A 2016 research text, part of Springer’s Risk and Resilience in Military and Veteran Families series, has garnered praise for its fresh perspectives in the study of military-connected families.
The Journal of Family Theory and Review recently contained a review on “War and Family Life.” Each chapter in the book was based on a presentation given at the 2013 International Research Symposium on Military and Veteran Families.
“The editors and contributors to this book are to be commended for their efforts to extend the focus of military research beyond service members and veterans to include family members,” wrote reviewers Heidi Cramm, assistant professor at Canada’s Queens University and Deborah Norris, associate professor at Mount Saint Vincent University, also located in Canada.
According to Cramm and Norris, “War and Family Life” expressly moves beyond the descriptive state of military family research to tease apart the multiple, complex factors at play in the daily lives of military families.
This unique resource provides findings and insights regarding the multiple impacts of military duty on service members and veterans, specifically from a family standpoint. Broad areas of coverage include marital and family relationships, parenting issues, family effects of war injuries, and family concerns of single service members.
“It is also refreshing to read research (e.g., Chapters 5 and 6) that offers perspectives other than those often reported in the military family literature, for example, the negative sequelae of PTSD on military families, particularly decreased family functioning and decreased marital satisfaction (Lambert, Engh, Hasbun, & Holzer 2012; Monson, Taft, & Fredman, 2009),” the scholars wrote.
“War and Family Life” was edited by Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, director of MFRI, and David Riggs, executive director of the Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP). The book was published by Springer in 2016.
The Journal of Family Theory and Review is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the National Council on Family Relations.