“This study examined how changes in at-home parents’ mental health and parenting practices related to changes in their children’s adjustment throughout the course of a service members’ military deployment. Participants included at-home parents from 114 National Guard families who were interviewed at four different occasions across the deployment cycle.”
Cardin J. F.
Help seeking by parents in military families on behalf of their young children (2015)
MFRI contributing authors studied military family help-seeking activities with regard to children’s problems. Specifically, they examined emotional and behavioral problems in children younger than 10 years old. In general, the study found parents knew about these problems.
Maternal perspectives on deployment and child-mother relationships in military families (2015)
We are still learning about the impact of deployment challenges of young children whose parent experience military wartime deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. 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.
Effectiveness of a multimedia outreach kit for families of wounded veterans (2014)
This study evaluated a Sesame Workshop multimedia kit which included video and print materials, aimed to help caregivers assist young children as they adjusted to their parent’s injury. The authors hypothesized that use of the materials would produce improvements in caregiver and child outcomes as well as reductions in perceptions of disruption in the home.
Accumulation of Risk and Promotive Factors Among Young Children in U.S. Military Families (2016)
This study focuses on strengths that reside within individual military children under the age of 10, while examining the risk and external (promotive) factors associated with each individual. Researchers found that risk factors, particularly parental depression, community poverty and cumulative risk, were more strongly associated with children’s outcomes than promotive factors.