ABSTRACT
Prior research has consistently shown that, among the challenges faced by military families, those that result from separation and deployments are among the most stressful (Bartone et al., 1993; Bell, Teitelbaum, and Schumm, 1996; Hill, 1949; Segal and Segal, 1993). By their very nature, deployments add stress to the lives of the nondeployed spouse. In the best of circumstances, in which marriages are strong, nondeployed spouses generally have a greater workload to keep the household operating and to have a greater workload to keep the household operating. They miss and worry about the safety of their deployed spouses; and they often struggle with the difficulty and expense of trying to maintain contact with their deployed spouse. In cases in which marriages are in difficulty at the time of a deployment, a spouse may be dealing with all of these challenges and the possibility that choices or decisions made while apart may lead to disagreements and fights, resulting in serious problems when families are reunited. In some of the most extreme cases, military families must cope with medical emergencies and life-threatening crises while the deployed soldier – husband/father or wife/mother – is away on deployment. This was the case, for example, for many families in Louisiana and Mississippi during hurricanes Katrina and Rita. And always there is the question of how much to tell a spouse who is away on deployment and in harm’s way when problems arise on the home front.
