[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office]
[H.A.S.C. No. 111-131]
RECENT STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF DEPLOYMENT ON MILITARY CHILDREN
__________
HEARING
BEFORE THE
MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD
MARCH 9, 2010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TONGRESS.#13
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MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
SUSAN A. DAVIS, California, Chairwoman
VIC SNYDER, Arkansas JOE WILSON, South Carolina
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California WALTER B. JONES, North Carolina
MADELEINE Z. BORDALLO, Guam JOHN KLINE, Minnesota
PATRICK J. MURPHY, Pennsylvania THOMAS J. ROONEY, Florida
HANK JOHNSON, Georgia MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
CAROL SHEA-PORTER, New Hampshire JOHN C. FLEMING, Louisiana
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa
NIKI TSONGAS, Massachusetts
Michael Higgins, Professional Staff Member
Jeanette James, Professional Staff Member
James Weiss, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
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CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2010
Page
Hearing:
Tuesday, March 9, 2010, Recent Studies on the Effects of
Deployment on Military Children................................ 1
Appendix:
Tuesday, March 9, 2010........................................... 19
----------
TUESDAY, MARCH 9, 2010
RECENT STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF DEPLOYMENT ON MILITARY CHILDREN
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Davis, Hon. Susan A., a Representative from California,
Chairwoman, Military Personnel Subcommittee.................... 1
Wilson, Hon. Joe, a Representative from South Carolina, Ranking
Member, Military Personnel Subcommittee........................ 2
WITNESSES
Chandra, Dr. Anita, Behavioral Scientist, RAND Corporation....... 3
Wong, Dr. Leonard, Research Professor, Strategic Studies
Institute, U.S. Army War College............................... 4
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Chandra, Dr. Anita........................................... 26
Davis, Hon. Susan A.......................................... 23
Wilson, Hon. Joe............................................. 25
Wong, Dr. Leonard............................................ 39
Documents Submitted for the Record:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
Witness Responses to Questions Asked During the Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted during the hearing.]
Questions Submitted by Members Post Hearing:
[There were no Questions submitted post hearing.]
RECENT STUDIES ON THE EFFECTS OF DEPLOYMENT ON MILITARY CHILDREN
----------
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Military Personnel Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Tuesday, March 9, 2010.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 5:32 p.m., in
room 2118, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Susan A. Davis
(chairwoman of the subcommittee) presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SUSAN A. DAVIS, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM
CALIFORNIA, CHAIRWOMAN, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
Mrs. Davis. The hearing will come to order.
Good evening, everybody--or good late afternoon. Thank you
so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.
Given the limited legislative calendar available to the
committee, we are embarking on a different hearing structure.
This hearing will focus on a specific topic, the effects of
deployment on military children, and will only last
approximately one hour prior to our votes at 6:30. As such, I
will keep my remarks very short, and we will have time for a
more robust discussion on this issue during the question and
answer section. I want to thank our witnesses again for coming.
While there is a lot of anecdotal information that we all
think about as we think about our military families and our
young people, until recently there have been really very
limited analysis of the impact deployments are having on our
military children. Today, we will focus on two recent studies
that looked at military children and the impact multiple
deployments have had on them and their families. So let me
welcome our witnesses, Dr. Anita Chandra, a behavioral
scientist with the RAND Corporation, and Dr. Leonard Wong,
research professor at Strategic Studies Institute with the U.S.
Army War College.
While their individual research has documented several
findings, it is important to note that both studies have many
similarities. For example, both studies found that children
with a strong non-deployed parent and/or family support
structure was very important to ensuring lower levels of stress
and a better ability to cope with the deployment. These
findings, of course, are an important first step toward
understanding the needs of our military children and helping to
provide them and their families the programs and support that
they need to survive, be resilient, and succeed during these
difficult times.
Dr. Chandra and Dr. Wong--please, Dr. Chandra, if you will
begin first. All written statements will be included in the
record. We would ask you to keep your remarks to three or four
minutes. We really want to hear from you, so we want to be sure
you have an opportunity to say what you would like; and, of
course, we will follow up with questions as well.
Mr. Wilson, do you have any comments?
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Davis can be found in the
Appendix on page 23.]
STATEMENT OF HON. JOE WILSON, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM SOUTH
CAROLINA, RANKING MEMBER, MILITARY PERSONNEL SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Chairwoman Davis; and thank you for
holding the hearing today.
Today's hearing continues our commitment to military
families who share the challenge of ongoing wars alongside
their military service member. I believe our children are the
future of this great nation. We must take care that, in our
efforts to mitigate the effects of combat on service members,
we are mindful that families experience the challenges of
deployment together but each in their own way.
I am encouraged by the studies we will hear about today
which seem to suggest our military children are more resilient
than we could expect. With that, it is also clear that the
well-being of our children is affected by the stability of
their family and the emotional strength of the non-deployed
parent, among other factors.
Our main concern, that although the Department of Defense
[DOD] and the military services have implemented numerous
programs to address the mental health needs of our service
members and their families, these programs remain under
resourced and pose challenges to families who need help. I
encourage the Department and services to look closely at the
results of these studies to determine where these programs may
fall short in providing the necessary support to military
family programs.
