CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 32, (2018) pp.

27–37
DOI:10.1111/chso.12222

Falling Out of Time: The Challenges of

Synchrony for Children with Incarcerated
Fathers
Helene Oldrup
SFI – The Danish National Center for Social Research, Copenhagen K, Denmark

Using a temporal lens, the article shows how fathers’ incarceration leads to a loss of attunement to the
temporal rhythms of their children’s everyday lives. This lack of synchrony has implications for both the
being and the becoming of the child. Through in-depth interviews, the article draws on data from a Dan-
ish study of mothers and children, aged 5–27, whose father/stepfather was incarcerated. Findings show
the significance of a multifaceted understanding of time showing the implications of fathers’ imprison-
ment for children, suggesting that policy initiatives would be enriched by a focus on challenges to syn-
chrony from the child’s perspective. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and National Children’s Bureau

Keywords: Children of prisoners, family and time, synchrony, temporal agency.

Introduction
Paternal absences have been defined as ‘a physical absence of fathers from the households
where children live’ (Dermott, 2008), i.e. time away from the child’s life. In debates on fami-
lies, such paternal absence has been identified as causing a range of social problems for chil-
dren. While paternal absence is often understood as a consequence of relationship
breakdown, reducing fathers’ involvement in the child’s life, incarceration is another such —
albeit extreme — example of paternal absence from the child’s life. Criminological research
shows that these children have a higher risk of mental problems, antisocial behaviour, higher
offending rates and lower educational achievement (Murray, 2005; Murray and Farrington,
2008; Wakefield and Wildeman, 2014). Significant attention has been paid to such ‘sec-
ondary’ effects of paternal incarceration, however, less is known about the processes
involved. While studies explore what it means to be an incarcerated father (Dyer and others,
2012; Moran and others, 2016), fewer studies explore fathers’ incarceration from the chil-
dren’s perspective.
A dominant narrative about family life posits it as ‘being together’ and quality time.
Indeed, many studies show that spending time together is integral to family life (Brannen,
2005; Christensen and others, 2000; Gabb, 2008). Not surprisingly, a child’s spending time
with an imprisoned father is recognised as a legal right, critical to maintaining family con-
tact and benefitting children’s emotional well-being (Poehlmann-Tynan, 2015). However, few
studies employ a temporal lens when considering children of incarcerated fathers (Foster,
2016), even though temporality is an established theme in prison research (e.g. Crewe, 2011;
Medlicott, 1999). Previous research views children’s relationship with their father as a conse-
quence of the patterning of the interaction between them and examines the relation between
frequency, quality of contact and the child’s psychosocial functioning (Lanskey and others,
2016; Poehlmann and others, 2010; Poehlmann-Tynan, 2015). While these studies consider
the impact of paternal incarceration on children, recognition of children’s agency involves

