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Researchers with the think tank RAND interviewed more than 1,500 home caregivers (or non-deployed parent) and their children, ages 11 to 17, to learn what impact deployments to Iraq or Afghanistan are having.
The study found that youth who experience parental deployment suffer more "emotional difficulties" in connecting to families, engaging in school work and mixing with peers than children of like age across the country.
That military children are more stressed in wartime was not a revelation. But researchers were surprised to learn their problems deepened with longer or more frequent deployments, in the view of non-deployed parents. This challenged an assumption that children might, with repetition, get used to a parent being gone and later reintegrating with the family.
"We did think maybe these challenges would wane and people would get into adjustment mode," said the study's principal investigator, Dr. Anita Chandra, recently. "And what we found was that cumulative months of exposure to deployment really seemed to hold up and present (more) challenges for families."
"We are seeing that wear and tear from the multiple months of deployment" on home caregivers "does trickle down to the child in many ways," Chandra said.
The study, presented as an article in Pediatrics magazine, was paid for by the National Military Family Association. From June through August researchers interviewed a large pool of families who had applied for Operation Purple, a free summer camp program sponsored by NMFA to help military children cope with the stress of war.
Non-deployed parents were interviewed, too, but separately from their children. Participants were asked about service member deployment history, difficulties for children during deployment and the service member's reintegration with the family on arriving home. They also were asked about the overall well-being of the child and home caregiver.
The study's authors conceded that surveying families already motivated to send kids to free camp through Operation Purple may make them "distinct" from other military families regarding level of stress.
Fifty-eight percent of children surveyed had a parent in the Army either active duty, Reserve or Guard. Twenty percent were Air Force and 19 percent Navy. Marine Corps youth were underrepresented at 13 percent. Most participants were families of mid-grade or senior enlisted members.
Ninety-five percent of the children had experienced at least one parental deployment, an average of 11 months, in the previous three years. Thirty-eight percent of the children had a parent deployed when surveyed.
Chandra said the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are creating an unparalleled time for military families given the strain of operations over many years on both active and reserve volunteers.
"The nature of these conflicts is different -- in terms of the extended deployments, the multiple back-to-back deployments. So it's hard to really extrapolate from prior wars to what we're experiencing now," she said.
Policymakers involved in family support efforts might want to use the study to weigh the effectiveness of current programs to help families cope, and perhaps target more support where stress is greatest, Chandra said.
"There was a real eagerness to share experiences" among the families surveyed, Chandra noted. It seems "military families really want to help by providing insight that might inform support services for others. That spirit was definitely true in our sample of families."
The study, "Children on the Homefront," can be read online at www.pediatrics.org.
