lost as to who I am” (Ben, interview 3).

Theme 4: Powering Through: Losing Innocence and Creating Meaning

This theme describes the necessity for participants to power through the impact of their father's imprisonment. It also reflects the difficulties participants had in powering through and what was expected of them in this process. For most, their father's imprisonment was a life-changing event, irrevocably altering the family system: “as a family we exploded,” leaving the family life without “a certain substance, it lacked a framework” (Harry, interview 1). In this vacuum, powering through seemed to be the only way to cope, with participants feeling like they “grew up very quickly” (Fiachra, interview 1). Ben felt that he “had to step up or else things were gonna get worse” (Ben, interview 2). Some participants coped with by wearing a “façade” (Ben, interview 2), using violence, by “[blanking] it out for a long time” (Robert, interview 1), or becoming fiercely “independent” and the “man of the house” (Paul, interview 3).

This led to some participants feeling the need to take on their father's role—a role that was sometimes challenged when their father returned: “he started playing the authoritative father figure … I've been the man of the house, I've been the one that's been keeping it down here while you're inside” (Paul, interview 1). Ben too showed his father that he “wasn't the same kid he'd left when he went away four years previously” by being “violent towards him” (Ben, interview 2). The dynamic changed too toward their mothers and siblings. Glen noted feeling like a “rescuer” in relation to his mother, seeing her as a “seriously vulnerable woman” (Glen, interview 2). Both Ben and Fiachra felt the need to be the “protector” (Fiachra, interview 1) in relation to their younger siblings: “I had to be the craziest and people would leave me alone and leave my brother alone and we would have that level of protection” (Ben, interview 2). Participants described a loss of childhood innocence and an abrupt exposure to adult tribulations: “I was conscious of weird things from a young age,” such as “walking around a shop with her thinking we haven't got much money” (Glen, interview 3). Harry remembered “someone looking at school photographs of me then and saying you stopped smiling, you just had a grimace at the camera, there was no smile. … You grow up quickly in that situation” (Harry, interview 1).

This desire to power through the pain of their father's imprisonment and its effect on their family meant that vulnerability was something to be pushed down. Participants often spoke casually of difficult early experiences, recalling the events but not the emotions. But behind this “calm and collected” exterior (Robert, interview 1), flickers of vulnerability made themselves known, such as when Harry became tearful when talking about injustices in the world, linking this to his own experiences as a innocent child and being thrust out of innocence without his say so: “people are dragged into things that they have no wish to be dragged into or have no control over. You know, that's the deal for me” (Harry, interview 1). This sense of unfairness, of “why me?” was echoed in both Paul and Fiachra's descriptions of how they were sent away from their home environments, Paul to a youth detention facility and Fiachra to a care home, with no say in the matter: “I just felt like it's happened to me dad and it's happened to me, why? I didn't understand” (Paul, interview 2); “nobody ever gave me the chance to be able to answer” (Fiachra, interview 3). Participants, by necessity, had to power through and grow up before their time. They did not feel as if they had a choice: “what else are you gonna do? There was no one else there to help” (Ben, interview 2).

It seemed that this powering through was necessary for participants, shaping them in powerful ways: “it definitely had a massive impact on my shaping and my forming and who I am now” (Fiachra, interview 2). Despite lacking that “cradle of family to settle back into” (Harry, interview 2), all participants exhibited some form of resilience, eliciting noticeable feelings of admiration in the interviewer. This resilience was reflected in how they had come to terms with their early experiences and how this informed their attitude to life: “am I annoyed about it? No. It made me who I am and what I am and able to be quite philosophical about life you know that it isn't all about you getting the best chances in the world you know you're gonna have to make do with what you've got” (Harry, interview 1).