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28 Helene Oldrup

exploring children’s own experiences of time, including their perceptions of the past and
future with their imprisoned father (Lanskey and others, 2014).
All these studies indicate that time and temporality are crucial in understanding how
paternal incarceration influences children’s family life and well-being. This article presents
an analytical approach that highlights the temporal implications of paternal incarceration on
children’s relationship with and intimacy with their father. Particularly relevant for children
of prisoners is the dimension of synchrony, or the absence thereof, in the additional daily
challenge created by prisons’ schedules for visiting and contact. The article draws on qualita-
tive interview data from 36 children and young people whose fathers were incarcerated. This
qualitative study is part of a larger mixed methods study on the everyday lives and well-
being of children with an incarcerated father. In the article, ‘children’ is shorthand for both
children and young people who have an incarcerated father.
Time, synchrony and temporal agency
Time is a multidimensional social concept, only partly relating to the common-sense under-
standing of linear clock time (Adam, 2008). The perspective of ‘timescape’ reveals the signifi-
cance of a range of temporal dimensions in people’s lives, including time frames, pace and
synchronicity (Adam, 2008). Considerable research focuses on the impact of work life on
family life, with many studies examining the pace of life from parents’ and children’s per-
spectives (Harden and others, 2013; Hochschild, 1997; Southerton, 2006). Fewer studies focus
on the challenges of synchrony in families, created by for example differing work schedules
in families (Thomas and Bailey, 2009), and show how couples seek to synchronise their
schedules to create periods of togetherness (Hochschild, 1997; Sullivan, 1996).
The social significance of synchrony entails the possibility of good and bad timing of
action (Adam, 2004), involving coordination with the time rhythms of family, friends and
other activities (Southerton, 2006). Relevant timetables include those of the household, work
and other social institutions, in this instance prisons. In relation to the family, one can dis-
tinguish between different dimensions of time to which synchrony poses a challenge: practi-
cal, special and imaginary time (Morgan, 2011). Practical time refers to the everyday
repetitive routines. Many family activities are of this kind, i.e. similar tasks repeated regu-
larly. These may be daily or more seasonal, such as birthdays. Special, exceptional or memo-
rable time includes events such as births, deaths or marriages, or involves special
achievements, e.g. graduation. However, such events — including divorce and imprisonment
— are not always positive or conflict free. Such events, which may be family- or commu-
nity-based, are important in uniting families by providing common reference points and
reinforcing a sense of shared identity (Felmlee and Sprecher, 2000). Imaginary time involves
pasts, presents and futures. As family members are co-present in each other’s lives over time,
past, present and future are recollected or rehearsed. As synchrony presents a challenge in
all three dimensions, the empirical analysis examines strategic moments of synchrony
between children and incarcerated fathers.
Synchrony, or being together, is central in narratives about intimacy in families. Gabb
(2008) shows that for many parents and children, spending time together creates family, with
the emphasis on the quality of that time: ‘there is consensus that it is through everyday
practices — activities of care and affect — that families are materialised’ (119). Thus, family
time symbolises what family should be (Christensen and others, 2000). Another is a narrative
of ‘being there’ for the children, with parenting involving not merely spending time with
children but being available when the children need them (Ribbens, 1996). However, ‘being
there’ is a ‘subtle and complex notion’ (Ribbens McCarthy and others, 2003) that can refer to
psychological, emotional or physical presence (Dermott, 2008). Furthermore, communication

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 Challenges of Synchrony for Prisoner’s Children 29

