Reference:
Posada, G., Walker, D., Cardin, J. F., Nyaronga, D., Schwarz, R., & MacDermid Wadsworth, S. M. (2015). Maternal perspectives on deployment and child-mother relationships in military families. Family Relations: Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Family Studies, 64, 651–664. doi:10.1111/fare.12165
Summary:
During the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, deployments and their related challenges became more common for military families. In fact, 40 percent of the more than two million U.S. children, whose parent experienced military wartime deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, were younger than five. We are still learning about the impact of deployment challenges on these young children.
To gain insight on this issue, MFRI contributing authors used survey data from 292 mothers of military children to study relations among military deployment factors, quality of maternal care and child attachment behavior with their mother.
The authors found that overall, deployment-related factors were both directly and indirectly related to children’s attachment. Other notable findings include:
- Mothers’ views of quality of care, mothers’ depression, and fathers’ involvement when not deployed were largely connected with children’s attachment behavior.
- Fathers’ combat exposure was negatively related with children’s attachment behavior.
- Mothers’ quality of care partially mediated the association between fathers’ involvement and children’s attachment behavior as well as the link between mothers’ depression and children’s attachment behavior.