NEWS: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Soldiers

CULTURE: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Soldiers

On Memorial Day, it seems appropriate to remember not only veterans, but also their loved ones. According to the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, pregnant women whose military partners are deployed are almost three times likelier to suffer postpartum depression.

According to the study's lead author, "the findings mean that military wives should be informed of the risk and aggressively screened for depression." Reasonable enough. I'd add that the findings also mean that perhaps we should end the fucking war and let those guys get back to their wives and kids.

My husband spent 12 years in the military, including the first Gulf War. One of the reasons he got out is that he wanted kids, and I didn't want to raise them alone--which is pretty much what happens when one parent's on active duty. I remember toddlers running up and grabbing the wrong pair of uniformed legs when guys would get back from deployments, and new wives who hadn't yet learned to hide their sadness and anxiety about being far away from family with their husbands gone. It's just a shitty situation for families.

Especially when there's no good reason for it.

Bitch_PhD thinks one of the best ways to support the troops is to support their families back home.

Just more of the collateral destruction of this misguided war. And damnit, why call it 'Postpartum Depression" as if the mother's hormones are creating these feelings of despair?

This particular phenomena needs to be re-labled "BAD WAR BEREAVEMENT DISORDER"

This doesn't surprise me, since many women who are depressed prior to pregnancy are more likely to suffer PPD.

It's a shame soldiers can't go on strike, mutiny, and fly themselves back home. It would be awesome, though.

Yet another reason to support Ron Paul in 2008, the only candidate on either side or genuinely supports a truly non-interventionist foreign policy. While Obama or Hillary won't be likely to drag us into another war under the auspices of alleged WMD's, they're just as likely as their Democratic predecessors (Bill Clinton, anyone?) to send our soldiers off into random conflicts with no clear objective under the guise of "nation-building." (Disagree? Remember Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda --- hell, Vietnam?)

Hey, don't go spouting off about Barack Obama's policies on military deployment or lumping him with the clintons for buddha' sake

or I'll foam at the mouth and make you rue the day you said it....

I agree wholeheartedly. Sometimes I think the families have the hardest job of all. The deployed servicemember sees the ground, understands the danger, can deal with it locally, and has a good support network. The families have to imagine so much of it as they try to understand it. That imagining is often much worse than the reality.

US Army Family Values: "If the Army meant for you to have a wife, it would have issued you one."

I suspect the other services are on a par with that.

PPD is evil. It's bad for kids health too. Sometimes mom's leave their kids in harms way or resent them, even killing them in extreme cases, when in the throes of PPD.

My mother probably had it. She had thyroid problems from the get go, her father brought radioactive iodine home from his work on the Manhattan Project. Then my folks split up and my father got custody by threatening her life.

When PPD is harmful for children it is described that it is the point when a woman feels that her life, or well being, is threatened by the child's presence. It's natural to think of self-preservation before the well being of your child, when you feel pressured to choose by some circumstances. It wasn't my mother's case as far as I've learned but often that will happen when she doesn't feel she has any help or support with motherhood and is struggling to get by as a mother. The mothers with PPD also may later overcompensate from those moments by becoming too protective instead.

That's my understanding.

As having been on both sides of the coin and served in the military for 14 years and now a dependant of a military member, it is pretty hard on both sides. I haven't spent one of my birthdays with my wife since we were married in 2004, We have been together for one anniversarys, and moving to crappy places where you feel like an outsider and can't find a job even though you have masters degree's and tons of experance is pretty hard. But the thing is I would not change joining the military and serving if I could and I don't think my wife would either as it was some of the best times and most miserable times but the people I served with were wonderful. One thing is we don't have children, and I could see the depression a mother would get missing her spouse and having to depend on strangers for help etc.

I think this article is in poor taste considering the timing.

People make choices that they have to live with. We do not have a draft. People choose to join th military. Other people choose to marry them.

I live with my choices. You have to live with yours.

Yeah, because voting for an outsider candidate in 2000 worked so well.

Its Memorial Day, save the arguing for tomorrow. Thank the Vets, the Vets Families, The Fallen, and the Families of the Fallen.