I also recognize this research is only the first step in
understanding how the war on terrorism is affecting our
military children. I would like to hear from our witnesses
today their recommendations for future study. I am also
interested to hear if they found gaps in programs available to
assist military families and if the effects of deployments on
children would be mitigated if these gaps were addressed.
Finally, I would like to know how else we can help these
incredible children who so often have to be strong beyond their
years, while their military parent is away. We owe it to this
nation to ensure this generation of military children is able
to transition to adulthood with the skills and emotional
strength to successfully lead us in the future.
I welcome our witnesses and thank them for participating in
the hearing today. I look forward to your testimony.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Wilson.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilson can be found in the
Appendix on page 25.]
Mrs. Davis. Dr. Chandra, would you please begin.
STATEMENT OF DR. ANITA CHANDRA, BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, RAND
CORPORATION
Dr. Chandra. Thank you.
Chairwoman Davis, Representative Wilson and distinguished
members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to
testify today. I will discuss the findings from our study,
``Children on the Homefront: The Experience of Children from
Military Families'' related to the well-being of military
children and how they are coping specifically with parental
deployment. These findings were also published in the Journal
of Pediatrics in December of 2009.
As you know, multiple and extended deployments and the high
operational pace of the current conflicts are unparalleled for
the U.S. military's all-voluntary force. As a result, many
military children are experiencing more months or years of
parental deployment; and it is increasingly important to
understand how parental deployment affects child well-being.
Despite the contributions of previous studies, significant
knowledge gaps remain, especially for older children.
Our study focused on the well-being of youth ages 11 to 17
and their non-deployed parent or caregiver from over 1,500
families. Families in our study were selected from the 2008
applicant pool to Operation Purple, a summer camp program
sponsored by the National Military Family Association. Our
sample was proportionate to deployed force composition across
Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force active, guard, and reserve
service members. We conducted two interviews, one with the non-
deployed caregiver, usually the mother in this case, and one
with the child. I will highlight our findings related to
military youth well-being as well as challenges specifically
associated with deployment and reintegration.
First, to military youth well-being. A goal was to show how
children from military families function with respect to
academics, peer, and family relations, general emotional
difficulties, and overall problem behaviors. Compared to
children in the U.S. sample, the average emotional difficulty
for our study sample is consistently higher at each age. We
found that 30 percent of our sample had elevated levels of
anxiety symptoms indicating a possible anxiety disorder. This
is twice as high as the proportion of other samples of youth.
We did not observe any major differences in child well-being by
component, deployment experience, or service.
Children and caregivers were also asked to report on
difficulties that children experienced as a result of parental
deployment and return. Caregivers reported that older children
had a greater number of difficulties than younger children
during deployment. Girls reported more challenges during
deployment and reintegration than did boys. We also found that
caregivers with poor mental health themselves reported more
child difficulties during deployment.
Total months of parental deployment in the past three years
were significantly linked to a greater number of child
difficulties during that deployment as well as upon
reintegration. More specifically, as the total months of
parental deployment increased, so did the number of
difficulties the child reported. In some, our analysis
uncovered important associations between a family's military
background, deployment experience, and key child outcomes.
Given that child difficulties were greater for families
experiencing longer periods of parental absence in the last
three years, these families may benefit from targeted support
to deal with these stressors at later points in the deployment
and not simply during initial stages. Further, families in
which the non-deployed caregivers are struggling with their own
mental health may need more support for both caregiver and
child.
At the same time, however, we know that dozens of programs
are already being implemented across the defense and civilian
sectors to support military families. It is important to ask
questions about whether, based on research, these programs are
meeting the needs of the families; and, if not, should they be
continued or how might they be improved.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today and to
share the results of our research.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Chandra can be found in the
Appendix on page 26.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Wong.
STATEMENT OF DR. LEONARD WONG, RESEARCH PROFESSOR, STRATEGIC
STUDIES INSTITUTE, U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE
Dr. Wong. Chairwoman Davis, members of the subcommittee,
thank you for this opportunity.
There have not been very many studies done on the influence
of multiple deployments on children; and of the studies that
were conducted, many of them focused on whether deployments
indeed stress children.
In March of 2009, Steve Gerras and I conducted a study to
explore what factors might influence the magnitude of that
stress. We collected the responses of over 2,000 active duty
soldiers who completed a web-based anonymous survey. In
addition to that, we provided them a link to forward to their
spouses, which resulted in over 700 spouse surveys, identical
surveys. We also provided them four links to send to up to four
of their children between the ages of 11 and 17, which resulted
in adolescent surveys, identical surveys. We also conducted a
second phase of this study where we traveled throughout the
United States Army installations and interviewed over 100
adolescents at assorted Army posts.
What did we find? What we were expecting, first of all, is
a cumulative effect of deployments. We thought that with each
subsequent deployment there would be higher levels of stress in
the children. When we looked at the soldier surveys with their
estimate of the stress that their children are experiencing,
there was a cumulative effect. But when we looked at the
children's perspective, there was no cumulative effect.