technologies have created new forms of ‘being there’, independent of place. Indeed, such
technologies have transformed family life by stretching social relations over distance (Madi-
anou and Miller, 2011), with mobile phones allowing flexible forms of micro-coordination,
solving daily temporal problems (Wajcman and others, 2008) and enabling constant avail-
ability of parents and children (Williams and Williams, 2005).
Acknowledging children’s temporal agency is key to the ‘new sociology of childhood’
(James and Prout, 1997). Researchers in this tradition emphasise children as actors of the
present; however, being is neither opposed to nor conflicts with becoming (Nielsen, 2016;
Uprichard, 2008); both are simultaneous, as children construct the social world around them.
As the kinds of childhood they experience today shape the kinds of adults they are likely to
become, children are both present and future agents of their present and future lives (Upri-
chard, 2008). Despite being limited by the structural constraints of childhood and the rela-
tions they are part of, how children exercise their agency in relation to being and becoming
is critical to understanding how their father’s imprisonment influence their relationship with
him.
Context
The penal regime in Denmark has been characterised as Scandinavian exceptionalism in
terms of rates of imprisonment and humane prison conditions — including visiting opportu-
nities and facilities — which are generally regarded as better than their counterparts in
Anglo-Saxon jurisdictions (Pratt, 2008; Smith, 2012). During the last decade, the Danish
Prison and Probation Services have implemented initiatives to improve contact between
incarcerated parents and their children. This is part of a general trend where incarcerated
parents’ relationships with their children are seen as something to be addressed by policy
(Enroos, 2015).
For children in contact with their incarcerated father, the primary channels are telephone
conversations and visits. In open prisons, prisoners have landlines in their cell. In secure
prisons, they have access to a shared landline from which they may make, but not receive,
calls. Although prisoners are entitled to at least one weekly visit of at least an hour, practices
vary. Children under 18 must generally be accompanied by an adult. Prisoners can apply for
visits to special events (e.g. a child’s birthday up to age 15). The new initiatives taken during
the last decade includes improved family friendly visiting rooms, seasonal family days,
prison officers responsible for the children and parental training groups for fathers (Olsen,
2013). However, other challenges remain, such as distance and travel difficulties between
children’s homes and prisons and the lack of an adult to accompany the children on their
visits, in case their main care giver not being able to do so or not wanting to do so.
In Denmark, approximately 5–6 per cent of each birth cohort experience parental incarcer-
ation during their childhood, with around 4000 such children in 2013 (Olsen, 2013). About
95 per cent have incarcerated fathers, a figure that has remained relatively stable from 2000
to 2013 (Oldrup and others, 2016). For most of them (87.6 per cent), their father’s average
prison sentence is less than 2 months. Children in this group may not visit their father, either
because the parents tellz them that he is away working or travelling, or because they want
to shield them from the prison. For the other group of children (12.4 per cent) whose fathers
have longer prison sentences such strategies are difficult if contact between child and parent
is to be maintained. A survey of Danish children with an incarcerated father showed that
about a quarter had little or no contact with him, while over half reported contact at least
monthly (Oldrup and others, 2016).
Children experiencing paternal incarceration have fewer socioeconomic resources than do
children from the general population. In Denmark, fewer of their mothers are in employment

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30 Helene Oldrup

(35 per cent compared to 77 per cent of mothers from the general population) and more live
in poverty. More of these children live in single-headed households (61 per cent compared to
18 per cent in the general population) (Oldrup and others, 2016). This makes these children’s
relationship with their (incarcerated) fathers important.
Methodology
A total of 36 children and young people were interviewed; their main characteristics appear
in Table 1. The interviews typically took place when the father was serving the first third of
his sentence.
The mothers of the interviewed children are largely in employment or education, making
them more resourceful than the average mother to a child with an incarcerated father. How-
ever, this is unsurprising as marginalised groups typically are more difficult to recruit. The
study includes relatively more fathers with longer (+3 years) sentences. The prolonged
absences from their children’s lives make their children an excellent group for understanding
the temporal impact of prison. Moreover, the sample over-represents families who either
lived together or had regular contact before and during imprisonment, making it well-suited
for gaining knowledge about improving relationships in such families.
The children were recruited using prisons, prisoners’ associations, and social authorities to
gain contact to them or their mothers. The children/young people were interviewed once, in
their homes or (in a few instances) another place due to cramped living conditions. Children
were interviewed on their own or with siblings, in their own room or in their living room,
while their mother was in a separate room. While the home environment might make the
child feel secure, it may also have made it difficult to talk about challenges in the family. In
some cases, being interviewed with a sibling hindered exploration of individual experiences.
The semi-structured interviews with the children had the following main themes: contact
and relationship with their imprisoned (step)father, experience of prison visits, family prac-
tises and relationships in the family, at school and with friends. Visual techniques aided the
children during the interviews (Thomson, 2008).

