The Effects of War on Parenting
in Military Families
Karen Blaisure, PhD
Presented at the Michigan Summit on Military Families
November 18, 2011
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI
This presentation is partially based on
Serving Military Families in the 21st Century (in press)
I would like to recognize co-authors:
• Tara Saathoff-Wells, PhD, University of Central Florida
• Angela Pereira, PhD, Colonel (Retired)
• Shelly MacDermid Wadsworth, PhD, Director of the Military Family
Research Institute at Purdue
• Amy Dombro, MS, Consultant, Honoring Our Babies and Toddlers
“They're the 9/11 Generation — the more than 5 million service
members who have worn the uniform this past decade and their
families…. More than 2 million men and women have served in the
war zones, including an unprecedented number of deployments by
our National Guardsmen and Reservists. We've never asked so
much of our all-volunteer force. And we've never asked this much of
our military families, either.…They're spouses who balance a career
and a household all alone while their loved ones are deployed.
They're young children who have known only life in a nation at war.
They're teenagers who are all too familiar with Dad or Mom being
gone for months at a time.
Yet even with all that they shoulder, these military family members are
some of the most extraordinary individuals I've ever met: the moms
who always seem to pick up the extra carpool shift, the kids who
take on extra chores around the house, the survivors of our fallen
who step up every day to serve our communities, and the veterans
and wounded warriors who have served our country heroically on
the battlefield and continue to contribute here at home.
Now it's up to us to serve them as well.”
Michelle Obama (2011)
Overview
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Parents in the Military
Context of Parenting
Deployments and Parenting
Injury and Parenting
Loss and Parenting
Implications for Practice and Research
Examples of Services and Programs
Parents in the Military
Percent
Family Status FY 2009 (DUSD, 2010)
45
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
39
42
36
32
14 14
AD
9
5
4
1
3
1
SR
Parents in the Military
• Active Component 44% (n = 613,997)
• Selected Reserve 43% (n = 364,951)
• Average 2 children per parent
(Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Military Community and Family Policy) [DUSD], 2010)
Parents in the Military
• Birth of first child (FY 2009)
• 57% AD and 45% SR members 20 – 25 years old
• average age was 24.8 AD and 26.4 SR
• Active Component members in each branch become
parents earlier than members of the selected reserve
(DUSD, 2010)
• Compared with civilians
– More likely to have children in their 20s and less likely in
teens or 30s
(MacDermid Wadsworth, 2010)
Parents in the Military
Age Distribution of Children (DUSD, 2010)
11
19 to 22
4
31
12 to 18
23
SR
30
31
6 to 11
AD
27
Birth to 5
42
0
10
20
30
Percent
40
50
Parents in the Military
Couple
Military/Civilian
Not a couple
Parents
Couple
Dual-Military
Not a couple
Context of Parenting
On/near major installation
AC
Institutions (e.g., religious groups, medical
care, DoDEA schools or civilian schools with
higher % of military children/parents)
Civilian community
Parents
SR
Institutions less familiar with military life
Civilian Community
Veterans
Institutions less familiar with lives of
veterans
Context of Parenting
• Duty First and Sense of Community
• Employment, Health Care, Greater Racial
Equality
• Relocations
• Spouse Employment
• Child Care and Education
Context of Parenting
Duty First and Sense of Community
• Priority of Mission vs Family Needs
• Sense of community bolsters positive family
adaptation
– Informal support (interpersonal connection,
emotional and practical support): community groups,
friends, neighbors
– Formal support: family programs and services
– Unit-level support: unit commander and leaders, a
family readiness group, or key volunteer network
location that most communicates “we take care of our
own”
(Bowen, Mancini, Martin, Ware, & Nelson, 2003; Martin & McClure, 2000)
Context of Parenting
Employment, Health Care, Greater Racial Equality
• Secure employment and health care
• Policies/practices: integrate work/housing, enforce equal
opportunities, and reflect social hierarchy built on rank and not
class or race
– Reports of better race relations than in the civilian world
– Greater degree of job mobility, opportunities for
advancement
– Black and Latino service personnel report high satisfaction