Amazingly, there was a trend of decreasing stress with each
subsequent deployment. So instead of a cumulative effect, we
saw perhaps levels of coping strategies being learned and
maturing happening in the children.
Back to the predictors of deployment stress. What did we
find? We found the number one predictor for deployment stress
was their participation in an activity such as sports. That was
followed by a strong family and then the child's belief that
the American public supported the war.
Sports as a diversion for deployment stress, that makes
sense; and youth sport programs are relatively easy to create.
A strong family that is expected, but that is a long-term
social problem as well as an Army problem.
But the strength of a child's perception of the American
support for the war would be associated with their deployment
stress was a surprise, and that is a much more complex issue to
deal with.
We also shifted then to another question, not looking at
the everyday stresses of a deployment but looking at a child's
ability to cope with a life of deployments. For this, we looked
at what predictors help a child survive the life of an Army
brat in a deployed Army.
What we found was that the predictors were a strong family,
a strong non-deployed spouse, the perception that the American
public supports the war, but the largest predictor of a child's
ability to cope with the life of deployments was their belief
that soldiers are making a difference in the world. That is
surprising and yet intuitive.
What happens is these adolescents grow up in an environment
with lofty notions such as sacrifice, selfless service, and
duty. They are surrounded by sayings such as I know my soldiers
and I will always put their needs ahead of my own from the NCO
Creed.
These children understand that the Army is a greedy
institution, demanding all the time, energy, and focus of a
soldier. But they also understand from firsthand experience
that the family is a greedy institution that requires constant
attention and care. So they see their deployed soldier caught
in the middle of both noble institutions.
So our study examined deployment stress, how do you deal
with the stress of an individual deployment, and found that
sports, a strong family, but also the belief that the American
public supports the war influenced that stress. But when we
looked at the ability to cope with the deployment, we found
that, in addition to strong family, strong non-deployed spouse,
the perception of American support for the war but the belief
that American soldiers are making a difference in the world is
the number one predictor. What we found was that we found
varied common factors, but we also found that attitudinal
factors make a difference in a life marked with multiple
deployments, that a child's confidence in their parent's call
to duty is worth the sacrifice.
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wong can be found in the
Appendix on page 39.]
Mrs. Davis. Thank you very much, both of you, for your
comments and the work that you have done on this.
Maybe I will just start with you for a second, Dr. Wong,
because I found that interesting in terms of the adolescents.
And one of the things that I wondered about is, if you were
able to separate those young people who were living in a more
confined military base versus those who were living in the
public domain essentially, attending public school versus a
military on-base school, what difference did you see?
Dr. Wong. That is a good question, and we did ask both of
those. We asked, did you live on base versus off post; and we
also asked, did you go to a DOD school or a public school. What
we discovered is there is really only--in this age group, 11 to
17, there are only two DOD high schools anyway. So that
question went away.
As far as the on-post/off-post, we did not find a
difference. Why is that? It could be because someplace like
Fort Carson where off-post there is a huge variance in what an
off-post experience is. There are some that are far away and
they are very civilianized, but there are some very close and
they are very military. What we think we heard from the
anecdotal evidence we picked up in the interviews was how much
the family participated in the post activities as opposed to
where they lived was a bigger factor.
Mrs. Davis. So if they participated heavily in post
activities, there was a higher level?
Dr. Wong. Exactly. And yet they lived off post. They took
the time to take advantages of activities. Interestingly,
during a deployment, you reduce the persons available to drive
to activities by 50 percent.
Mrs. Davis. Dr. Chandra--and, I think, Dr. Wong, you can
weigh in on this as well. While there were certainly
differences in your studies, one of the things that was similar
is that the non-deployed parent, the extent or the well-being
of that parent particularly or provider as it relates to their
own mental health, is there anything in particular you found
that actually was quite supportive of that non-deployed parent
that jumped out a little bit that was more unusual, whether or
not they actually accessed services and family support centers,
et cetera? Did you learn anything about what kinds of programs
perhaps that that non-deployed parent took advantage of?
Dr. Chandra. For this study, we actually didn't look
specifically at the services that non-deployed caregivers
access. We are looking at that issue in follow-up analyses. But
certainly we had a very strong relationship between the
caregivers' mental health and their ability to cope as well as
their ability for their children to handle some of the
deployment stressors.
Dr. Wong. For our study we did ask the spouse how they
handled deployments, and that was a very significant factor.
From the interviews, what we discovered was that a key factor
in the spouse's dealing with deployments is the Family
Readiness Group, and that is a strong factor. And you can
almost tell in the children how active the parents were, and
the children saw that as the non-deployed spouse's role almost
during deployment.
Mrs. Davis. Were there any particular gaps that you picked
up in speaking with them, something that would have been
helpful?
One of the things that actually I have picked up over a
number of contacts with military families is the lack of
tutoring assistance, that the non-deployed parent has sort of
lost that extension in helping out with school. And they said,
if we only had more ability to access tutors or get some help.
