Problems in Reserve

I am coming to realize there is not only a chasm between the 2 percent who serve in the military and the rest of us, but a chasm within the military as well, between the situation of active duty service members and reservists. I don’t mean a rivalry, but rather a drastic difference in the situations their families face when a reservist parent deploys. The article “Military Families Among Us: The Hidden Challenges for Social Workers,” by Jodie Bargeron, MSW, LSW, touches on this.

Iraq and Afghanistan services members face longer and more frequent deployments than in past wars, in significant degree due to reliance on reserve members. This creates a problem for reservist families, who may not live in a place where they can access the military support available to non-reservists. “A family may not know any other military families in their town, much less any other families with an actively serving member,” Bargeron says. “Without a centralized military base, families lose the point of entry to supports they need. Children may not know others at their school with an actively serving parent. More importantly, natural supports such as the school social worker, teacher, pediatrician, and day care workers have limited exposure to families serving in the wars, and therefore may be unaware of the effects of deployment on child development and how to help these children and families.”

In the past people believed that if a child was too young to understand deployment, he or she was too young to be affected by it. It’s now apparent that very young children with a deployed parent may regress or begin to miss developmental milestones (Geneman and Lemmon, 2008), based on the length and frequency of deployments. Today standard combat deployment is one year. During the 2007 surge, deployments lasted fifteen months.

Adolescent children are less likely to see developmental changes, but they more frequently show symptoms of anxiety and depression. Children of reservists are less likely to receive the outside support they need for continued healthy growth. School and medical social workers may recognize the signs of stress, or even neglect or abuse, without understanding or even knowing about the deployment.

Approximately 30,000 U.S. children have experienced the return of an injured parent soldier or the death of a serving parent (Lemmon and Chartrand, 2009). Families of reservists are less likely to have easy access to military support services to deal with the trauma this causes the family.

Bargeron's article is addressed to social workers, identifying ways they can be more aware and sensitive to reservist families in their service area, beginning with identifying those they already have as clients, but Bargaron makes a closing comment that applies to all of us. The best place to start helping a reservist’s family or any other military family, is “to acknowledge their sacrifice while their parent or spouse is serving. Honoring their sacrifices opens the door to support.”