with the quality of life
– Similar divorce and marriage rates
– Racial gap in preterm birth substantially reduced
(Lundquist, 2008)
Context of Parenting
Relocation
• MFRI Relocation Study (MacDermid, Weiss, Green, & Schwarz, 2008)
– Perceived move more difficult when in summer, more severe daily
hassles/household stress
– External locus of control/high neg emotion at risk of experiencing
negative events & evaluating events more negatively
– Positive coping/enhanced psychological well-being associated
with expectation of and actual easier moves
• Resilience factors associated with positive coping
– Human capital: optimism, phy/psy health, sense of mastery, skills,
high role balance, life satisfaction
– Social capital: marital sat, family functioning, responsive/effective
parenting, social competence, formal & informal supports
Context of Parenting
Relocating: Reserve Component
• Air and Army National Guard
– May serve with unit close to where they live or
– May have significant travel to unit: opportunity for promotion or
change in MOS
– Guard members moving out of state must fulfill contract: return to
drill with their unit, or identify a Guard unit in new state to accept
them and obtain agreement of the first unit to release them to the
new unit
• Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps Reserves
– As a federal force, members may be re-assigned to another duty
station but typically only within a region
– Regions may encompass many states, so orders may mean having
significant travel demands in order to drill or may prompt reserve
members to move their households to be nearer to their new unit
Context of Parenting
Spouse Employment
• 21% reached educational goal, those not in school but wish to
be cited barriers: cost, family responsibilities, childcare needs
• Employment/career
– Major factor in spouses’ assessment of their quality of life
– Factors hinder and help securing employment
– Compared to civilians, military spouses are more likely to
• be younger (hinder)
• have young children are home (hinder)
• reside in metropolitan areas (help)
• have graduated from high school and have some
college education (help)
(Castaneda & Harrell, 2008; DMDC, 2009; DUSD, 2010)
Context of Parenting
Child Care Study 2003-2004 (n = 1,028)
– > 50% of parents had irregular work hours, so used multiple
arrangements to meet their child care needs.
– Even with priority at CDCs, single parents & dual-military
parents considered option least likely to fit schedules:
evening, overnight, holiday, weekend work
– Parents reported child care too expensive
– Most did not know child care was subsidized; some believed
CDCs make a profit for the DoD; they do not
– FCC homes longer hours of care, more flexible; however,
unstable when provider is ill or has family emergency
(Zellman, Gates, Moini, & Suttorp, 2009)
Context of Parenting
Children’s Education
• Majority of school-age military children of AD &
SR attend civilian schools or are home-schooled
• AD families may relocate “back home”
• ~ 7% or 80,000 of the 1.2 million military children
attend DoDEA schools (Department of Defense Education
Activity [DoDEA], 2011)
• Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunities
for the Military Children (Military Interstate Children’s
Compact Commission, 2011)
Context of Parenting
Family Stress Theory (ABC-X Model; Double ABC-X Model)
• Stressor Event or Situation
Normative or Non-normative
• Perception
Meaning, perception, family’s “cognitive style”
• Resources
Family: cohesion, adaptability
Community: individuals, institutions outside of family that
provide social support
• Coping
(Hill, 1958; McCubbin & Patterson, 1982)
Context of Parenting
• Pile-up of stressors
• Pile-up of multiple deployments:
When does one cycle end and the next one begin?
• Pile-up of dangerous deployments:
When does the worry end? When does it begin?
• We see resilience in action
and
• We see wear and tear
(Cozza, 2009)
Deployments and Parenting
Family Preparation for Deployment
• AC and RC families: well-prepared likely to
“weather deployments more successfully”
than less prepared
• Military’s goal: prepared families who
consider deployments a condition of military
life, not out of the ordinary
(Booth et al., 2007, p. 31; Castaneda et al., 2008)
Deployments and Parenting
Clarifying family roles and expectations
Managing strong emotions
Establishing closeness in relationships
Creating a shared meaning
(Bowling & Sherman, 2008)
Deployments and Parenting
When do we say good-bye?
