Since the beginning of the 21 st Century, more than 2 American children have experienced parental deployment during their tender age (DeVoe, Kritikos, Emmert-Aronson, Glenda, & Paris, 2018). Therefore, it is critical to assess how the experiences of military parents affect their children psychologically. From an interactionism viewpoint, children whose parents serve in military are experiencing far more emotional difficulties than their fellow children in civilian families. For example, the long deployment period deny these children a chance to live with their mother or father. The thought that military job is a dangerous job that can lead to the death of their parents or psychological problems. A recent study by Collins (2018) revealed that Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among military parents leads to a negative impact on their children’s’ mental health. Another research by DeVoe et al. (2018) revealed a strong association between military parents’ PTSD and their children’s behavior problems. The situation gets worse once they are old enough to know the dangers serving in a war zone where sniper fire, IEDs, and suicide bombing are the order of the day.
In my view, families in the presented study were representative since the study was all about military families. However, there was a need to involve an equal number of civilian families in the study. Doing so could have created a platform for comparison and show the extent to which the experience of children from military families differ from those from civilian families. Also, there was a need to examine the specific factors such as the rank, years served, or whether the parent has ever served in a hostile environment, suffered a major injury, or died while on military duty.
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In my opinion, excessive deployment makes it difficult for soldiers to play their family roles. For example, a study by Hathaway, Russotti, Metzger, and Cerulli (2018) revealed how military life alters family structure, dynamic, and support. Long military deployments lead to strained parent-child relationships leading to stress and distress for both children and their parents (Hathaway et al., 2018). Therefore, reducing such deployments will provide the much-needed environment for offers to spend more time with their family. Also, there is a need to provide support, especially to children whose parents are serving in the military. For instance, Hathaway, Russotti et al. (2018) recommended the use of continuous counseling services and support at the community level to help such children cope with their parents’ long absence. Since the men and women in uniform are serving the interests of the entire nation, spending taxpayers’ money on such programs is justified.
References
Collins, T. (2018). Military parent's PTSD and children's mental health: A scoping review. The Qualitative Report, 23 (5), 1237-1255
DeVoe, E. R., Kritikos, T. M., Emmert-Aronson, B., Glenda, K. K., & Paris, R. (2018). Very young child well-being in military families: A snapshot. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 27 (7), 2138-2148
Hathaway, A., Russotti, J., Metzger, J., & Cerulli, C. (2018). Meeting military children's biopsychosocial needs: Exploring evidence-based interventions. Best Practices in Mental Health, 14 (1), 54-77