Table 1: Characteristics of the interviewed children

Gender 23 girls/13 boys
Age 5–9 years: 11
10–17 years: 16
18–27 years: 7
Relation to incarcerated father Biological father: 27
Stepfather: 9
Fathers’ present sentence Detention, awaiting sentencing: 3
Under 3 years: 2
7–14 years: 10
Released: 3
Unknown: 1
Mothers education/job Job/in education: 11
Long-term sick/sick pension: 5
Unemployed: 2
Unknown: 1
Child’s contact with (step)father before imprisonment Living together: 15
Divorced, regular contact: 10
Divorced, irregular or rare contact: 10
No contact: 1

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 Challenges of Synchrony for Prisoner’s Children 31

The mothers were informed about the study when they volunteered their children to take
part, and were asked about any special considerations regarding the child. Before each inter-
view, time was taken to explain to the child/young person the aim of the study and the
questions asked, and the child’s informed consent to being interviewed was obtained. The
child/young person was informed that he or she could choose to stop the interview. The chil-
dren’s continued willingness and interest to partake were monitored during the interview for
verbal/nonverbal indications that they wanted to stop. In these cases the interview was
paused/stopped.
Interviews were transcribed and coded using Nvivo software (Nvivo, QSR International,
Daresbury, UK). All data were anonymised. The thematic analysis of different temporal
dimensions and children’s agency was developed from the coding process, with coding
derived from both theoretically informed codes as well as data-driven codes (Coffey and
Atkinson, 1996). In this process, children’s accounts were first decontextualised into new
pools of meaning, and through comparisons of patterns and exceptions the data was recon-
textualised, allowing for new organising principles.
Analysis

Navigating prison visits

Children’s practical time in relation to their father’s incarceration refers to them navigating
prison visits and phone calls in their daily lives at home and to them visiting their father in
prison. Indeed, their father’s incarceration poses challenges to children’s practical time. From
the children’s viewpoint, prison is an additional environment in their everyday lives, one
they must fit in if they want physical or phone contact with their fathers. Doing so involves
reassessing and negotiating the temporal rhythms of routine daily practices of schools, child-
care institutions, and their parents’ work life, along with social and leisure activities
(Rasmussen, 2004). Moreover, both temporally structured activities and spontaneous ones
guide their everyday lives. However, these children also encounter the temporal rhythms of
the prison, even when they are at home. As prisoners’ lives are highly structured, with fixed
visiting and telephone times, the daily lives of children and their fathers are organised
according to different temporal rhythms.
When the children visit their father, they encounter the rigid temporal structures of the
prison. Marko, age 13, explains: ‘So right at the beginning, we started to drive at four
[o’clock]. [Visits are] from four to half past eight, and then we go home, and it takes just
over half an hour, and slightly after nine we are home’. The children describe these visits as
clashing with their other routines and obligations, as they must choose between the conflict-
ing demands of school, family and prison. Diana, 12, does not visit on Tuesdays because she
wants to stay in school, while Mille, 13, says: ‘I have French on the visiting days and that’s
an important lesson, so I have to do that’. However, other children prioritise visiting their
father over school, as Paw, 17, explains: ‘I had to take time off [school], because I decided I
would rather visit my father’. As the children also have obligations to family and friends,
they must choose between these and the prison visit. Stephanie, 13, says: ‘Visiting [my step-
father] is allowed every Sunday, and I go every other week, because every other weekend I
am with my dad’. Others may not visit on weekends, because they have friends’ birthday
parties or want to relax at home. Thus, the work of synchronising time and navigating the
different temporal rhythms and demands falls on the children (and their families) if they
want to visit.