Because, as one of parents would say, I cannot--I have got
three kids. I cannot help them all at one time.
Dr. Wong. We didn't pick up anything like that. What we
heard was a lot of spouses just want someone to listen to and
chat with and talk about things, to feel like they are not
alone. So as far as specific tutoring programs, we didn't pick
up that.
Dr. Chandra. For this part of the study, we focused
specifically on the types of challenges that children are
facing during and after deployment. And so what we found was
there were things that they highly endorsed as difficult, both
from the caregiver perspective as well as children; and these
were things like missing school activities, finding that people
in the community really didn't understand what life was like
for them. So they definitely articulated some of those things
you are referencing as more common challenges, particularly
during the deployment.
Mrs. Davis. What do you think should be done to assist
military families? What would you like to see?
Dr. Chandra. Well, I think our studies--both of our studies
really point to the needs of older youth; and, as we reference
in our work, there certainly has been a lot more attention on
younger children, younger than 12, for which we know there are
a lot of child development and support programs on base and
off. So what we hope from this work is that it starts to
identify some of the needs of older youth and teenagers so that
we can look at the programs that we currently have and try and
figure out are we aligning our programs with those needs,
particularly of adolescents and particularly those older
adolescents.
Dr. Wong. What our study showed was also a similar focus,
but what I liked about our study was the surprising findings
there are some obvious, easy things like sports activities. The
kids need to be busy, keep them distracted.
Strong families, that is a hard one; and yet it is very
intuitive to all of us that you need a strong family. And that
starts long before deployment, and it starts maybe even before
the soldier comes into the Army.
But how do you influence--because we found that the factors
of the child's belief, what they feel about the Army, what they
feel about the nation makes a difference, and they will see
through propaganda. So how do you influence a child's beliefs?
That is a critical question, and that will have us thinking for
a long time.
Mrs. Davis. One of the surveys that has been done--I am
going to turn to Mr. Wilson in just a second. One of the
surveys that was done--we met with a number of spouses probably
about a year ago--was their belief that the--I think 94 percent
believe that the American public really had no idea what they
go through, what their sacrifices are all about. And we know in
many ways--we have been pretty much a military at war, not
necessarily a nation at war. Did those kinds of sentiments--did
those come across from the students as well? Or you are saying
the fact that they feel that there is a great deal of support
really has helped them tremendously?
Dr. Wong. We saw a variance on that, that where some people
thought yes and some people thought no. What we found was that
it does influence the stress that the children experience.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Wilson.
Mr. Wilson. Thank you.
An extraordinary difference would be for young people who
live on military bases, their mom or dad are active duty, and
then I know from my personal experience serving in the Army
Reserves and National Guard, here we have people back in their
home communities. In your studies, did you see a difference
between active duty children and reserve and guard children?
Dr. Wong. Our study was restricted to active duty. And so
if a follow-on study would be conducted, we could hypothesize
that it would be worse for a reserve component because they
don't have that tight-knit community, or we could hypothesize
that it would be better because they are taking extraordinary
measures and the community might be behind it and there could
be sustained community and family support available. So it
could go either way.
Dr. Chandra. Our study actually did include representation,
active, guard, and reserve; and we did not find any significant
differences in terms of child well-being with respect to
component. There were other factors like the total months of
deployment that seemed to be more of a distinguishing risk
factor.
We did note that for children living on base, caregivers
were less likely to report difficulties during deployment than
for those families living off base.
Mr. Wilson. And I do hope, as you continue your studies,
because it really would be interesting to see the difference
between the active duty, whose moms and dads are in uniform
every day, and then we have the guard members, whose moms and
dads are in uniform monthly, and then deployment.
And I know that is really reflective of my family. I have
one son who is active duty Navy, served in Iraq, and he has
small children. And then I have got three other sons, one
served in Iraq, another in Egypt, and they are Army National
Guard. So I wouldn't want you to study my family. I don't want
to offer that up. But I know there are differences and
different challenges.
But I do know this, that in our family our sons, their
spouses, the children are all very, very proud of the service
that has been rendered to our country. And particularly with
the elections yesterday--my oldest son had been in Iraq for the
2005 election, so it was great to see his keen interest in the
62 percent participation. And then I have a nephew who is in
Baghdad, and he was keeping me up on the percentage of
participation during the course of the evening. So our family
is engaged.
In regard to Family Readiness Group, because to me that is
so important, and I was provided pre-mobilization legal
counseling in my service and something that I, in retrospect,
wish we had focused on more in working with families. Guard
members, reservists received annual legal briefings to prepare
them in the event of deployment, but it was rare that we had
family members participate. Now it is a significant part to
have a Family Readiness Group, and the families do want to be
participants.
How would you judge the Family Readiness Groups and which
ones did you see were most effective?
Dr. Wong. That would be a hard question for us, because we
saw plenty of spouses and children who were very appreciative
of the Family Readiness Groups, and we really didn't hear
people talking about ones that were wanting. And so it could be
that people didn't want to express that, but I didn't hear that
many people complaining.
