The Impact of Deployment on Children From Canadian Military Families

• Author: Amanda Bullock,Alla Skomorovsky
• Published date: 01 October 2017
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16670691
• Date: 01 October 2017
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Impact of

Deployment on

Children From

Canadian Military

Families

Alla Skomorovsky

1

and Amanda Bullock

1

Abstract

Children in military families experience various stressors associated with the

demands of military life, such as parental absences due to deployments. However,

there is a limited understanding of children’s well-being to parental deployment from

Canadian military families. This study was conducted to examine the impact of

deployment on the well-being of school age children from Canadian Armed Forces

families and to consider the resilience factors in their well-being. Focus groups with

children (N¼85) showed that deployment negativ ely impacted children’s well-

being, routines, and family dynamics. Active distraction and social support seeking

served as the most effective protective factors against deployment stress. Recom-

mendations for mitigating the impact of deployment are offered.

Keywords

children, military, well-being, deployment, resilience

1

Department of National Defence, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Alla Skomorovsky, Department of National Defence, 101 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

K1A 0K2.

Email: alla.skomorovsky@forces.gc.ca

Armed Forces & Society

2017, Vol. 43(4) 654-673

ªThe Author(s) 2016

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X16670691

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Over 40,000 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) personnel have been deployed in sup-

port of the mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2012 (Boulos & Zamorski, 2013).

As such, recent research has mostly focused on investigating the impact of deploy-

ment on the well-being of CAF personnel and their spouses (e.g., Boulos &

Zamorski, 2013; Skomorovsky, 2014). However, there is very little empirical

research on the impact of deployment on children from CAF families. While limited

in nature, evidence from the United States reveals that children and adolescents

experience lower well-being, disruptions to their routines, and lower family func-

tioning during deployment.

1

Notwithstanding, there are several limitations with the extant literature. Fore-

most, the majority of studies have relied on the perspectives of adults such as

parents when there is a replete with calls for more evidence from the child’s

perspective (Flake, davis, Johnson, & Middleton, 2009; Lester et al., 2010). This

is because parents’ assessments may be biased in terms of what they choose to

disclose, their own well-being, the parent and child sex, child age, and their per-

ceptions of the child primarily within the home context (Card et al., 2011; Chandra,

Burns, Tanielian, Jaycox, & Scott, 2008; Flake et al., 2009). It is argued that

research on children’s well-being from the child’s perspective is needed because

they may be the most accurate at judg ing their emotional states and cogniti ve

styles, and as such, children can provide unique insights into their internalized

distress (Card et al., 2011; Flake et al., 2009). Moreover, research on both military

and civilian samples has demonstrated that parent reports of children’s well-being

are usually different than children’s self-reports (Crow & Seybold, 2013; Lopez-

Perez & Wilson, 2015). Also, the few studies from children’s perspectives are

based on adolescents who, because of their enhanced cognitive development and

previous deployment experiences, may have a better understanding of the dangers

of deployment to the military parent and the challenges faced by the at-home parent

than younger children, and as such, may respond differently (Clever & Segal,

2013). Finally, not all children from deployed families are adversely affected; many

demonstrate resilience (Lester et al., 2011). However, there is little research on the

resources for resilience that children use to overcome the challenges of deployment

(Cozza & Lerner, 2013).

Impact of Deployment on Children

Deployment is a continuous process characterized by specific phases: predeploy-

ment (i.e., period when military members receive official notification of an opera-

tion), deployment (i.e., military member is away on the operation), and

postdeployment (i.e., return of the military member to his or her family; Military

Family Services (2015). Deployments can be ‘‘normative,’’ which refers to routine,

noncombat missions for a clearly defined period of time, or ‘‘catastrophic,’’ which

refers to deployments under times of crises, where there is a higher risk of danger,

for an undetermined period of time (McCubbin & Figley, 1983).

Skomorovsky and Bullock 655