Participants seemed to grasp control over their life circumstances and begin shaping them in ways that were meaningful for them, deliberately going down a different path, determined to make a difference for people in similar situations (even if later they became disillusioned by this): “I want them to have what I didn't have I suppose, which is somebody fighting in their corner. And that's why I got into the [career]. That's kind of why it burnt me out too” (Ben, interview 2). Some participants found ways to continue powering through into their adult lives—through work in Harry's case: “I tended to you know sort of bury myself in that and become … enveloped in it … wrapped up in your work” (Harry, interview 2). For Robert, it was the search for justice on his father's behalf that appeared to help him power through the pain of it all, though he recognized that this search would not necessarily fix everything: “You tend to block other stuff out like looking at pictures of him or hearing about stories in between … because you feel that there's been an injustice, so you're … thinking if you get justice … everything'll be ok. It's one of these things, probably not” (Robert, interview 3).

Powering through came with its costs. It was if participants had to push through their early experiences and get enough distance to be able to finally confront the pain they had pushed to the side: “There was never a time years before where I was … comfortable to discuss it. It was too close to me at that point” (Harry, interview 2). Ben's strategy of being the dependable and independent one, though useful in his earlier years, seemed to backfire in his adult life, in that he experienced suicidal ideation and addiction, something which caused a split within himself: “I always felt like I've been lying a little bit to everyone because I pretend that everything's fine, everything's good, but I still suffer with addiction issues, I still struggle with all the same mental health problems I had when I was a kid, I just buried them under a false success story” (Ben, interview 1).

However, the fact of their father's imprisonment was viewed as a necessary evil by some. Ben described how “prison was the best thing that happened to [my father], because it gave him time to reflect on all the issues he needed to reflect on, and he came out of that a completely different person” (Ben, interview 1). For Fiachra, having his father removed from the family environment was a necessity for their safety, due to the “[his] sisters being abused” (Fiachra, interview 1). Glen shared his honest assessment of his father's imprisonment: “I kind of always felt that they were probably doing the right thing, locking him up” (Glen, interview 1), with Harry too noting that “[they] were better off in some ways that he wasn't there” (Harry, interview 3).

DISCUSSION

The four themes—“The Liminal Father,” “Guarding the Interior,” “Pushed to the Edges,” and “Powering Through”—appear to reflect the significant shift in participants' psychological worlds following their father's imprisonment, both in how they grappled with it during their childhood and how it altered their pattern of relating to themselves and others later in their adult lives. The Liminal Father refers to the space the father occupied on the boundary between presence and absence during and after his imprisonment, as well as to how participants identified/disidentified with their fathers. Guarding the Interior describes how participants protected themselves from painful inner experiences. Pushed to the Edges describes the ways in which participants felt on the margins of life. Finally, Powering Through illustrates how participants coped with their father's imprisonment, by growing up early, suppressing their vulnerability, and losing their innocence in the process. Taken together, these themes indicate that participants seemed to experience their father as a liminal presence during and after his imprisonment. His imprisonment forced them to dwell in a space on the edges of things, molding the ways in which they protected themselves from emotional pain and creating a need to power through the turmoil of this experience. The findings will be discussed in relation to previous research as well as how they further our understanding about sons' experiences of paternal imprisonment.

The findings build on previous research on ambiguous loss (e.g., Bocknek et al., 2009; King et al., 2024), stigma (e.g., McGinley & Jones, 2018), coping with intense emotions (e.g., Kautz, 2017), growing up quickly or parentification (e.g., Zhang & Flynn, 2025), and resilience or “powering through” (e.g., Johnson & Arditti, 2023). For instance, although previous research and theorizing on ambiguous loss have demonstrated the pain for families of navigating the paradoxical “presence-absence” of an incarcerated parent (Bocknek et al., 2009; Boss, 1999; King et al., 2024), the findings from this research reveal what the internal experience of navigating this loss is like from the son's perspective, as well as how it goes on to shape the development of their identities. Pushed to the Edges relates to previous research on the loss of social ties and an imposition of stigma (e.g., Breen, 2008; McGinley & Jones, 2018; Zhang & Flynn, 2025). Whereas previous research looks at the experience of stigma as it is happening for the family and child, the current findings delineate the ways in which the stigma experienced was experienced as something imposed upon participants as a prison sentence of their own, a sentence that still rippled through them to this day, leaving some in a state of in-betweenness. In this way, stigma was intimately linked with the liminality of their father. The father–son relationship was pushed to the edges in some ways, while also taking on increasing prominence in participants' mental lives and developing character structures, illustrating the paradox of absence–presence mentioned earlier. In this process, distrust grew toward others, particularly those in authority, echoing Miller et al.'s (2011) findings that adverse early experiences may lead to increased threat vigilance, mistrust, and dysfunctional social relationships.