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32 Helene Oldrup

Difficulties reaching father

As with navigating competing temporal rhythms in order to fit in visits, the children also
have to navigate to fit telephone calls into the competing temporal rhythms and demands of
their daily lives. Importantly, new technologies are not available in prisons, and the family
typically depends on the father’s telephoning them. While such calls may alleviate some sep-
aration stress and allow regular contact, the accounts of children and young people in this
study suggest that contact on the phone is challenging.
Sisse, 9, explains: ‘He calls three times a day. So he is allowed to say good morning. And
then he’s allowed to say good day, and in the evening good night’. This timetable reflects
the prison’s rigid time structure. Indicating that telephone communication is difficult, both
children who are and who are not close to their father say they do not speak with him on
the phone, preferring to talk when they visit or when he returns home. Some explain that
the two speak only briefly. Mads, 7, who has regular contact with his father, explains that
he just says ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ when his father phones. Asger (20) reports talking little
with his father, as neither are good at conversations. As other studies report, such calls may
be awkward (Nesmith and Ruhland, 2008).
Others explain fitting such calls into daily life as problematic. While the father may have
plenty of time to talk, the family will often be busy with everyday activities, e.g. eating. As
the family cannot always know when he will call, such calls may be disturbing or irritating:
[Mother] talks about half an hour at a time. We think it’s really annoying, because when we need to
use the phone, she won’t let us. And then when I finally get it, then he calls. Also, when you sit and
eat, he calls. It’s really annoying. (Jenny, 9)
Clearly, while telephone calls allow daily contact, they are often not synchronised with
the children’s activities or needs and may feel disruptive. Nonetheless, some children eagerly
await their father’s call. Mille, 13, worries about her father. Although her mother divorced
him, Mille keeps regular contact with him:
He usually calls me at seven o’clock. [The day he’s calling] varies so I actually never know when
he’ll call me. I get so stressed out every time the clock is about seven. Then I’ll keep an eye on my
phone, because imagine if I didn’t have time to take it!
When a child is waiting at a set time every day, the father may not be able to time his call
precisely, creating anxiety and adding emotional pressure. Another girl, who can telephone
her father in his cell, says that when she phones, often he is not there, leading to disappoint-
ment.
While the phone allows regular contact, synchronising such calls with the children’s daily
lives is difficult, often making such calls awkward or causing distress. Thus, for this group of
children, there is no sense of instant availability or virtual co-presence with their father.
Visiting prison
Visiting is part of the child’s practical time with their father. Younger children in particular
describe these visits in terms of intense emotions. Ronja, 11, explains that while she is
pleased to visit her father in prison, she is sad when they leave. Sandra, 17, is from a family
where her parents had lived together for over 10 years before her stepfather’s imprisonment:
It is a feeling of happiness when we see [my stepfather] and are with him, and when you see how
happy the children [her smaller siblings] are. They go crazy when they see him. They love being
here, playing and running around. And when you leave it’s always a down feeling. You can feel it

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 Challenges of Synchrony for Prisoner’s Children 33

in the whole family, when you come home you feel “that was a bit much”. Everyone is sad. You
miss the person more than if you had stayed at home.
Sandra’s descriptions show that even when visiting is happy, such visits end with a feeling
of loss that can re-enforce the experience of separation. Thus, family time becomes an ongo-
ing cycle of visits, emotionally charged with both happiness and loss.
Other children describe a different experience of visiting. Karoline, 14, has not had regular
contact with her father or felt close to him before imprisonment: ‘He asked how we were,
but we didn’t really have a conversation with him, like we have conversations with our
mum or others from the family’. Michelle’s (13) father has been controlling and violent
towards her mother: ‘When I became older, I saw him a lot of times. It became irritating,
because we had a long drive. And every time he asked how it went and if I was well. So I
said the same thing again each time. I don’t want to go there again.’ Jennifer, 21, did not
live with her father before his imprisonment (her parents were divorced), but she had regular
contact with him and says she feels close to him. However, making time pass when visiting
can also be difficult. Once, the family found a board game that they could play: ‘It’s good to
have something to do, rather than sitting there staring for two hours, because then it can be
like “forced contact”’. These descriptions of visits reveal the challenge of feeling togetherness
when such togetherness was absent before the imprisonment. The descriptions also resonate
with those of ‘dead time’ in prison, i.e. the repetitive, rhythmic sameness of prison routines
as experienced by inmates, a time devoid of events or interaction (Medlicott, 1999). Co-pre-
sence does not necessarily create feelings of togetherness or continuity: indeed, what may be
shared is the alienation of the prison experience.
Time out of significant life events
Incarceration makes fathers unable to participate in special family occasions, such as signifi-
cant life events of their children. Paul, 17, whose mother broke off contact with his father
when he was little, and who found his father a year before incarceration, says:
Because he went to prison, he can’t come to my birthday in 3 weeks. The prison only thinks that if
it’s a 50th or 60th birthday, then it’s OK. Christening is also OK, but turning 18 is not. I think if you
ask all young people, then 18 is the most important birthday you have. It’s like growing up.
Paul disagrees with the prison’s definition of an important life event that a prisoner is
allowed to attend. Jennifer, 21, explains that her father was in prison when she gave birth to
her first child: ‘He saw her on her christening, when she was 3 months old. It’s a bit late.
You are reminded about [his absence] when you have a child. That’s hard, I think’.
When fathers miss such events, both he and the child miss a joint reference point and the
opportunity for creating shared history. Instead, they are both reminded of the pain of sepa-
ration. However, it is important not to assume that children always want their fathers present
at special events if there were no family unity to begin with. Some deliberately distance
themselves from their father; indeed, access to such events may be a way for him to force
himself into their lives. For example Maria, 14, decided to eliminate contact with her father
after his recent sentence for violent assault of a friend. However, her father announced that
he would visit on her birthday, seeing it as a way to apply for a day out of prison.
Synchronising the future?
The children’s relation with their father also has an imaginary dimension, particularly in
relation to the future. Sandra, 17, has a mother and stepfather who are divorced but who see
one another regularly, as they have small children. Sandra feels afraid for their future