Dr. Chandra. We didn't look specifically at Family
Readiness Groups, but I would submit, certainly thinking about
how those families who don't live on base or who are not
geographically collocated to access those Family Readiness
Groups, what are the other ways they can engage in those kind
of connections, particularly for guard and reserve families.
Mr. Wilson. I hope you will look into that. Because there
are armory Family Readiness Groups, but a challenge is that
many of the members of that particular armory are people who
commute--it is not uncommon--100 miles, 200 miles, not just
within that community. And so I hope we will look at that.
And I know from my experience you will have a spouse, male
or female, who is just enthusiastic organizing the immediate
community and then trying to make efforts for those persons who
live further away; and they are just so selfless and the
communities are so supportive. And we also have in our state
what is called the State Guard, which backs up.
So, again, thank you; and I look forward to the balance of
the testimony.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Kline.
Mr. Kline. Thank you, Madam Chair; and thank you both for
the studies and for being here and your testimony and answering
our questions.
I guess I jump sort of intuitively to the same thing that
Mrs. Davis and Mr. Wilson did, and that there would be a big,
noticeable difference between whether you lived on the base--
on-post or off-post in the case of the Army. And, apparently,
Dr. Wong, you didn't see that so much.
I guess with the active forces--and, Dr. Wong, that is what
your study was--we are now way past the point where we have
individual assignments, for the most part. We send units over.
So you have Family Readiness Groups, and you have some unit
cohesion that would apply whether you lived on or off the base,
as you are suggesting.
My son is still with the 101st, and for years he lived in
Clarksville, Tennessee, off the post, and now he lives on Fort
Campbell. And, in all cases, the kids were surrounded by other
kids whose moms and dads were with the 101st. So I can see why
that might get blurred pretty easily.
I think you are really suggesting, though, that the post
activities might be helpful, but if you have to commute to
them, that might be a detriment for those who live
significantly off-post. But I am not sure why you said sports
are a good distraction. I am not sure if I understand in the
results of either of your studies that these post activities
make a big difference; is that correct?
Dr. Wong. Our study looked at activities, specifically
sports. We looked at clubs such as band or drama. We looked at
organizations such as Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. And we looked
at religious activities. What we found is that the significant
factor for predicting which children would be better with the
deployment and stress are those that are participating in
activities such as sports.
Mr. Kline. But does it have to be a post activity?
Dr. Wong. No, not at all. What it is, it serves as a
distraction to the negative feelings that are associated with a
deployment.
Mr. Kline. So if they live off the post and they are in
little league or something like that off-post, that is the same
thing as if it were--okay. I think it would be helpful to, at
some point, for somebody, when you are looking at this, to look
at the impact of the individual deployments which still occur
in the reserve component. We still have them called up and sent
off, and they are not surrounded by any unit cohesion, and that
might be interesting to see.
I know I always worry about my grandkids. They are still
preteen. This is the third--my son will leave here in about 10
days for his third combat deployment, and I found it
interesting because I have been worried about that cumulative
effect, too. I don't know if that--you said there may be a sort
of maturing that goes along. I don't know if that just applied
to older kids, or does that apply to your three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine-year-old?
Dr. Wong. We restricted our study to 11- to 17-year-olds.
Mr. Kline. So you had nobody below 11?
Dr. Wong. We didn't have anyone, so we really can't
compare.
Mr. Kline. Okay.
Dr. Chandra. And, to add to that, we looked at both the
number of deployments and the total months of deployments,
regardless of the number. And actually the factor that mattered
the most, that had the greatest effect was the total months of
deployment, not the discrete number of deployments. So we were
able to differentiate those.
Mr. Kline. That is where I was getting to next, whether you
had concluded that it was better to have more, shorter
deployments, those would be preferable to fewer, longer
deployments, or whether it was a cumulative deployed time. In
other words, if you had five 7-month deployments, is that worse
than two 15-month deployments? We don't do 15-month deployments
now, but if we did, do you have a----
Dr. Chandra. We did not look at the sequencing, but
certainly it is--that cumulative months of deployment with
whatever configuration, as you suggested, that example had a
greater impact negatively on children's well-being.
Mr. Wilson. Okay. Thank you very much. Thanks for doing the
study, and we are looking forward to more.
I yield back.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Snyder.
Dr. Snyder. Do either of you have any idea what the total
number of children like at this moment in time today have
parents that are deployed overseas, what kind of numbers we are
talking about?
Dr. Chandra. The recent statistics that I have seen is
about 1.8 to 2 million children.
Dr. Snyder. So almost 2 million children that have
parents--I probably should have phrased that differently than
when I said overseas--deployed overseas, separated from their
parents?
Dr. Chandra. That is my understanding from recent data. I
don't know----
Dr. Snyder. Do you agree with that number, Dr. Wong?
Dr. Wong. I don't know the number, but that number is in
the ballpark from what I have read in the studies.
Dr. Snyder. Dr. Wong, why was your study restricted to only
active duty? That seems like if we did that by mandate in our
legislation we made a terrible mistake, I would think. Why was
that?