Concurrent with these interpersonal changes was an intrapersonal one, insofar as this relates to the person's experience of and relationship to oneself, and the relationship between parts of the self. Guarding the Interior reflects how participants defended themselves against the emotional pain of their father's imprisonment, morphing into a general strategy of defending against painful emotions. Perhaps as a way to manage the intensity of these early experiences, participants engaged in a range of defensive processes, such as isolation of affect (remembering the facts, but not the emotion of early events), idealization and devaluation (placing their father on a pedestal or seeing him as the source of all their troubles; Freud, 1966) or identification with the aggressor (Ferenczi, 1988; Howell, 2014). This reflects Sack's (1977) observations of aggressive behavior in sons of imprisoned fathers. As many participants were exposed to their father's violent or antisocial behaviors prior to imprisonment, it is likely this elicited anxiety that participants responded to by aligning themselves with these traits in their father, particularly in their early years, or, in other instances, by idealizing him (Frosh, 2012). Equally, this sense of identifying with aspects of their father may have served to bridge the distance and anxiety elicited by his imprisonment.

Participants may have inherited certain scripts of masculinity from their fathers and the wider culture (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). This sense of identifying with aspects of their father may have led to their preferred methods of coping with emotion, as outlined above, aligned with a more hegemonic version of masculinity, inhibiting participants' ability to fully express and feel the pain of their early experiences; however, this script began to be modified for some as they grew older, allowing for a different and more expressive relationship toward emotion to emerge, perhaps reflecting a more nurturing masculinity (Miller, 2010).

The Liminal Father and Powering Through point to new ways in which we can understand what this experience is like. Participants appeared to experience an ongoing sense of ambiguous loss (Bocknek et al., 2009; Boss, 1999, 2007; King et al., 2024) in response to their father's imprisonment and its rippling effects on their lives. Imprisonment forced their father into a liminal space, which changed the father–son dynamic, a liminality that seemed to endure after imprisonment. There was a sense of unclear loss for participants—their father was reduced to the restrained space of the visiting room, no longer a physical presence in their everyday lives. It was as if each participant mourned something (Baker, 2001; Berzoff, 2003; Freud, 1917; Kernberg, 2010) when their father went to prison—expectations for an ideal father–son relationship, a change in the image of their father (now a “criminal”), a change in his tangible physical presence. Their father now existed in a transitional space, leaving participants to grapple with the “enigma of the absent presence” (Taiana, 2014). They too were placed in a state of in-betweenness, on the borders of their old life, as shown in Pushed to the Edges.

It seems that, even if their father remained alive, the imprisonment killed a part of him or their relationship in their minds, leading to an experience of loss and mourning. What participants were left with was a “father wound” of sorts (Miller, 2013), a painful impression of his absence, creating reverberations into adulthood. A father wound can be defined as an “internalised, unresolved conflict between father and son” (Diamond, 2007, p. 161), brought about by the physical or emotional absence of the father. Another way of viewing this is that their father's liminality impeded his ability to earn the status of “father” in the eyes of their sons as certain expectations of involvement and presence were not met (Brown-Weinstock et al., 2023). The father's inability to be involved and to provide, according to prevailing norms of fatherhood and masculinity (Dermott, 2014; Hanlon, 2012; Randles, 2020) potentially influenced these feelings of loss. The ambiguity and socially sanctioned nature of the loss appeared to leave participants with this internal wound that they responded to through defensive processes such as those described above, as well as repudiation, disavowal, idealization, and overidentification (Balcom, 1998).