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34 Helene Oldrup

relationship, as she does not know whether she will see much of him — will he still feel that
she is his child, will he have time for her? Indeed, she has rekindled contact with her father,
who is now taking time to spend with her. Similarly, Sara, 17, whose parents have a long
stable relationship, says:
I think in a way, I’m afraid, not so much afraid for me, but more afraid of what will happen to him,
and what will happen to us. . .. and also scared on his behalf, the uncertainties about all of this. . .I
am a bit worried that when he comes home he’ll think he has to make decisions [about her going to
parties], because I’m a bit too old for that. My mum is very, ‘you do that’, of course, if we have an
agreement. I am worried he can’t accept it, because he hasn’t been here to see my development.
Despite knowing that he will eventually return, she does not know whether he will have
changed. Although the family plans to live together again, the prolonged absence creates
feelings of insecurity about future relationships. Both Sandra and Sara come from families
that have remained in contact during imprisonment, nevertheless the imaginary future with
their incarcerated fathers feels insecure. Such comments suggest that missing out on change
while it is occurring results in a loss of confidence in fathers and a consequent loss of their
authority. Thus, ‘being there’ in mundane ways in the everyday life of the child may be how
a parent earns that child’s trust and the right to judge what is in their best interests.
Children’s temporal agency
Taken together, these insights into children’s experience of paternal absence in practical,
exceptional and imaginary time show that there are consequences of fathers not ‘being there’
as children’s ‘being’ accumulates into agentic forms of ‘becoming’ (Nielsen, 2016). The two
following examples explicate this notion that, as children grow and change in their father’s
absence, they may redefine their relationship with him.
Ann, 21, has an incarcerated stepfather. She used to live with her divorced mother, seeing
her father every fortnight. He came into her life when she was 14, bringing lots of fun into
her and her mother’s life. However, when she was 16, the two adults decided to move to
India. Ann then moved in with her father, with whom she has many conflicts, to do her A
levels. Her mother and stepfather returned after a year, and soon thereafter her stepfather
was imprisoned. Finishing her exams, she moved into her own flat. Although Ann may join
her mother on prison visits, she also wants to distance herself from her mother and stepfa-
ther. With the stepfather in prison, her mother is depressed and finds it difficult to cope with
both her own and his children, having challenges in terms of criminality, early parenthood
and unemployment. The stepfather has lots of ideas for initiatives her mother could take, but
which she finds difficult to realise. Therefore, there are tensions in the family. To preserve
herself, Ann has learned from her earlier abandonment, saying that she needs to focus on
what she wants and what makes her happy.
Asger, 20, has parents who divorced when he was 13. While he began staying with his
father every fortnight, he did not feel that his father was interested in him. Shortly after, his
father was incarcerated. Although Asger visited him regularly for the first few months, he
has now ceased visiting. ‘There has been a lot missing, especially for a teenage boy, when
there are problems at school. Then you don’t want to talk to your mother. You want to talk
to dad, but you can’t. That has ruined it’. The absence of his father during these vulnerable
years has led Asger to more or less cease having contact with his father, saying that it is not
important for him.
The analytical focus on being and becoming points to how childrens’ past reaches into
the present and future. Although Ann and Asger have different family backgrounds, the
failure of their (step)fathers to ‘be there’ while incarcerated has clearly shaped their