• Notification: few hours to 1+ years
– During gear-up: individuals or units spend
weeks/months away training
– Guard and Reservists meet obligations of
civilian job and train replacement (Griffith, 2005)
• Time counted differently by military & families
– “Boots on the ground”
– “Boots away from home”
(Castaneda, Harrell, Varda, Hall, Beckett, & Stern, 2008)
Deployments and Parenting
Deployed parent
• Parenting from afar
• Wanting to protect
• Family source of
support/stress
Parent at home
•
•
•
•
Anxiety/depression
“Single” parenting
Return date
Practical matters
Both
• Worry
• Loneliness
• Communication
difficulties
• Boundary
ambiguity
(Boss, 2006;
DMDC, 2009;
Faber et al., 2008)
Deployments and Parenting
Reintegration Challenges
• Children
–
–
–
–
Reconnecting
Attachment
Routines
Disciplining
• Partner
–
–
–
–
Relational Uncertainty
Intimacy
Communication
Infidelity, abuse
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Household Decisions/Work
Disruption of Routines
Civilian job
Injury
Depression/Anxiety
Posttraumatic stress symptoms
Alcohol Problems
(Bowling & Sherman, 2008; Knobloch,
2011; Nichols & MartindaleAdams, 2011)
Deployments and Parenting
Parenting and Children’s Adjustment
• Studies during OEF and OIF have
demonstrated close association between
– Positive parent-child relationships
– Family adjustment and closeness
– Maternal or caregiver adjustment
– Parental stress
• and children/youth adjustment to deployment
(Chandra et al., 2011; Flake et al., 2009; Lincoln et al., 2008; Park, 2011 )
Deployments and Parenting
Parents who communicate a sense of security
and confidence and use effective coping
strategies serve as “a powerful protective
factor” in their children’s lives
(MacDermid et al., 2008; Walsh, 2007)
Deployments and Parenting
• Focus groups: 71 military fathers, 14 installations across world
• Some “softened” role as a parent
– leave most of the parenting to wives, pulling back
• Others use permissive parenting practices
– Feel guilty over not being the ideal “involved” father
• May equate “good fathering” only with a physical presence
• Rather, focus on quality time and managing time well to
– engage children when home;
– plan and think creatively before deployment about ways to
be psychologically presence when deployed; and
– consider how to best reunite and resume day-to-day
parenting with their children after deployment
(Willerton, Schwarz, MacDermid Wadsworth, & Oglesby, 2011)
Deployments and Parenting
Study of Army and Marine Corps Parents/Children
(Lester et al., 2010)
• Parents and 6 – 12 year olds, currently deployed or
recently returned parent
• MC similar to community norms in depression scores,
internalizing/externalizing symptoms
• MC significantly higher levels of anxiety
– 32% of children with a recently returned parent and
– 25% of children with a currently deployed parent
• At-home civilian mother distress predicted depression and
externalizing and internalizing behaviors in children
• Active duty parent’s depression and anxiety symptoms in
predicted internalizing symptoms in children
Deployments and Parenting
Multiple and Dangerous Deployments
• Increased stress
• Can result in the reduction of parental
efficacy:
– that is, parents’ availability and
effectiveness in caring for their
children
(Cozza, 2009a)
Deployments and Parenting
Child Maltreatment
• Texas study (2000-03): increased rate of child
maltreatment before/after first large-scale deployment
after 9/11
• No consensus on how rates of child maltreatment in
military families compare with non-military families;
Texas study showed rate higher for nonmilitary families
(Rentz et al., 2007)
• Substantiated child neglect in Army families declined in
1990s but rates in 2004 approximated 1991 rates
(McCarroll et al., 2008)
Deployments and Parenting
Child Maltreatment
• Study (JAMA) on 1771 Army families (1858
parents) with 1+ instances of substantiated child
maltreatment (2001-2004) found during
deployment:
–
–
–
–
Overall rate of child maltreatment 42% greater
Child neglect was the most common
Rates of child neglect were nearly twice as great
Rate equally elevated for girls and boys
• Elevated risk for children 2 – 12 years of age
(Gibbs et al., 2007;McCarroll, Fan, Newby, & Ursano, 2008)
Injury and Parenting
• Combat-related injuries, physical and psychological,
• Children must adapt to new understanding of their parent
• Parents must adapt to new understanding of themselves
• Parent-child attachment may be challenged
(Gorman, Fitzgerald, & Blow, 2010)
• Little empirical research examining impact of combat injuries
• Study of 41 families: 92% moderate to severe injury
• Spouse report, two tertiary care facilities June 06-May 08
• 63% - high deployment-related family distress prior to injury
• 48% - high family disruption following injury
• 44% - perceived injuries as very serious
• 68% - high child distress
(Cozza et al., 2010)
Injury and Parenting
Invisible Injuries
• A study of 468 National Guard fathers: increases in postdeployment posttraumatic stress symptoms associated
with lower levels of effective parenting
(Gerwitz et al., 2010)
• PTSD associated with decreased parenting satisfaction and
parenting skills in sample of Vietnam veterans
(Samper, Taft, King, & King, 2004)
• PTSD symptoms in active duty parents predict depression
