Resilience of Girls with Incarcerated Mothers: The Impact of Girl Scouts

Various factors are suggested to promote resilience in children, including self-esteem. Because Girl Scouting engages girls in activities that enhance self-esteem, it is most appropriate to focus on this factor as a part of the research to evaluate the impact of scouting on the resilience of children of incarcerated parents.

Troop 1500, the Enterprising Girl Scouts Beyond Bars Program, is an in-prison mother-daughter visitation program at Hilltop Prison, in Gatesville, Texas, and one of over 40 Beyond Bars programs in the U.S.

Programming for Troop 1500 is designed using a resilience framework, and self-esteem enhancement as a major focus. Research evaluation findings suggest that while there does not seem to be a relationship between girls' attitude towards their incarcerated mothers and girls' self-esteem at pretest, there is evidence of a modest relationship between these variables after one year.

Participation in the program seems to enable girls to begin to formulate healthier and more realistic conceptualizations of their mothers and their relationships with their mothers, and in turn, over time, the girls' sense of self and self-esteem improves.