When my father, Odysseus, and his men sailed off to the Trojan War, they were confident their gods favored a quick victory. Instead, the siege of Troy lasted ten years. After Troy fell, the survivors made their way home to Sparta, Mycenae, Pylos, and elsewhere in the ancient Peloponnese. Neither my father nor any of his troops arrived home with the rest. We waited for years as the news grew worse. Odysseus was dead, we were told,or imprisoned, or, worst yet, he had married another woman and abandoned my mother Penelope, my brother Telemachus, and me.


If he is alive somewhere, his thoughts may wander to Penelope and Telemachus, but he won’t be thinking of me. I am the daughter he doesn’t know exists. Odysseus went off to the Trojan War when his son, Telemachus, was barely old enough to walk. His wife, Penelope, was a teenage bride, and is now a young wife, mother, and queen who has to try to rule Ithaca without him.


I was born seven months after he left. I am a hero’s daughter and a princess of his realm, but I have lived my entire life without a father. I’m nineteen now, and still waiting.


All over the world, and throughout history children grow up as I have. This website will focus on the children of those men and women who have gone off to fight America's wars, and provide information and resources for all who care about military families and want to help.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Learning More

The stresses on military families are attracting a great deal of attention among graduate student as subjects for theses and dissertations.  Marinewives.com has a survey page currently listing twelve research projects, most of them academic, as well as links to other pages where additional surveys can be found.  

Graduate students are asking for participants in studies such as this one from the University of California at Santa Barbara: 
“The purpose of this study is to examine how military wives talk to their deployed husbands about the stressors they experience when their husband is away in a combat situation. You will be asked a series of questions on a variety of topics you may discuss with your husband, including stressors you experience while he is deployed and topics about family matters.” 

This is a good sign that awareness of this at-risk population is growing.  Hopefully there will be a means for results to be shared outside the academic community, and that some of these graduate students will be so impacted by this research that they choose a path of service to those who serve.
Posted by About AART at 7:00 AM

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