Dr. Wong. Sir, that was done because we were sending out a
survey that we wanted 11-year-olds to fill out. And so if we
wanted to make it applicable to the reserve component, we would
have had to have made it a lot bigger because the issues were
different. So we said we wanted to see does the post's youth
center make a difference. That question would not have made
sense to a reserve component child. So to keep the survey short
enough that an 11-year-old would fill it out, we said restrict
it to the active component.
Dr. Snyder. It may point to the need to do a further study
of the component. Because we--I think most bases probably do
have sports teams. I would suspect there are a fair number of
kids in the reserve component world that we don't have control
over that. We can't send around a memo, hey, Dr. Wong's study
recommends all your bases need to have a summer baseball league
or something. We don't have control over what is going on in
other parts of the world.
I wanted to ask about special needs kids. Did either of
your studies look at those parents who have special needs kids
and how this might impact on them? Because that is a problem in
the military even when everybody is at home.
Dr. Chandra. Unfortunately, we didn't include questions
about this in this study, but we are hoping to include this in
follow-up work. Because I think the Exceptional Family Member
Program and other services that are available to special needs
families are an important consideration.
Dr. Wong. Our study did not address special needs
specifically, but during the interview portion of our study we
did have special needs children arriving for interviews, and we
took their comments into consideration.
Dr. Snyder. I think Mrs. Davis has heard me talk about this
before, but, 3 years ago or so, at the Little Rock Air Force
Base, I had them arrange a meeting with family members of kids
with autism; and they had to work at it a little bit because of
medical privacy. So they extended that. But we finally ended up
with a group--I can't remember what--maybe six to eight
families were represented there.
And the most striking thing about it was that they didn't
know each other, that it was like a godsend for them that they
finally had other parents on the base. Little Rock Air Force
Base is a relatively small base. But it was their first
opportunity--we have gotten so protective of people's privacy
there wasn't an ability to get people to get together. So I had
to actually recommend it.
And I am told that this has been done by some bases now
around the country, that once every so often that the base
commander needs to have kind of like Special Needs Parents Day
and get everybody in there for coffee at 8:00 in the morning
and then at 8:30 say that is autism corner, that is asthma
corner, that is diabetes corner, however you want to do it. But
just to get people--let parents instruct parents as they are
coming and going. Because I think this must be a tremendous--
deployment must be a tremendous potential burden on those
families who really have difficulties anyway with a child with
some either emotional or physical health issues.
We had a situation--we talk about valuing things. I am
putting this in context now. We had this situation at Little
Rock Air Force Base where there is a public school on the base
that is the responsibility of the local school district. It
leaks. It is terribly inadequate. It is great education there.
But everybody is so frustrated because they say they are going
to do something, and then it doesn't get done. And the base
commander has gotten involved the last two--has gotten involved
politically about why we can't do something about this school.
But it makes sense. If you don't value the school, what message
is that sending to the kids?
One guy talked to me about how he would get e-mails from
his kid that the roof had leaked again on the school papers
while he was in Iraq, you know, on his desk the next morning
and the school desk is all wet. And maybe that puts it in
context, why that is so important to those families, that they
sense that we don't take care of their physical needs, that it
may be sending the wrong signal about how important we think
their service is.
That is probably a stretch, but I will ponder that some
more.
My time is up. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
As I recall, in both of your studies--and this certainly
represents the military that they are serving in the wars today
as well--both of those families who were questioned, the father
was deployed. Do you have any sense or do you think we should
be looking also at more families where the mother is the
deployed parent?
Dr. Wong. In our study, 10 percent of the sample were
women; and what we found was there was no significant
difference between the children of women soldiers and men
soldiers in how they dealt with deployment stress.
When we looked at their ability to cope with deployments
overall, in other words, a life of deployments, there was a
significant difference that women--the children of women
soldiers had a harder time coping with a life of deployments.
That could be for many reasons, one of which is that the
percentage of single parents is higher for women soldiers.
Mrs. Davis. And in terms of adolescents, you looked more at
adolescents than at young children?
Dr. Wong. Exactly. We stopped at 11 as the youngest and 17
as the oldest.
Mrs. Davis. Dr. Chandra.
Dr. Chandra. Absolutely. I think it is critical for us to
look not only at female service members but dual-military
families and to understand the impacts and the effects
associated for the family as well as for children specifically.
We had a small number of fathers in our sample, so we weren't
able to tease apart differences between whether the father was
deployed or the mother.
Mrs. Davis. One of the things that I think we have to be
careful about is, even though you saw great resiliency in a
number of people, especially the young people, I had to smile
because I was thinking for adolescents maybe I think you
suggest that life might be easier without dad around and that
in some ways they have learned to cope and they have a certain
amount of independence and have taken on roles in the family
that otherwise they might not have done. So it may be that,
especially during the transition periods that occur that are
tough when people are coming back from a deployment, that life
is just perhaps a little simpler for kids.
But I also think that even though we are seeing that there
are a number of young people as well that have great resiliency
and are doing well, we also know there are some young people
that are not doing well at all. And so as you look at those
children particularly, did you have any sense of the severity
of the mental health problems that they have and how does that
compare to the general population?