The father's subtle presence seemed to have interpersonal implications, especially for intimate relationships, influencing how they related to others (Jones, 2007) as well as their fears of being dysfunctional fathers themselves. Some had managed to move past these fears and were in long-term relationships, whereas others seemed more reluctant to make those connections. A fear of emotional entanglement, a low sense of self-regard, or a need to be the protector or rescuer characterized participants' narratives, which influenced their navigation of intimate relationships (Balcom, 1998). Without a father's presence, the ability to tolerate and navigate multiple relationships appeared to become more difficult for participants (Jones, 2007).

However, these ways of responding may also have been ways of processing this loss and of engaging in the mourning process. As Baker (2001) and Kernberg (2010) have illustrated in their psychoanalytic description of loss, mourning often features a gradual internalization of the self-other relationship (in this case the father–son relationship), an internal attachment that is maintained over the lifespan and can shape life direction, identity formation, and values. Like Fraiberg et al.'s (1975) observations of the way in which parents can bring past relational experiences into their encounters with their children, the participants in this study seemed to carry this internal attachment to their father with them, using it as a guide to their relationships and philosophies of life, of both what to do and what to avoid. The father, despite his absence, appears to become internalized in participants' psychological worlds (Jones, 2007).

In this context, Powering Through represents how participants, in the context of being pushed past a threshold into an obscure and unknown psychological space after their father's imprisonment, grappled with this disconcerting shift by internalizing their “lost” relationship with their father and allowing it to impact their identity formation and what they considered meaningful in life (King et al., 2024). For some, this meant identifying with him and almost taking his place in the family system (e.g., Ben, Paul, Glen). For others, it meant using him as an internal guide to navigate relationships and life's difficulties (e.g., Robert). Or, it meant using this internal father image as negative symbol to define oneself against (e.g., Fiachra). Perhaps this incorporation of the father into the internal world and developing sense of identity allowed participants to maintain an affective link with him. It seems that the presence–absence of the father remained with participants throughout the rest of their lives, as if “the shadow of the object [father] fell upon the ego [son]” (Freud, 1917).

A strength of this research was its use of multiple interviews, mirroring the findings of Goyes and Sandberg (2025). It allowed for more trust to develop between interviewer and participant and therefore increased the richness and nuance of the data available for analysis. A limitation is perhaps that all participants came from Western-style nuclear families, which may have influenced their experience of their father's imprisonment, as compared to kinship systems where there many adults share the responsibility of caring for children.

Future research should consider the impact of life stage on the processing of this experience. It could be that life developmental stage (Erikson, 1994) affects the way in which participants make sense of this experience. In this study, it was clear that some participants were early on in their processing of it, whereas others had already come to some sort of peace with it. It seems very likely that the impact of fathers' absences for participants here, as well as for men in general whose fathers were imprisoned for a substantial and key period of their childhood, is also connected to the wider familial and social context in which this occurred, including the family's ability to process the loss and the availability of compensatory and substitutive experiences. Equally, the varying offense types may have affected the experience of their father's imprisonment (e.g., abuse vs. political imprisonment), warranting an exploration of the impact of offense type on the lived experience of sons. In this study, some participants (e.g., Harry and Paul) felt their fathers were wrongly imprisoned—this may have led to a qualitatively different experience of having an imprisoned father, as opposed to Fiachra, whose father had engaged in sexual abuse, which tends to carry a greater burden of stigmatization (Harper et al., 2024).

