Blog posts with the tag "Staff Perspective"

Limited research has focused on parents of Service members despite the millions of mothers and fathers who wear these shoes. However, Worthen, Moos and Ahern (2012) take a step to fill this gap by shedding light on the experiences of 11 returned Veterans aged 22-52 living with their parents after separating from the military in California.  The authors argue for the importance of this research, noting that 27% of Veterans 30 years of age or younger currently live with their parents in California, and an even larger percentage lives with them for some period of time after leaving the military. Also, according to these researchers, Veterans who navigate the waters of returning to live with their parents often face more rocky transitions than their non-Veteran counterparts because they are leaving the structure and purpose of the military and may have experienced combat or other trauma.

Since President Obama declared November 2013 to be Military Families Month, it seemed appropriate to write about military families.  My professional interest in military families began when I married my active duty Navy husband in 2005.  When I did my first literature review on military families, I was quite surprised by the size of the body of literature, much of which was quite outdated.  While the research literature on military families and children is still limited, it has grown significantly since then.