Military Families, Effects of Combat and Deployment on

Families affected by military service face exceptional challenges. Issues surrounding the increasing effects of combat deployment on families have surfaced in the last decade as a result of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom—OEF) and Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom—OIF), as well as Operation New Dawn (OND; Iraq war post 2010), which have resulted in frequent and lengthy deployments for members of the armed forces. Since the start of these conflicts, more than two million children have been directly affected by the deployment of a parent. For the youngest children in military families, deployment interferes with the opportunity to develop and maintain relationships with the service-member parent during critical developmental periods, which may affect their ability to reestablish relationships with that parent upon reintegration or ...