Implications

The implications for clinicians working with sons and families affected by paternal imprisonment are (a) that imprisonment leads to a fundamental change in the father–son relationship, experienced as a loss that can have long-term effects, and therefore understanding the impact of this change is critical in understanding how this population relates to their emotional lives and to others; (b) sons of prisoners may engage in a range of defensive processes to manage emotional pain and maintain the link with their father, but these processes may also inhibit their expression of vulnerability and trust, meaning more time is needed to build a therapeutic relationship; and (c) stigma (and its resultant sense of alienation) carries forward into adult life, suggesting that, for clinicians working with this population, exploring the echoes of stigma in the present is important, as well as targeting stigma and feeling disconnected from others early in childhood, perhaps by focusing on including these sons in social groups where they feel a sense of belonging (Bradshaw et al., 2024). For example, services for families of prisoners including Care After Prison (n.d.) and Bedford Row Family Project (2021) currently offer supports for family members. Services could consider expanding their remit to include specific social groups for the children of prisoners, with a focus on shared activities that allow meaningful peer relationships to form, addressing stigma, loneliness, and emotional difficulties, facilitated by trained clinicians.

Prisons may also benefit from being more facilitative of the father–son relationship to mitigate against the sense of loss experienced by the sons left behind. This could include making prisons more child friendly and allowing more contact between imprisoned fathers and their sons. A theater project completed in 2024 in Mountjoy prison, Dublin, provided the opportunity to men in custody, some of them fathers, to create and perform a performance to illustrate their experiences of oppression and their desire to break the cycle of trauma for their own children (Ruane & Dyas, 2024). This project (which was directed specifically toward men in custody) allowed them to access a state of vulnerability, which allowed them to connect more deeply with their families. This serves as an example of a different way to facilitate visits—could younger children be involved in or witness projects their fathers are engaged in? Is there an opportunity for innovative projects like the one above to facilitate the deepening of father–son bonds?

The current policy in the Irish Prison Service is that prisoners are entitled to one physical visit per week but the reality of this is quite different (Chambers, 2023). Efforts should be made by the Irish Prison Service to ensure adherence to policy and legislative requirements. The nature of prison visits could also be changed, for example, by expanding and rolling out programs such as the Parenting Inside program delivered by Bedford Row Family Project (2021), with an emphasis on providing an opportunity for developmentally promotive experiences to occur between imprisoned fathers and their sons (e.g., physical play, joint activities, appropriate physical touch and connection to decrease the father's sense of liminality) Practitioners working with these families, particularly the sons, should consider the role of emotional modeling, recognition, and labeling, to support these sons in navigating the deep and conflicted feelings arising from their father's imprisonment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, this research aimed to explore the lived experience of growing up with an imprisoned father, from the adult sons' perspectives. By adopting a psychoanalytically informed qualitative approach, four central themes were identified: The Liminal Father, Guarding the Interior, Pushed to the Edges, and Powering Through. Through participants' accounts, the felt sense of loss precipitated by their father's imprisonment rippled throughout their life, informing their decision-making and values as they grew into adulthood, as well having a range of other effects, such as the continuing effects of stigma and the need to defend against the painful aspects of this experience.

This study emphasizes the need for increased attention to how paternal incarceration can be experienced as a sense of ongoing loss for the sons left behind, in a way that goes beyond simply an experience of ambiguous loss and instead seems to deeply inform their characteristic way of being in the world, as evidenced through how participants described using their father as a template for both what to do and what to avoid doing, and how his subtle presence continued to play on their minds in the present. Knowing the deep and long-term impacts of paternal imprisonment, it seems important that sons of imprisoned fathers are given the opportunity to reduce the liminality of their father's presence. This could be done through changes in prison practices to allow for increased contact and engagement with the imprisoned father, in a way that allows him to retain some of his role in the family system and therefore his role as the “father” to his son, albeit in an altered way. Our study demonstrates a new and deeper understanding of what the experience of paternal imprisonment is like from the adult son's perspective, providing another lens through which to gauge the impact of paternal imprisonment on sons.