Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The idea that war is men's work has been around for as long as war itself. Women, tradition has it, were the supporting players -- dutiful, uncomplaining and sheltered from any real action. One of the most time-honored such images was the wife or mother "left behind." She sent her soldier off. She welcomed him home. And in between, she was not to be seen or heard from much but presumably pined away in patriotic martyrdom.

Iraq is far from the first war in which the roles assigned to women do not match up with what they actually do or who they are. But it is the first war that has included women, for better or worse, playing major parts in the main story line. Think Condoleezza Rice, Cindy Sheehan, Jessica Lynch, Lynndie England and Jill Carroll.

Now, two new books about the Iraq war have given a 21st-century recasting to the war wife. Stacy Bannerman's When the War Came Home and Kristin Henderson's While They're at War provide vivid descriptions and heart-wrenching details of the way war reaches into every aspect of the lives of soldiers' spouses. The books also make clear that the government's wavering support for the needs of military families in this particular war has made their survival here at home seem as tumultuous and uncertain as that of their soldiers in Iraq.

Both books received favorable reviews from the WaPo, Henderson's work getting the more raving of the two. Before we get to some military family statistics, I'd recommend firing up your audio player and giving a listen to NPR's excellent All Things Considered interview with author Kristin Henderson; you might also want to read an excerpt from While They're at War. Both options are available here.

A few thoughts from that excerpt:

Anyone who watches TV has seen the familiar images from the warfront: military men and women in desert camouflage uniforms riding in Humvees, patrolling dusty streets, firing their weapons.

The homefront gets a lot less screen time -- the camera swings around to focus on military families just long enough to peek through the window at the tearful goodbye and the joyful homecoming and, in between, the occasional yellow-ribbon moment. The rest of the homefront experience is hidden behind a closed door. Out of pride, or perhaps from a feeling of vulnerability, those of us who live the homefront life often feel the need to protect ourselves from anyone who has never been left behind during a deployment.

"They don't have any idea what it's like," I complained to an Army chaplain. "They just can't understand." He looked thoughtful for a moment. Then he said, "Maybe they don't understand because we don't tell them."

In NPR's audio interview, the author mentions some of the unmentionables found in the military family experience: depression, thoughts of suicide, worries over infidelity and/or divorce, and experiencing something called 'anticipatory grief' while their troop is deployed overseas.

Kristin Henderson explains what anticipatory grief is to the military family member:

Anticipatory grief is something that's experienced by people who have a loved one with a terminal illness. Early in the Iraq War, the chaplains on Fort Bragg noticed that many homefront spouses were experiencing the symptoms of anticipatory grief: tightness in the throat or chest like an anxiety attack, shortness of breath, sensitivity to loud noises, forgetfulness and difficulty concentrating, agitation and restlessness, extreme hunger or lack of appetite, crying jags, headaches, insomnia, and imagining the funeral. Some were resorting to drug use and excessive drinking. Essentially, you're grieving as if the one you love is already dead.

During a wartime deployment, homefront families know that the odds are very good that their service member will come home. But the fear is always with them. As a result, among homefront families, anticipatory grief is very common and normal. If you don't know what it is, you may think you're going crazy and find it overwhelming. But if you recognize it for what it is, there are ways to deal with it.

In addition to the NPR audio interview, the Pritker Military Library has an incredible online video of a recent presentation given by Ms. Henderson. Highly recommended, if you're interested in this topic.

A Selection of Military Family-Related Statistics

Although the following stats are not the primary focus of Ms. Henderson's work, they offer a small look at some of the more difficult areas of the military family story. Getting stats on rates of divorce, infidelity, depression, and other military family problems in order to compare them with those found in civilian populations is hard to come by; the military may be keeping track of things internally, but it's understandably not a priority to spread the data around.

A look at a few stats I managed to dig up nonetheless:

• "[A] 24-hour, toll-free hotline called Military OneSource has become a lifeline for some families. Operators offer information and referrals for counseling on everything from emotional problemsto parenting. [T]hrough October [2005], almost 100,000 calls or online requests came in, a 20% increase over all such requests last year." [Source]

• "An estimated 1.9 million kids have a mom or dad in uniform, and since 2001, a third of all U.S. forces have served or are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan." According to the DOD, as of September 2005, the number of deceased servicemembers who left behind dependent children and the number of dependent children: 86 Afghanistan KIAs left behind 165 children; 556 Iraq KIAs left behind 1,036 children. [Source]

• "One in four military families moves across county lines in a given year, compared to 1 in 12 civilian families. Frequent moves between states pose challenges for military children, in particular with educational issues." [Source]

• "[T]he war in Iraq had created unusually high sexual and marital tensions, because troops are deployed more often and for longer stints than in other recent wars, and because more soldiers are married. ... Sgt. Rowe Stayton, a former Air Force pilot who served in Iraq in the National Guard, said about a quarter of the soldiers in his platoon ended their marriages while in Iraq. At the same time, he said, troops in Iraq "indulge in sexual fantasies more than they ever would in the U.S.," because there was so little to do most of the time." [Source]

• "In 2004, a total of 3,325 Army officers saw their marriages end in divorce, 6 percent of all marriages among officers, according to the Defense Manpower Data Center, the Pentagon's statistics-gathering arm. That's up 78 percent from 2003 statistics at 1,866 and nearly triple the rate in 2001, which saw 1,145 divorces. mong enlisted soldiers, 7,152 filed for divorce in 2004 (3.5 percent of total marriages), according to the Manpower Center. Those figures are up 28 percent from 2003 (with 5,587) and up 52 percent from 2001 (with 4,513)." [Source]

• "A 2004 Army report found that up to 17 percent of combat-seasoned infantrymen experienced major depression, anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder after one combat tour to Iraq. Less than 40 percent of them had sought mental-health care. A Pentagon survey released last month found that 35 percent of the troops returning from Iraq had received psychological counseling during their first year home." [Source]

• "In FY 2003, 17,000 reported cases of spouse abuse occured involving military personnel. Ninety-eight hundred were substantiated, rate of substantiated aggression of 14.2 per 1000.-FY98-04, Spouse & Child Maltreatment, Family Advocacy Program, Department of Defense, 2005." [Source]

• "[In 2004], according to DoD figures, there were 16,400 cases of domestic violence reported, with 9,450 of them substantiated. That's still a rate of 14 cases for every 1,000 couples, compared with 3 per 1,000 among civilians. And consider that many soldiers spent all or part of last year deployed and thus physically separated from their spouses. ... Including nonfatal incidents, there were 832 victims of domestic violence between 2002 and 2004 at Fort Bragg alone, according to Army figures." [Source]

• "[M]ore than 200,000 prescriptions for the most common types of antidepressants were written in the past 14 months for service members and their families, said Sydney Hickey, a spokeswoman for the National Military Family Association. ... The prescriptions were for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, commonly called SSRIs. These drugs are used to treat depression, anxiety disorders, some personality disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder. They include brand names such as Paxil, Cymbalta and Wellbutrin." [Source]

• "The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says that for the first three quarters of 2005, nearly 15 percent of veterans aged 20-24 are jobless -- three times the national average." [Source]

• Additional statistics and data in the National Center for PTSD's Partners of Veterans with PTSD: Caregiver Burden and Related Problems

• Sample OEF/OIF incidents are found in the PTSD Timeline.

Resources for Military Families

- Military Families: Preparing for Your Troop's Return Home
- Reconnecting with Your Kids After Deployment
- Lifelines Online PTSD Video Series for Military Families
- Families: Recommended Reading
- Do's and Don'ts List for Interactions with Returning Troops
- Military Family Resource: MarineParents.com