Dr. Chandra. We purposely didn't use clinical or diagnostic
assessments, but we did note that about a third of our sample
had elevated anxiety symptoms, and these are anxiety symptoms
that would warrant a subsequent clinical assessment for an
anxiety disorder. So that was about twice what we would expect
in other studies of young people.
We also found that about a third of our sample had
heightened emotional difficulties. So these are things like
getting along with friends and feeling sad and tearful and so
on. And that compares to about 20 percent, about a fifth, in
the general population. So it gives you a sense a little bit of
the elevated symptoms. Certainly further studies should really
use diagnostic or screening tools to know if it is a disorder
level.
Mrs. Davis. I guess also the number of times that the young
person frequents a mental health provider during the course of
the year, whether, in fact, the parent is seeking that kind of
assistance as well. I think what we would be after in this is
some of the changes that have occurred within the military
around issues of stigma and whether the families are benefiting
from what I hope and see is a changing attitude in that regard
and whether there is a belief that there is help out there if
we need it and if we feel that it is available to us. Is there
anything in some of the surveys or the discussion that you
picked up that could speak to that?
Dr. Wong. Our study did not address clinical diagnosis
either. What we did was ask overall how your child--when we
asked the soldiers and the spouses--handling deployments
overall. Interestingly, soldiers said about a third of their
children were doing poorly or very poorly. When you turned to
the children, only 17 percent said they were doing poorly or
very poorly. But that 17 percent could be extrapolated out to
20,000 children in the active force that say they are not doing
okay, they are doing poorly or very poorly. I think that
reflects your point of let us not say that everything is fine
out there. There are 20,000 children out there saying they are
doing poorly or very poorly, and it is not acceptable.
Dr. Chandra. We did include questions about mental health
service use at subsequent surveys. So we are actually in the
process of analyzing that. So, hopefully, we will be able to
have those findings for you soon.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Kline, did you have any other questions?
Mr. Kline. Just one quick question. Dr. Wong, on the poorly
or very poorly question, did it--I guess I am not sure when you
were doing the asking. Was this all post deployment or during
deployment?
Dr. Wong. Thirty-six percent of the soldiers who responded
to our survey were deployed at the time. So we had responses
coming from Iraq, Afghanistan. We had 700 of their spouses,
about a third of them had their spouse deployed; and we had 550
adolescents, about a third of their parents were deployed. So
what we were able to do is compare the non-deployed with the
deployed for questions addressing deployment stress.
Mr. Kline. What I was getting at was you may be doing
poorly or very poorly--11 months into deployment may be
different than one month into deployment. And I was trying to
understand if your study got at that.
Dr. Wong. Right. For the ability to cope with a life of
deployments as opposed to a single deployment, that was done
with everybody; because we are asking them to reflect upon life
as an Army brat.
Mr. Kline. I see. Okay. Thank you.
Mrs. Davis. Dr. Snyder, any more questions?
Dr. Snyder. Probably the longer we go on, the more our
questions will get far more detailed than your study could
possibly undertake. Back in the olden days when Mr. Kline and I
were in the Marine Corps and I was in Vietnam, it was--the
rarity was--I can remember I think I talked to my mother on the
phone maybe twice in a year or something like that.
I have I guess a total of three employees that have been
mobilized overseas. One of them is currently overseas on a
second deployment. He is getting towards the end of his second
year-long deployment and has three little girls. But he is very
pleased with the use of Skype or some brand of that.
I assume that you haven't looked at any of those kinds of
things, the importance of those kinds of contacts or what those
impacts might be with much, much better communications than we
have ever had in war situations.
Dr. Wong. Actually, one of our hypotheses was that the more
frequent communication with the deployed soldier and the more
in-depth communication with a soldier, two variables, we
figured the lower the stress would be. What we found was the
more frequent the communication, the higher the stress.
Now, we have to be careful about causality here because it
could be--a knee-jerk reaction might be the more they talk, the
more they get stressed. Or it could be the more stressed the
child is, the more they want to talk with the deployed soldier.
Or it could be the more they talk to the deployed soldier, the
more they are hearing about what is going on; and that might
produce more stress.
Dr. Snyder. You are no help at all, are you?
Dr. Wong. But we did find that for a family that reported
that all the indicators were that it is an intact, strong
family, the communication was not detrimental. Increased
communication was not a detrimental factor. For families that
reported that their family was a weak family, the more
communication, the more stressful. So there we start to see a
glimpse of the complex nature. We can't just say more
communication is better.
We also did a previous study where we looked at the effect
of communication on the forward operating base back home on the
soldier, and a lot of times more communication from the soldier
back home produces more stress in the soldier. Because, in the
old days, you focused on the mission and only the mission.
Today, we are worried about the washing machine repairman
coming and what should the spouse do and buying a house and
everything else that we have now put on the brains of the
soldiers deployed.
Dr. Snyder. I see. When you start looking at kind of how we
judge this stuff, I don't know how you ultimately decide the
impacts of these things.