and internalizing/externalizing symptoms in children;
greater the symptoms in the parent, the greater the
symptoms in the child
(Lester et al., 2010)
Injury and Parenting
• PTSD negatively affects parent-child relationships
– parents experience emotional numbing and
avoidance (Ruscio, Weathers, King, & King, 2002)
– symptom of hyperarousal may also play a factor
• Service member or veteran with PTSD symptoms
–
–
–
–
withdraw from family interactions
less monitoring of children
less involved with children
exhibit volatile emotions when stressed and in conflict
(Gewirtz et al., 2010)
Injury and Parenting
• Workgroup on Intervention with Combat Injured Families
– guide research and interventions to assist families
– improve communication
• Medical and social service professionals indicate parents
set tone for children in families with injured service
member
• Parents can provide or learn to provide
– developmentally appropriate information about the
injury whether visible or invisible
– reassurance of the parent’s love for the child
– encouragement to ask questions, and
– guidance on how to interact with the parent
(Cozza, 2009b; Cozza et al., 2005)
Loss and Parenting
• Approximately 5000 combat-related deaths
(6000+ overall deaths) since 9/11 (DMDC, 2011 a, b, c)
• Know little about how children adjust to the
death of a military parent
• In general, however, bereavement is a risk
factor for children developing emotional or
behavior problems (Cozza et al., 2005)
Loss and Parenting
• Traumatic Grief in Children
– National Child Traumatic Stress Network (2008)
• Military death during wartime may result in unwanted
or unexpected intrusions while mourning
• Families have a right to privacy
• If children hear a parent died for no reason, or a war is
unnecessary, they may have a harder time
accepting/integrating the death than if they hear a
death was noble, for a reason, heroic
• Teens’ opinions about a war can help or complicate
their grieving (National Child Traumatic Stress Network, 2008)
Implications
Research
– Parents who are not a couple
– G/L Parents
– Parenting and injury
– Parenting and loss
– Evaluation of programs and services
– Parenting after separation from military
Implications
Support for parents
– Effective parenting across life course
– Parenting stress and parental coping
– Parenting when parents not a couple
– Couple support
– Deployment cycle
– Injury
– Loss
Examples of Services and Programs
• Military Family Assistance Centers
• Reserve and National Guard Programs
–
–
–
–
Family Readiness
Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program (RC)
Online assistance
Military Family Life Consultants
• Family Readiness Groups/Key Volunteer Network (Marine
Corps)
• Navy Family Ombudsman Program
Examples of Services and Programs
• Military OneSource
https://www.militaryonesource.mil
• AfterDeployment
http://www.afterdeployment.org
• National Center for PTSD
http://www.ptsd.va.gov
• MilitaryHOMEFRONT
http://www.militaryhomefront.dod.mil
• Websites of Active and Reserve Components
Examples of Services and Programs
Zero to Three
• Coming Together Around Military Families®
– Duty to Care Training for Professionals
• Honoring Our Babies and Toddlers Manuals
– Supporting Young Children Affected by a Military
Parent’s Injury
– Supporting Young Children Affected by a Military
Parent’s Death
Examples of Services and Programs
Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS)
• Nonprofit organization for families whose service
member has died
• Peer support network
• Crisis response professionals available by phone
• Assistance with understanding military benefits
• Magazine, a guide for survivors, online chats, webinars
• Survivor Seminars - social support education about
grief and traumatic loss
• Good Grief Camps for children teach coping skills and
build social support (http://www.taps.org).
Examples of Services and Programs
FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress) Project
• Parent-children sessions
– goal setting, problem solving, regulating emotions, managing
reminders of combat/deployment, communication, mutual-support
– educate on child development, stress continuum, trauma
– individualized family deployment timeline
– links to additional services and resources
• Evaluation: 821 families, 42% self-referred
– Parents: decreases in symptoms of anxiety and depression
– Parents: improved children’s prosocial behavior, reductions in
problematic conduct and symptoms of anxiety and depression
– Children: significant increases in problem solving, emotional regulation
– Families: improved problem solving, communication, affective
responsiveness, behavior control, and roles
(Salzman, 2010; Saltzman, Lester, Beardslee, & Pynoos, 2008;
Westphal, & Woodward, 2010 )
Examples of Services and Programs
• After Deployment: Adaptive Parenting Tools
National Guard and Reserve Families
• Passport Toward Success
Children and Parents of members of Indiana NG
• STRoNG Families: A Multi-family Group Intervention
to Support Military Families with Young Children
Contact Information
Karen Blaisure, PhD, LMFT, CFLE
Professor
Department of Family & Consumer Sciences
1903 W. Michigan Avenue
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5322
269-387-3663
[email protected]