Military child well-being in the face of multiple deployments

Although members of the military are the ones who serve in harm’s way, deployments affect all members of a military family, including children. Statistics indicate that “more than 2 million US children have been affected directly by a parent’s military wartime deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan” (Chartrand et al. 2008: 1). In addition, deployments disrupt family routines, and experiencing even one deployment cycle (i.e. pre-deployment preparation, deployment, and post-deployment reunion) can create tremendous emotional upheaval within military families (Kelley 2002). Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the longest military operations since the Vietnam War, have resulted in members of the military being deployed more than once, some as many as four or five times, since 2001. With the operational tempo of these wars, military families have faced a steady cycle of deployments and reunions, which may affect military child well-being in a manner that differs from previous wars. As Rohall et al. (1999) note, the increase in deployments and family separations in recent decades has created a situation where “families must always be prepared to manage family life without the presence of at least one spouse” (50). Although little is known about how children react to deployments, it is inevitable that the experience changes the lives of military children and may be inherently taxing upon their well-being. Most research on the impact of multiple deployments examines the effect on military

members who voluntarily joined the military knowing that deployments are a likely component of military service. Hosek et al. (2006) indicates that the effects of deployments are non-linear, with military members experiencing more stress from later deployments than earlier deployments. For military members, deployments can be positive experiences as they offer opportunities for the members to apply their skills. The experience of the first few deployments is therefore less stressful than later experiences when continuing demand on their resources can prove overwhelming. In effect, the amount of stress that each experience imparts to a member is somewhat greater than the preceding experience. Our model builds on Hosek et al.’s (2006) basic assumption that the effects of

deployment experiences are not strictly additive, but rather that the impact of each deployment is affected by the experiences that precede it. While military members are

eventually overwhelmed by continuing deployment experiences, we hypothesize military children would have the opposite reaction: initially reacting poorly to parental deployments (e.g. presenting more examples of problematic behaviors) but eventually developing strategies to cope with parental absences. As a result, there would also be a nonlinear relationship between the number of deployments and child well-being outcomes, with the negative impact of parental deployments decreasing with each experience. Research on the impact of deployments on children have found that they suffer

emotional, behavioral, sex-role, and health problems that manifest as changes in academic performance, personality changes, and parent conflicts. Younger children, especially those 6 years and under, appear to cope least well whereas parents perceive their oldest adolescent children as best able to cope with deployments (Booth et al. 2007: 91). Because of the demographics of the military, much of the research on the impact of parental deployments has focused on the father’s absence. Although the loss of the father figure in the family because of deployments is similar to that of families with incarcerated or divorced fathers (MacDermid et al. 2005), deployments differ in that they add a component of heightened risk because military members may engage in armed combat. Reactions of children to the deployments of fathers include behavioral problems, emotional distress, depression, difficulties in school work as well as in relations to peers and family members, and suicidal threats (Hobfoll et al. 1991; Levai et al. 1994). Kelley (1994a, b) found that children whose fathers were deployed during the Persian Gulf War showed no reductions in internalizing and externalizing behaviors, “suggesting that these children may have been particularly susceptible to stressful separations” (Kelley 1994b: 172). Research that has examined the effect of absent mothers (resulting from military deployments) on children has found similar results: greater susceptibility to anxiety and sadness (Kelley 2002). Research also indicates that there may be gender and age differences in how military

children react to deployments and separations. Elder’s (1998) life course research has shown that “the developmental impact of a life transition or event is contingent on when it occurs in a person’s life” (961). Hence we expect that children’s adaptation to a deployment would be related to their age during the deployment. Jensen et al. (1996) noted that boys and younger children appeared to be the most susceptible to deployment effects. In a study of admissions to psychiatric hospitals during the Persian Gulf Crisis of 1990-91, among children with a father deployed in the Persian Gulf, three times as many boys as girls were admitted to psychiatric hospitals (Levai et al. 1994). According to Hillenbrand (1976), with a father absent, the eldest sons perceived their mother as the dominant parent, while they took on the fatherly role. Younger male siblings who could not take on the fatherly role were less likely to react positively, seeking more aggressive methods of recognition. Clinicians’ guides to helping military children cope with deployments note that preschoolers (e.g. 3-5 years) may respond to deployments with regressive behaviors, such as clinginess and separation anxiety, whereas school-age children (e.g. 6-12 years) respond by showing irritability, aggression, whininess, or worry. Teenagers often exhibit rebelliousness and, like school-age children, they also often become irritable and have anxiety over their parent’s safety (National Center for PTSD 2004: 85). Although adults reflecting back on growing up in the military have cited geographic

mobility and constraining behavioral norms as more stressful than parental separation (Ender 2002) this does not preclude deployments as a significant contributor to child stress. This may be especially true for military children since 2001, whose parents have experienced multiple deployments. Frequency of deployment may interact with other

stressors, creating unique effects. For example, a frequently deployed parent might be especially rigorous in enforcing behavioral norms to ensure that they are followed while the parent is absent. Children who lose the active presence of a parent face significant challenges and stress,

including feelings of isolation and anxiety, although most military children negotiate these challenges successfully (National Center for PTSD andUSDepartment of Defense 2004). Families that do not react well to deployments often have additional strains, such as preexisting psychological conditions or a history of abuse, which are accentuated by the deployment cycle (Lincoln et al. 2008). Spouses who remain at home, however, can minimize the negative impact of the deployment on the children in the family. Frank et al. (1981) suggest that communication with the absent parent and talking about the deployed parent can help children cope with the separation. The ability of the parent at home to manage their own feelings affects how their children will react to the deployment, as they may communicate their stress to their children (Pivar 2009). The non-deployed parents can also minimize deployment-related stress if they maintain close relationships with their children, establish a stable routine that maintains family traditions, and monitor children’s exposure to news coverage of the war while keeping communication lines open (National Center for PTSD 2004). Adding additional empirical support to these suggestions, exposure to media coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom had a negative impact on wives and children, especially pre-adolescents, of deployed Army members, although the effect of the exposure varied across children within the same family (Ender et al. 2007). Even before the global war on terror, military members were required to fulfill more

objectives than before the end of the Cold War. One result is that members and their families must separate more often (Rohall et al. 1999). Although separations and deployments had once been relatively predictable occurrences, Lincoln et al. (2008) note that the length of military deployments has become uncertain as military members face frequent deployment extensions with the likelihood of multiple deployments in a short time span. The study of the impact that multiple deployments have on children, ages 2 to 18 years, of military members is vital to maintaining the family unit, especially because children are less likely to speak about or be aware of their problems (Hobfoll et al. 1991).

Participants and procedure