I am not running for re-election. This is my seventh term.
Because life treats you differently. Mr. Kline and Mr. Wilson,
they talk about their sons in uniform. I have sons in diapers.
I have a set of triplet boys that are one-year-old. They turn
15 months today. And then a three-year-old. And I know that
anytime I put on a necktie--I had about a year, year and a half
where my three-year-old would cry because he thought that meant
I was going to Washington. So that is stressful. On the other
hand, he went through phases of several months--he would cry
when I went to the grocery store. I don't know how you balance
that out. He is a little kid.
But I don't know how you look at this down the line. After
talking about my employee's second deployment of a time away
from family is over a year both times, two and a half years
total out of--a very, very important part of both their lives
as parents but also their lives as children. I don't know you
do studies down the line. You won't be able to. You just--
people go through it the best they can, and we try to be as
supportive as we can. But you did not look at children younger
than 11; is that correct?
Dr. Wong. That is correct.
Dr. Chandra. One thing that will be critical is that our
study is longitudinal. So we followed families over three time
points, and certainly hopefully we can follow families longer,
because it will be important to see how these effects change
over time and certainly to tease apart kind of natural
developmental changes that happen with kids and adolescents and
what really is kind of the effects associated with deployment
stressors.
Dr. Snyder. Right. And it is my belief that everybody is
entitled to one off-the-wall question a day or so. So, Dr.
Wong, I am going to ask it to you; and for obvious reasons I
won't ask Dr. Chandra.
Last week, some allegations were made that RAND cannot be
trusted, that they have bias in their studies. Have you had any
reason to think that RAND is not a reputable research
institute?
Dr. Wong. I am honored to be sitting here with Dr. Chandra.
Dr. Snyder. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mrs. Davis. Thank you so much. We certainly appreciate all
of your comments.
I think we have asked this in several different ways, but
with the work that you have done and particularly as it relates
to a longitudinal study, what else would you like to know? What
is it that is important as we continue?
Dr. Wong. For our study, what is important that we can see
that children are saying that they are not doing as bad as
their parents said. But what happens when they are 25 years
old? How are they going to be as parents? We don't know that.
That is something that needs to be taken a look at. We looked
at 2009. The wars are 8 years old. What happens when they are
10 years old, 12 years old? We don't know that. So even though
we are looking at it from a certain point in time, we don't
know the future.
Dr. Chandra. I think there are a few things that hopefully
we can understand better. One is to really understand the non-
deployed spouse or caregiver's mental health. I don't think a
lot of attention has been paid to the parent at home. I think
it is critical that we look at the needs of girls and older
teens. And we haven't spent a lot of time looking at what
supports we have in place.
And then, overall, we have a lot of programs being rolled
out; and there have been tremendous efforts on behalf of DOD as
well as the civilian sector. But we really don't know which
programs are effective. And given that we have research now
that is really identifying what those need areas are and which
subgroups of kids could benefit, now we really need to think
about whether our programs are matching those needs.
Mrs. Davis. I am glad you brought up girls particularly,
because in your study there was a difference in the response of
young women. Now, were those responses of the non-deployed
parent regarding the girls or were these actual responses of
the girls themselves?
Dr. Chandra. Actually both. But our finding about the
reintegration-related challenges was really based on youth
report. And so girls and boys both sort of shared that it was
difficult getting to know that returning parent again. But
girls expressed more worry about how their parents were getting
along at home. They expressed more worry if that deployed
parent who returned had a mood change or was different in some
way. They just had greater anxiety about some of those issues.
So we need to think about how we support girls during that
process.
Mrs. Davis. And in teasing out what is unique about girls
and boys, when it comes to perceptions around social
relationships as well. Because I think we would probably agree,
those of us in the audience, that there is a difference, sort
of a complexity of those relationships seems to be picked up
more by young women often than is by young men. And I would--
that would be curious to see whether there are some programs
particularly that should be targeted and supported as they go
forward with their adolescent development which would be really
critical with their dad being gone.
Dr. Chandra. Absolutely. I think earlier studies that have
focused on younger kids have really seen difficulties for boys,
and certainly those difficulties are there for the adolescent
boys, but I think this study highlights some of the needs of
girls specifically.
Mrs. Davis. Great. Thank you so much.
We certainly appreciate the work that you have done, and we
hope it will continue. We remain concerned about identifying
and trying to help to the extent that that is possible.
One of the things that I have been a little concerned about
is in some areas I guess it is difficult for us to even
identify where the military families are located. In
California, that is not really the case. But I understand that
in some states it is, and I know that there are organizations
looking at military children and families that are concerned
about that as well. So we would want to know in isolated areas
and particularly as parents come home where they don't have a
support structure, whether or not we really need to be--have a
lot more services available to those families. We need to find
out ways of thanking the families and thanking the young
people. We thank our families repeatedly. We thank--we sort of
direct our comments often to our spouses, to their spouses, but
the kids really also need to be recognized and thanked for the
sacrifices that they make. It is very important.
Thank you for your work. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 6:21 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
?
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