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Maintaining relations between a jailed parent and their child poses a real challenge considering the various obstacles the detained parents and the children and their companions have to face. Parenthood is as it were suspended. The author is member of an interdisciplinary (law and psychology) research team working in France on a project in three penal institutions with data gathered from questionnaires and focus-groups. He adopts a psychodynamic clinical approach to highlight the tension that can be felt between the expectations expressed by the jailed parents towards their children and the disqualification their bond is subjected to, due to the experience of the conditions of detention and how the children are catered for as also prison access for those who, from outside, are in a position to support parent-child relations (spouse or ex-spouse, family members, etc.).