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 Challenges of Synchrony for Prisoner’s Children 35

expectations of him. When they reflect on their future, both children and young people
who were close to their (step)father and those who were not question his future role in
their lives and distance themselves both emotionally and physically to insulate themselves
from future disappointments.
Concluding reflections
The children’s stories in this article capture the significance of living out of synchrony with
a father during his imprisonment. With an incarcerated father, children endure complex
timescapes, navigating the extra temporal rhythms of the prison in practical, exceptional and
imaginary time. Their accounts make clear that the challenges of synchrony fall on the chil-
dren with resultant emotional costs as they (with their family) must do the work of navigat-
ing their activities around prison schedules while finding the father difficult to reach within
the singular prison timescape. The details of the children’s accounts also reveal important
differences in their experiences, relating to their type of contact with their father before his
imprisonment. Thus, the article shows how the temporal logics of the prison institution
clashes with the temporal structures of children’s worlds.
A methodological limitation of the study is the single-occasion interview design. As the
article has shown, the child’s experience may change over time as the father’s sentence con-
tinues, making research following the children and their mothers over a longer period with
qualitative longitudinal methods important. While the article shows how fathers’ sentences
affect children’s experience of time, following the children over time would allow a deeper
understanding of which families and relationships are likely to survive the prison sentence.
The article contributes to the literature on family and childhood by offering a conceptual
approach for understanding the role of synchrony in children’s everyday worlds, supple-
menting previous studies which have focused on the impact of parents’ work life and of
pace. Indeed, this temporal approach to children’s family lives can be used to examine other
childhoods, such as children who have a parent working away from home for long periods
or who is in foster care. Furthermore, a focus on synchrony is highly relevant in a societal
context where temporal patterns are becoming more flexible and complex, making the chal-
lenges for synchronising time unlikely to disappear. In research on children of prisoners, the
focus on synchrony contributes with a broader understanding of what ‘time together’ means
for prisoners and their children. The existing focus on duration and frequency of visits mat-
ters, but this article shows that it is also necessary to take account of the multiple dimen-
sions of the temporal worlds of children.
The UN Convention of the Rights of the Child protects children’s rights to direct and regu-
lar access to a separated parent. While the Danish Prison Services have improved facilities
and activities for contact, this article show the obstacles for contact arising from difficulties
of synchrony between the child’s world and the prison. This makes issues of planning, spon-
taneity, accessibility and regularity in relation to contact important issues to address.
Acknowledgments
Egmont Foundation, Denmark, grant number: 831-2312. The author wishes to thank editor,
professor Rachel Thomsen and professor Nanna Mik-Meyer for helpful comments to an ear-
lier version of the article.

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© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and National Children’s Bureau CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 32, 27–37 (2018)
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Correspondence to: Helene Oldrup, SFI – The Danish National Center for Social Research, Herluf Trollesgade 11, DK
1052 Copenhagen K, Denmark, Tel.: + 45 33480978. E-mail: heo@sfi.dk

Accepted for publication 9 March 2017

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and National Children’s Bureau CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 32, 27–37 (2018)
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