CHILDREN WITH A MILITARY PARENT

By: Michelle Iaquinta

MILITARY FAMILIES
Everyday a family
suffers the lack of a
mother or father due to
the military.
Children worry about
his or her loved one
and if he or she will see
that certain person
again.

EFFECTS ON CHILDREN

The child has the hardest

time to adjust with a
parent gone.
A child can suffer from
autism (autism is a brain
disorder which causes
difficulties in a childs
speech).
During school, a child
can have sessions with a
speech pathologist to
help his or her speech
impediment.

EFFECT ON CHILDREN

On average, military
aged children and youth
will attend six to nine
schools during their
kindergarten through 12th grade school years,
(Aronson, 2011, 999)
This can encourage the
child to not make new
friends and to not adjust
to his or her new
surroundings because he
or she knows they are
going to move again in
the future.

EFFECTS ON CHILDREN
Another way a child experiences affects of
development is when a military parent is injured.
The parent may have a different physical
appearance after the war.
Children in families of injured service members
experience sudden changes in living arrangements,
schedules, parenting practices, and the amount of
time spent with their parents, (Cozza, 2010, 112).
This can cause the child to have temper tantrums
and making the parents become stressed with the
childs behavior.

EFFECTS ON FAMILY

Families with a military parent

or spouse can suffer from
Post-traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD).
PTSD can occur when one is
exposed to a traumatic event
such as war and can be
diagnosed when one has
impaired function of at least
one months duration
associated with symptoms.
One symptom is when a
military veteran has a
flashback of what happened
during the war. The veteran
can become stressed from
these flashbacks and suffer
mentally.

EFFECTS ON FAMILY

Army wives have been shown

to have significant increases in
rates of depression, anxiety
disorders, adjustment
disorders, and sleep disorders
when their husbands deployed,
especially with longer
deployments, (Roy, 2012,
284).

Single parenting can either be

short-term or long-term
depending on the return of the
other parent.

The parent has twice as more

responsibility, since she is now
the fatherly figure, and has
twice as much stress.

EFFECTS ON COMMUNITY

The community tries to help

military families as much as
possible.
One way a community can
help is by the FOCUS
program. FOCUS stands for
Families OverComing
Under Stress.
This program helps families
get through stressful times,
via child and parent skillbuilding groups and
workshops, consultations,
and briefings, (Saltzman,
2011, 214).

HELPFUL AGENCIES
Moms of Military (located in Riverside, Ca.) is a
group of mothers and wives of loved ones that are
currently serving in the United States military.
It helps mothers and wives get through the hardship
of having her loved one away.
The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
(located in Los Angeles, Ca.) is an agency that
improves access to serves for traumatized children,
their families and communities throughout the
United States.
This agency gets money from donations and they
raise public awareness of the serious impact of
child traumatic stress.

GAPS IN RESEARCH
The two gaps in research are the lack of knowledge
on the topic and what happens after the parent
comes back from war.
There is limited research on military families and
how it affects the child, family, and community.
Also, there is not enough information to what
happens to the families after the soldier has
returned.

MASLOWS POINT OF VIEW

Maslow stated that

children have a Hierarchy
of Needs.
Some children may not
be getting his or her
basic needs because
both parents are not
there.
The single parent can
sometimes not give a
child all of the nurturing
and warmth the child
needs.

REFERENCE

Aronson, K. R., Caldwell, L. L., & Perkins, D. F. (2011). Assisting Children and
Families With
Military-Related Disruptions: The United States Marine Corps
School Liaison Program (Vol. 48, pp. 998-1015). University Park, PA: Wiley
Periodicals, Inc. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
Berns, Roberta (2010). Child, Family, School, & Community: Socialization &
Support (8th Ed.) Community Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Cozza, S. J., Guimond, J. M., McKibben, J. A., Chun, R. S., Arata-Maiers, T. L.,
Schneider, B.,
& Maiers, A. (2010). Combat-Injured Service Members and Their
Families: The Relationship of Child Distress and Spouse-Perceived Family
Distress and Disruption
(Vol. 23, pp. 112-115). Bethesda, MN: Wiley
InterScience. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
Johnson, K. (2008). Soldiering On (145th ed., pp. 36-38). N.p.: U.S. News & World
Report. Retrieved April 15, 2013.
Lowe, K. N., Adams, K. S., Browne, B. L., & Hinkle, K. T. (2012). Impact of Military
Deployment on Family Relationships (Vol. 18, pp. 17-27). Retrieved April 15, 2013.
Roy, C. J., Taylor, P., Runge, W., Grigsby, E., & Woolley, M. (2012). Web-Based
Post- traumatic Stress Disorder Education for Military Family Members (Vol. 177,
pp. 1-8). Retrieved April 15, 2013.
Saltzman, W. R., Lester, P., Beardslee, W. R., Layne, C. M., Woodward, K., &
Nash, W. P. (2011). Mechanisms of Risk and Resilience in Military Families:
Theoretical and Empirical Basis of a Family-Focused Resilience Enhancement
Program (pp. 213-230). Retrieved April 15, 2013.