Air Force Capt. Morshe Dayan Araujo (the military designation as published has been corrected in this sentence) stood just outside her tent on an Iraqi base north of Baghdad when she saw a toddler being prepped by medical personnel for a ride to his home in southern Iraq. The child’s stomach hurt and he was crying.
“I thought of my 1-year-old son and wanted so desperately to hold and comfort this little boy. But I couldn’t, because I had just had a smallpox vaccination,” Araujo said. “It just hurt to see him crying.”
That maternal gnawing reflects the main stress faced by many of the nearly 20,000 women serving in the U.S. war against Iraq. And though there is ample research to show that separating from family is the No. 1 cause of stress among military personnel, little is known about how the stress manifests itself among military mothers.
Lt. Col. Barbara Rowe, who trains military physicians in behavioral science and mental health issues, says she was “stunned” to find there was no research on how military mothers are affected by separating from children during deployment. In writing a dissertation for her doctorate degree, she has interviewed hundreds of women in the military to study the effects of family separations on military moms.
“Their responses and how they’re affected vary widely,” she said. “But one thing that comes through is their dedication to the military and their dedication to their children and the conflict between the two.”
Her research is still a few months from completion, but Rowe said her data are showing that the effects of the struggle between work and children are forcing some women to leave the military.
“It’s similar to what women experience in the business world too. Especially women who have to travel a lot,” Rowe said. “It affects their career paths because it is too much of a conflict.”
Her early examinations are in line with other surveys that show the strain of separating from family members is the toughest challenge of working in the military–whether male or female.
A 2003 report by the Defense Department Advisory Committee on Women in Services shows “family reasons” as the main reason female officers have lower retention rates.
“Many participants felt that female officers leave because they are unable to find a reasonable work/life balance, or that the demands of separations from family–particularly for dual-military families–are too taxing. Female officers frequently used the word `incompatible’ to describe the military life and family requirements,” the Defense report said.
A recently released poll by the Washington Post, Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University shows that while most military spouses since Sept. 11, 2001, cope well with their partners being stationed overseas, three-quarters expect that their families will return to civilian lives because of the difficulties of military life.
A survey taken just before the war in Iraq shows a third of the responding service members felt “stressed out.” And of those, nearly 20 percent cited deployments and family separations as the top stress source, according to the 2002 Survey of Health Related Behaviors Among Military Personnel, released in March.
Missing the “special times”
For female soldiers, who also must struggle to fit in to the male bastion of the military, the separation anxiety–especially for mothers–can be especially tough, some soldiers say. They experience heartache and guilt in leaving their children behind. “I worry that I’m missing out on special times,” said 20-year-old Army Spc. Evelyn Alicea, whose 4-year-old daughter, Natalie Alicea, is being cared for by Evelyn’s mother. “I’ve missed her birthday twice now,” said the Chicago mother who is stationed in Iraq. “There’s always that thought about whether I made the right decision. I know it will benefit her in the future, but for now, it’s hard.”
She and other female soldiers now stationed in Iraq are quick to add that there is a difference between “stressing” and “worrying.”
“I go to sleep at night knowing my [15-year-old] son’s OK and that my husband will take care of everything,” said Air Force Col. Lisa Firmin (the military designation as published has been corrected in this sentence), who serves as a mayor of sorts, overseeing all the infrastructure of the 332 Expeditionary Mission Support Group at Balad Air Base in Iraq. “But I’m a mother. And a mother does not want to be separated from her child.”
Military mothers often must rely on spouses, family members and friends to care for children left home.
Air Force Technical Sgt. Shon Barnwell (the military designation as published has been corrected in this sentence), also at Balad Air Base, says she feels relief knowing husband Andre in Valdosta, Ga., is caring for 6-year-old Aliyah.
“He does everything. Cooks, cleans and all the finances. The only thing he doesn’t do is her hair,” she said.
That’s where Barnwell’s “second mommies” come in. “They’re friends who add a maternal piece of me while I’m away.”
For his part, Andre Barnwell, like other husbands interviewed, says he understands the stress his wife feels and works to ease her concerns.
“Moms are moms, no matter what they do for a living,” he said. “They always worry and think about their children. It’s hard.”
To cope with the stress of leaving little ones behind, women in the military exercise, relish in big hugs from friends or even read “a bodice-ripper” now and then. And there’s the Internet.
“E-mail is like a million bucks to me right now,” said Army Spc. Theresa MacBeth, 35, a Chicago police officer stationed in Iraq who communicates by computer with 13-year-old daughter, Magdalia.
Air Force Col. Rebecca Garcia (the military designation as published has been corrected in this sentence), 49, stationed in southern Iraq, recalls using e-mail during a previous deployment in Kuwait in September 2000. At the time, her now 19-year-old son, Jeremiah, had a difficult time in a science class.
“His teacher e-mailed me that he hadn’t turned in his science project. So I surfed the Net and found material that he could use and then sent it,” she said.
Then, Garcia made a phone call–precious to all the soldiers because they can be few and far between–and told her son to get online and finish the project. “He couldn’t believe I knew. I said I may be 10,000 miles away, but you can’t hide.”
Internalizing stress
A number of support programs set up during the past 20 years in each branch of the military can assist soldiers separated from their families. The programs also are available to military members’ spouses. Since Sept. 11, 2001, about 75 percent of those spouses who sought assistance said they found the armed forces helpful, according to the Washington Post-Kaiser study.
That’s a big change since the early 1990s, when the U.S. military was unprepared to deal with families’ requests for help in the Persian Gulf War, military observers say.
They also expect the stress levels among women to increase with so many more women serving in the armed forces, but female soldiers counter that stress has nothing to do with gender.
“Look, it’s a hard job to do here–day to day, man or woman. You’re living in a tent. There isn’t much in quality of life. You don’t have indoor plumbing and you work long hours. It’s tough,” Firmin acknowledged. “But we’re here because we want to be here.”
