The shifting impact of war on women’s lives and families

American involvement in war has historically coincided with and caused large shifts in U.S. society. This is perhaps clearest in the roles that women embody, and the ways in which those roles and expectations for women shift in times of war. The strongest example is the shift in women’s labor force participation in World Wars I and II, when women entered the American workforce in unprecedented numbers and worked in jobs previously restricted to men. This irrevocably altered the fabric of American society, in that women did not all return to the home as housewives after the end of the wars but remained in the workforce. This undeniably changed the fundamental structure of American families.

In similar ways, the U.S. military involvement in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades have shifted women’s role in war, in American society, and in military-connected families. As of December 3, 2015, the Pentagon announced that women would now be officially involved in combat roles, no longer exclusively serving in supportive roles. Despite the distinction of being in combat-support roles until recently, women in these roles were exposed to war zones at unprecedented rates and at only slightly lower rates than their male counterparts (Vogt et al., 2011). Although the impact of war on male service members has long been studied, we are still discovering the deleterious impact of war and related posttraumatic stress on women combatants and particularly on their families (Creech, Swift, Zlotnick, Taft, & Street, 2016).

Furthermore, though women have historically occupied the role of “military spouse,” only relatively recently has research begun to examine their lives, and the impact of military service on (largely but not exclusively) female spouses and the children of service members particularly during our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan (Lester et al., 2010; Renshaw et al., 2011). Military spouses are encouraged to gain education and work outside the home, through programs such as the My Career Advancement Accounts (an educational stipend for military spouses), the Employment Readiness Program (an employment preparation program for military spouses), among others. Military programs are beginning to recognize spouses as important contributors to military family well-being, and therefore, to force readiness (Green, Nurius, & Lester, 2013).

This second special issue of the Journal of Family Social Work delves into the impact of war on military women’s lives and families as well as expanding our knowledge of the female military spouse experience. Tova B. Walsh begins with an exploration of the experiences of female service members with young children who deployed to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. These women negotiated the modern combination of holding simultaneous roles of mother and warrior. Walsh explores their unique perspectives with regards to their needs and supports. Leigh A. Leslie and Sally A. Koblinsky further examine the common challenges women Veterans experienced as they transitioned into civilian family life after having served in combat zones. The authors identify the common strategies that these women used to address the challenges and build resilience.

Women are not only affected as service members and Veterans of war, but also as spouses of service members and Veterans. The prolonged wars during the Global War on Terrorism, with the frequent and multiple deployments, and the nature of military life that included frequent relocations and other stressors have affected military spouses and families. R. Blaine Everson, Carol Darling, Joseph R. Herzog, Charles Figley, and Dione King utilize family stress and resilience theory to explore, via a descriptive quantitative study, how the Iraq War, and specifically deployment and length of deployment, affect family well-being, such as family stress, family coherence, coping, and quality of life among Army spouses as compared to spouses of nondeployed service members. Elisa Borah and Brooke Fina add to these findings with a qualitative exploration of the experiences of military and Veteran spouses, specifically in the areas of health care access, identity as caregivers, and personal growth among other themes identified. Finally, Jenna Temple, Marianne McInnes Mille, Alyssa Banford Witting, and Angela B. Kim qualitatively explore the experiences of women whose Marine Corps partners have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and how their partners’ PTSD diagnosis and symptoms made their lives unpredictable. Furthermore, the authors noted the mixed messages and mental health stigma that they encountered from the military when they sought out assistance for their husbands.

As coeditors of the first and second special issues on military families in the Journal of Family Social Work, we would like to offer some concluding remarks. First, we were surprised and overwhelmed by the responses that we received when we put out the call for the special issue, with many times more submissions than we anticipated. Many worthy manuscripts were considered, and unfortunately only a few could be accepted. This positive response gave us the sense that social workers and other mental health professionals are seriously considering the issues that military and Veteran-connected families face and are attempting to address the challenges through the use of empirical evidence. As professional social workers, academics, and military family members (Strong is an Army spouse, Weiss is an Army mother) we hope that the reader will take away, first, that the families of service members are also warriors in their own right. Secondly, social workers and other mental health professionals are uniquely positioned to serve as facilitators of the military family transition from service to civilian life in fluctuating times of war and peace. Although our numbers are relatively small in terms of our military members as part of an all-volunteer force (less than 1% of the American population serves in the military), everyone is touched in one way or another by encountering service members or Veterans as friends, partners, parents, extended family members, clients, or neighbors (thus, the term military and Veteran-connected populations as eloquently proposed by Martin et al., in the first issue). In other words, we all are in this fight together, for better or for worse.

As a society, given that only a few of us see battle, we all still share in the responsibility (Gross & Weiss, 2014). In 2014, we saw reported estimates of an average of 20 Veteran suicides per day with an unprecedented and increasing rate of female Veteran suicides (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2016). Therefore, our work to support and help to rebuild our communities will continue, and we are all obliged to take part in it, as the costs of war go far beyond what we imagine and the often deleterious consequences extend for generations to come (Dekel & Goldblatt, 2008). As long as war continues to be part of the human experience, we can at least unite in providing an appropriate response to the aftermath. We can also hope that someday we are able to overcome what evolutionary biologist, Edward O. Wilson (2014) suggests are our evolutionary shortcomings that seem to drive our species towards destruction, conflict and war, “as timeless human qualities” (p. 179).