"Make-Believe" Families 317greater (Watterson, 1996). Male and female prisoners recreate their desires and needs
inside of the correctional facility, yet they do so in different ways. In female prisons,
women create caring relationships (MacKenzie, Robinson, & Campbell, 1989)
which have been referred to as kinship systems (Giallombardo, 1966), "play" families
(MacKenzie et al., 1989), surrogate families (Church, 1990), and pseudofamilies
(Pollock-Byrne, 1.990).
Kelly was 28 years old when she was convicted of selling drugs on the streets. She
was sentenced to 5 years in a state correctional facility. Kelly had spent a tew weeks in
the local jail before, but she had never been to prison. She had heard all sorts of stones
about prison and was not sure what to expect when she arrived. She was scared and felt
very alone. She had no family to speak of, and her so-called friends were other drug
dealers and addicts whom she could not rely on to be supportive during her time of
need. On Kelly's first day in prison, she was placed in a cell with a 23-year-old inmate
named Sabrina. Although Sabrina was 5 years younger than Kelly, she seemed much
older and wiser. Sabrina instantly began sharing her feelings with Kelly in an attempt to
have Kelly talk about her fears. Sabrina stated that it would make things easier if Kelly
would talk about them. Kelly immediately felt a connection to Sabrina, which she had
never experienced with anyone before. In a very short amount of time, Kelly began
to view Sabrina as a mother figure and even began calling her "mom." She also was
surprised to learn that Sabrina was married to another female inmate who was housed in
a different unit. This inmate's name was Christina, but everyone called her Chris. Kelly
soon began to call her "dad" because Chris behaved like a father and treated Kelly like
her own daughter. The three of them were just like a regular family and Kelly was able
to adjust to prison life with their help and support.Literature Review
As exemplified in Kelly's case, women who are sentenced to serve time in prison find
ways to cope with their environment. One way many of these women accomplish
this is by modeling real families (Watterson, 1996). They use these "play" mothers,
fathers, daughters, and lovers to make up for losing their real parents, children, and
lovers (C. Burke, 1992). The inmates do not necessarily enter prison to consciously
create these families, but when they are scared and lonely, they either retreat into
their own misery or create new relationships which develop into substitute families
(Watterson, 1996).
As one of the early researchers in this area, Giallombardo (1966) defined a prison
family as "a group of related kin linked by ties of allegiance and alliance who some-
times occupy a common household and are characterized by varying degrees of
solidarity" (p. 163). She expressed the notion that many of these women come to-
gether in homosexual relationships to create a marriage unit. Some of the prisoners
take on the role of a man and adopt masculine traits such as wearing their hair
short, wearing pants, and expressing typical societal male characteristics of strength
and authority. Other inmates take on the feminine role of wife or mother and wear
make-up and more feminine clothing (Giallombardo, 1966; Watterson, 1996).