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Kids often mistreated when parents sent to war
Updated Tue. Jul. 31 2007 5:04 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Kids are at greater risk of being abused or neglected when one of their parents is an enlisted soldier who has been sent into combat, finds a new study in the: Journal of the American Medical Association.
While the study looked only at American soldiers, the study likely has implications for the families of Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan or in other areas of conflict.
The researchers found that the rate of child maltreatment during times when one of the parents was deployed was 42 per cent higher than the rate of maltreatment during times when the soldiers were at home.
As well, the rates of children being neglected was almost twice as high when soldiers were sent into combat compared to when the soldiers were at home.
Parental stress is believed to be mostly to blame, since combat-related deployments have been associated with increased stress among the parents left at home.
A team led by Deborah A. Gibbs, a health and social policy analyst at RTI International, looked at 1,771 families of enlisted U.S. Army soldiers who had at least one report of child maltreatment reported to the Army Family Advocacy Program. They compared rates of child mistreatment while the soldiers were at home compared to while they were sent into combat, between September 2001 and December 2004.
They found that the occurrence of moderate or severe maltreatment of children was about 60 per cent higher during deployment vs. non-deployment.
The rate of child neglect was almost twice as high when soldiers were sent into combat compared to when the soldiers were at home. In contrast, the rates of physical and emotional abuse were lower during deployment than during non-deployment.
"Although many military families manage to cope with the stress created by combat deployments, in other families this stress significantly impairs the parents' ability to care for their children appropriately," said study co-author Sandra Martin, professor in the Department of Child and Maternal Health at the University of North Carolina.
The study found that it was generally the mothers left at home who were more likely to commit the mistreatment. The rate of child maltreatment by civilian mothers was more than three times greater during times of deployment. And the rate of child neglect by female spouses was almost four times higher.
The occurrence of maltreatment during deployment was also elevated among fathers left at home but not significantly so.
The researchers note that the U.S. Army does offer a number of services to families to address the stress that deployment has on family members left at home, including child care and support groups for spouses of deployed soldiers.
"Nevertheless, the greater rate of child maltreatment associated with deployments suggests the need for enhanced support for civilian parents in terms of additional resources, more effective services, development of services that those parents at greatest risk will be likely to seek out and accept, and greater outreach to connect parents to services," the authors write.
