For military families, the current war in Iraq has created an urgent challenge for children & their parents. Living with wartime separation & post war reunion, children with a parent engaged in combat may be affected by extended separation from a primary caretaker, altered family roles during the parent's absence, & potential impact of combat exposure on the military parent post deployment. Limited information is known about the impact of a military parent's wartime deployment on child adjustment. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network & UCLA Center for Community Health have established a partnership with the Marine & Family Services Division of Camp Pendleton (CP) where a large number of children have been affected by a parent's deployment to Iraq. We propose to examine prevalence of social, behavioral, and emotional problems for children affected by a parent's wartime deployment, and examine potential background & mediating factors of child adjustment. Recruited families (n=150) with a 6-12 year child (n=180) will be stratified into 3 strata: a) 50 families with children in which a Marine parent is currently deployed in Iraq; b) 50 families with children in which a Marine parent returned from Iraq to CP within the last six months; & c) 50 families with children in which the Marine parent is on active duty but never deployed in Iraq. This descriptive study will clarify correlates of adaptive and maladaptive adjustment in children exposed to a parent's war time deployment, as well as post deployment reunion with a parent, providing information about potential protective & risk factors for adjustment in these children. The proposal will prepare us to submit an application to develop a family transition preventative intervention to enhance child adjustment when a parent is sent to war. The proposed project is an urgent & timely opportunity to shed light on the area of children facing separation from a parent due to dangerous occupational duties, an increasingly common circumstance. Thus, these findings may be broadly applicable to other situations in which a child faces a parent's absence & potential traumatic exposure.
