Dad on a Stick

Stephanie Himel-Nelson is the Communications Director for Blue Star Families, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting, connecting and empowering military families. In her own words, a “recovering attorney, military brat and Navy spouse,” she writes about her military-centered life in a great blog post, Welcome to the New Normal: Military Life in 2010

I highly recommend following the link and reading her lively and thoughtful article for yourself. For me, the best part of the article was not the statistics about the effects of frequent, long, and dangerous deployments on children, but the way she made those real by giving examples of her friends and their children. Most of the military children she knows have spent half or more of their lives with at least one parent deployed or in a war zone, creating a “normal” that has the deployed parent in (and out) of that life in confusing, and debilitating ways.

“My friend Laura has struggled to get mental health services for her small child. Her 5-year-old was paralyzed with anxiety while her husband was stationed in Afghanistan. My friend Casey's son thinks that daddy just visits, he doesn't actually live with them. My friend Vivian made a Dad on a Stick to keep her children connected to their deployed father. My friend Melissa's daughter has struggled to deal with her anger at her father and both of them are dealing with secondary PTSD.”

In a recent Blue Star Families survey, 92% of military family respondents reported that they felt the general public doesn't understand or appreciate the difficulties and sacrifices involved in being a military family. Himel-Nelson concurs, telling us that she’s been asked on more than one occasion how her husband could join the military knowing that he might end up killing people in an unjustified war. She’s been asked to justify the “free” health care and benefits military families receive, and has been scolded that single parents raise kids alone all the time, and you don’t hear them whining about it.

“Service is very much a part of the military family culture,” Himel-Nelson explains. People don’t join the military, at least the vast majority don’t, because they want to kill people. “Service members and their families feel called to serve their country, to be part of something bigger than themselves.” Military family members also volunteer at much higher rates than civilians do. The 2010 Blue Star Families Military Lifestyle Survey reports that 68% of respondents had volunteered in the last year, compared to a volunteer rate of just under 27% for the general public (as reported in a survey by the Corporation for National and Community Service).

These questions and comments Himel-Nelson has received illustrate the appalling disconnect between civilians and military families in the era of the isolated and poorly understood all-volunteer armed services, “Our health care is not free,” Himel-Nelson says, “although it is greatly discounted, but we are covered because our spouses cannot be insured in the civilian world. You see, they're much too likely to be shot at or injured by an IED.”

It is also difficult to have the offsetting experience of a career, which can contribute so positively to mental health and self-esteem. A little over a third of military spouses are employed outside the home. Of the other two-thirds, half would like to be (Blue Star Families 2010 Military Family Lifestyle Survey) but find the timing of deployments and moves and childcare difficulties work against this.

“Our lives aren't better or worse than anyone else's,” Himel-Nelson says. “They're just different. Yes, we face challenges. Those challenges must be acknowledged so that military families can get the help that they need. But I've never regretted the way I was raised and I hope that our current crop of military children will have no regrets as well.”

That hope is entirely within the grasp of the American people to deliver upon. We can’t change the facts of life in the military. It does involve a great deal of upheaval, with absences, moves, and the stress of war. Still, if we can do all we can to help military spouses stay strong, resilient, and healthy in body and spirit, we will have created an armed forces that future generations of military children will consider worthy of their own commitment, as well as one that offers an attractive lifestyle to civilians, so that the burden of serving our country is not so narrowly distributed in years to come.