Kyle, 32

Embracing Fears

Becoming a father is by far my proudest accomplishment in life, and seeing my son develop into a promising young man is a blessing for which I am ever thankful. Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding my son’s birth and my parenthood are far from what is considered normal. On August 28th, 2014, my son Kayden was born to two incarcerated parents. His mother and I have been incarcerated since her early pregnancy in 2014, with both of our minimum parole dates currently scheduled well into his adulthood. Thankfully, Kayden has two loving grandparents who have opted to adopt him and provide him with a very positive upbringing. 

Sadly, I spent the first two years of Kayden’s life housed in facilities that do not offer contact visitation, as is the practice in many county jails and higher custody facilities across the nation. Instead, my only visitation opportunity consisted of a booth separated by glass and telephones, which is how I first met Kayden. Visiting Kayden through glass was sometimes disheartening, but I tried to make the most of the time I could spend with my son. Some of my fondest memories of that time were when I could get him laughing, smiling, and giggling. Even through glass, I adored such moments and made them my personal goal for every visit. He was too young then to remember these visits now, but I have no doubt they played a role in the bond that we have today. Thankfully, my visitation opportunities eventually improved from the glass booths that we first met through. 

In late 2016, I was finally transferred to a housing unit that offered contact visitation. I felt both excited and nervous for my next visit with Kayden. My son was two, and I had only held him once very briefly at a family court hearing, an act of kindness by a family court judge. 

Kayden was still an infant then and hadn’t known who I was. Within minutes of my embrace, he tried to get away from me by crying and reaching for the foster parents he was living with at the time. It pained me to see my son’s discomfort towards me, but I set aside my pain and focused on enjoying the remainder of my first physical contact with him.

As my new contact visitation approached, I was excited to embrace Kayden again. I craved to hold him and develop a more intimate bond with him. However, I was also afflicted with worry. I worry about how he might react to my embrace or respond to the sudden change of our visitation. I feared that he might express discomfort towards me again. He was significantly more orderly than he had been the first time I held him, and we had certainly strengthened our bond since then, but our relationship had still developed without physical contact. To add to my anxiety, I also had very little experience with children, so my worry also included nervousness about my ability to embrace and handle Kayden comfortably. He was a toddler at this point, so I knew that he was not as fragile as an infant, but I still worried that I might mishandle him or cause him discomfort. I spent five days awaiting my new housing unit’s weekly visit time, and each day brought both excitement and worry. I had visited with my son many times through glass (all of which were positive and enjoyable visits), but the impending contact visit felt foreign to me as if I were meeting my son for the first time.

Since that visit, we have had hundreds of visits. The anxiety I felt in those days has since faded into a distant memory that I seldom recall. While the worries I had then have since subsided, I am still afflicted with different fathering fears about my incarceration. One of my current fears is that Kayden will one day lose interest in visiting me, especially as he enters his preteens and adolescence. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon for many incarcerated parents and their children. Another fear is that he will start to resent my absence or, worse, that he might somehow blame himself for it. It is certainly possible that these fears might never come to fruition, but they are also very plausible nonetheless. Not too long ago, my family discovered that he harbors a sense of shame toward his parent’s incarceration, and understandably so. As a family, we have sought to educate Kayden about his unique situation while assuring him that he is deeply loved and cared about. The shame he feels toward having incarcerated parents may be unavoidable to some extent. Still, I hope to mitigate those feelings as much as possible through open and honest communication. He has taken well to this so far; I hope his understanding and acceptance will persist as he ages.