Developmental Issues Impacting Military Families With Young Children During Single and Multiple Deployments

Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in war time deployments for military service members. How have young children been affected by single and multiple Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) deployments? We found young children with a deployed parent showed increased behavior problems during deployment and increased attachment behaviors at reunion compared with children whose parents had not experienced a recent deployment. Child behavior problems were related to many individual child and family characteristics, such as child age and temperament, length of the deployment, total time deployed parent was absent, number of moves, and number of stressors reported by parent. Child attachment behaviors were related to the length of the deployment, number of deployments, and the number of stressors faced by the parent. Soldiers and spouses of soldiers who chose not to re-enlist more often described themselves as depressed, and had children with many more behavior problems at reunion.