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In France, women can be incarcerated during pregnancy and can keep their babies with them in prison up to the age of 18 months. The small number of nurseries in France and their unequal geographic distribution as well as the high percentage of foreign prisoners often result in women's isolation from their usual cultural environment. Family members and cultural community play a crucial role in the process of mothering. The aim of this study is to explore through these mothers' narratives how they experience the cultural aspects of this process in the prison environment. We conducted semi-structured interviews to collect the experience of 25 mothers and 5 pregnant women in 13 different prison nurseries in France and used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the data. Four different themes emerged: prison: repression of cultural practices, prison: a culture of its own, loss of traditional culture, and cultural hybridization. The specific environmental architecture and operating rules in prison nurseries may induce acute repression regarding cultural ways of mothering. Considering both cultural permeability specific to the peripartum period during which women tend to more easily embrace cultural aspects from their environment, and family distance which restrains cultural transmission, these mothers gather multiple factors of vulnerability for full prisonization, as a form of forced assimilation to prison culture. But a sort of specific hybrid prison culture around motherhood seems to emerge instead, in a process similar to creolization.

Many variables can influence the process of motherhood, including environmental precarity and personal adversity. One about which little is known is the impact of incarceration on women during or after pregnancy. In France, pregnant women or those with children up to 18 months old can be incarcerated with their child in specific units called nurseries. We sought to explore incarcerated women’s experience of motherhood in prison environments and its potential consequences on the construction of their identity as mothers. We conducted semi-structured interviews to collect the experience of the process of motherhood among 25 mothers and 5 pregnant women in 13 different prison nurseries in France and used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the data. Four different themes emerged: prison conflates their status as inmates and as mothers; it limits their freedom as mothers; it disrupts their family structure; and motherhood may help distinguish them from other inmates. Incarceration of pregnant women or young mothers in prison nurseries might disrupt the process involved in becoming mothers, causing their identities as prisoners to englobe their identities as mothers and resulting in inappropriate parenting support by prison staff. A professional specialized in peripartum issues should help each woman disentangle her identity as inmate and mother and enable her placement at the facility best adapted to her individual needs as a mother. In any case, if prison must continue to be possible, it must always be a last alternative for women with young children.

Introduction: Systemic diseases of pediatric onset are more frequent in the Afro-Caribbean population. We performed a study of patients followed in French overseas departments of America (FOAD) for pediatric systemic lupus (pSLE). The aims were to describe their clinical and biological specificities during childhood.Methods: A retrospective study was conducted between January 2000 and September 2021. Listings of patients with pediatric onset were obtained through multiple sources: computerized hospital archives, registry of referent pediatricians and adult specialists in internal medicine and French National Registry for rare diseases. The spectrum of diseases studied was systemic lupus according to international criteria with pediatric onset.Results: Overall, 2148 patients were identified, and 54 patients were included. The average follow-up was 8.3 years (range: 0.3 - 25 years). We found an increase in new diagnoses throughout the years. At onset, pSLE patients had a median of 10 SLICC criteria (range: 4-12), and the median EULAR/ACR 2019 score was 38 (12 - 54). At onset, one-third of patients had renal involvement, 15% neurolupus and 41% cardiac involvement. During childhood, 54% had renal involvement, and 26% suffered from neurolupus. Patients suffered a median of 3 flares during childhood and 26% from more than 5 flares. Younger patients at onset had worst outcomes; they had more flares (median at 5 p = 0,02) and needed an average of 4 background therapies (p = 0,04).Conclusion: The outcomes of Afro-Caribbean patients, where pSLE is more frequent, were similar to those in Western countries with worse disease activity at onset. Further studies should be performed to identify the genetic and environmental factors in this population.

International audience; Context: In France, young children of incarcerated women live with their mothers in prison in specific units called nurseries, up to the age of 18 months. Only a few studies have examined the impact of this environment on these children. This study sought to explore through mothers' narratives how they perceive their children to experience this environment and how it affects their development. Method: We used semistructured interviews to collect the perceptions of 25 mothers about their children's experience of daily life in 12 different prison nurseries in France. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore the data. Results: According to mothers, prison is a sensorially aggressive environment for children that may impair the children's sensory abilities. The children's and mothers' emotional perceptions of anger, sadness, insecurity and imprisonment intertwine. Prison is home for these children, which leads them to establish strong bonds with this inside world—prison staff, other inmates—but to develop reluctances and concern about exploring the outside world. Conclusion: The prison's sensorial environment may overlay the sensorial environment created by the mother, interfering with early mother–child interactions and leading to emotional misattunement. The gap between what the mother and the child each feel to be their home, and the social group they feel they belong to, causes pain to the mothers. This could alter their mandate of being a protective shield that could reduce the traumatic potential of the carceral environment on their babies. These mothers' sentences must be reconsidered for the sake of their children.