Keeping Military Families Onboard

April 19, 2005

Women military officers with children quit military service at a higher rate then men officers with children, according to a new report by the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services (DACOWITS).

The Department of Defense (DoD) announced the release of the 2004 report on March 30. Currently, women comprise 16 percent of the enlisted ranks and 19 percent of the officer corps.

The report said that in focus groups, active duty personnel, guard and reserve members and female junior officers all named work/family balance as the most significant factor influencing their decisions to leave the military.

Those who said they intended to leave military service because of problems with work/family balance said the military’s policies were too inflexible and/or their military obligations impinged on their ability to maintain relationships with people outside of the military.

Married officers with children were more likely to say they intended to stay in the military than married officers without children. However, in reality, it is the married officers with children who separate at a higher rate than those without children.

The report found that women officer separation rates were highest at five to eight years of service. DACOWITS recommended that the military services should create programs to address the special circumstances many women officers face in their fifth to eighth years of service—such as childbirth and raising children.

To keep women officers with children in the military, DACOWITS recommended making it easier for families to get in-home care and allowing military families the option of staying at installations during periods that are critical to family life.

The report said that children are often negatively affected by parental deployments, especially in single parent families and dual military families where both parents are deployed.

According to DACOWITS, children can experience insecure attachment, confusion and feelings of loss. School-aged children and teens often exhibited higher incidence of discipline problems, declining academic performance and fear of loss.

Furthermore, parents in the military said they are concerned about child care during deployment, with the greatest problems occurring in single parent and dual military families.

Servicemembers voiced “deep concerns” about managing the frequency, duration and uncertainty of deployments and the effects on their families, particularly their children, according to the report.

DACOWITS recommended that DoD discontinue the practice of deploying both military parents of minor children at the same time. It also recommended that single parents and one parent in dual military families with minor children should be exempt from stop-loss restrictions.

After deployment, reunion and readjustment programs should include enough time for family and personal needs, the report added. Further, the policies requiring mental health screening for all personnel when they return from contingency deployments should be enforced.

To ensure that families of all deploying servicemembers receive information about deployment schedules, support programs, points of contact for legal affairs, financial issues, child care options, psychological counseling and other resources, DACOWITS said letters should be mailed to the families’ homes. “All service branches should continue to outreach to family members, especially during deployment,” the report said.

The report can be found at: www.dtic.mil/dacowits/.