I think the timing is exactly what makes it relevant.
Your point about choices doesn't really address anything in her article. She never says that anyone is forced to join or forced to serve; in face she states that her own husband chose to leave the Army so that they could have kids. Obviously people have a choice but for those who chose to stay, that doesn't make it any less difficult, as demonstrated by the PPD stats.

Um, soldiers don't usually choose to just leave in the middle of combat, that is called going AWOL (or is desertion?), therefore they don't choose to stay (not in all cases). They signed a contract with Uncle Sam, so to infer that they can just leave is not necessarily accurate. Keep in mind she didn't put the personal comments about the war in there for the hell of it.

Um, yeah... unless there is a stop-loss in place, you do have a choice to stay or go. I didn't say anything about going AWOL and making the choice to leave in the middle of combat so I have no idea why that was part of your response to my statement (though I guess, if someone were so inclined, they could make the choice to desert). I just got out of the Army and I chose not to re-enlist which I was able to do because I "signed a contract with Uncle Sam". The choice part enters into the mix because that contract only binds us to serve for a specified number of years. Nobody can force someone to re-up, so to imply that people don't "choose to stay" is just retarded.

No matter why the war is being fought, war is war. Families suffer the same, whether it be a 'popular' war or not. It just happens to be that THIS war is going on while THIS study was being done. Any time a new mother has to worry about whether or not her husband is going to come home alive, there are going to be problems with anxiety and depression, heightened by the crazy baby hormones going on in her system.

When it comes down to it, whether my husband is fighting for a cause you believe or not doesn't really matter when it is 2 a.m. and you are wondering if they are safe. Personal beliefs in the war don't make a damn bit of difference when you miss them.

We can, and we are. There is a growing movement of us opposing this war, speaking out against it, and refusing to fight it. It has taken a huge toll on us and our families, and the military is keeping many of us against our will beyond our contractual release date. PPD is one of the many unfortunate side-effects of what we are dealing with in addition to amputations, traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, suicide, substance abuse, homelessness, and other issues.

ivaw.org
mfso.org
couragetoresist.org
objector.org
citizen-soldier.org

why do you see Bosnia and Rwanda as being a bad deployment for US troops? In all both cases they were trying to prevent further genocide from taking place.

It can actually be argued that they should have gone in a lot sooner in both conflicts

While this old antage is true, the military (the airforce most notably) has grown leaps and bounds to try and do all they can for the families, with new programs and family leadership training, not to meantion the MWR programs on base that provide childcare on some weekends so that mothers can have adult time.

Military partners who are killed whilst deployed, are 100% likely to have suffered death.

Last time I looked, the military was a voluntary organisation - no conscription around here. It's your choice.

Interestingly, a small news item in the UK has been about reservists and their families and whether they're getting enough support when they're deployed.

The Army has adopted similar programs. Each unit has a Family Readiness Group and each Service Member who has a child/ren must turn in a Family Care Plan to their company. The Readiness Group extends its services to Soldiers and family members and the Family Care Plan is a very comprehensive checklist of the who, what, when, wheres of your children; not only in the case of deployment but even in regards to every day childcare. Like you mentioned, MWR also has several programs for parents. The "US Army Value" quoted above is a relic of a different Army-- the same Army that had no prevention of sexual harrasment training (POSH), no Alcohol and Drug Prevention Training (ADAPT), and where random drug testing was a joke. When I first entered the service (2001) I was in language training with a few Majors. They were shocked at the ways in which trainees (a huge chunk of the people in the language school) were managed. They each recalled rampant drug-use and drug sales that had occured in the barracks during their time in training (AIT). They also told us stories of when they first entered "The Real Army" when commanders would address an entire battalion during a command info briefing and complain about women; calling them "useless dripping holes". To say that the Army has come a long way from the "If the Army meant for you to have a wife, it would have issued you one," mentality would be a huge understatement.

I know. I worked as a DA Civ as the State of NM's army/reserve/ng Family readiness group leader for years.