Children of deployed parents

More than 2 million children in the U.S. have had parents deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan during the wars there and about 40% of them are under five. Researchers from the Boston University School of Medicine studied 169 families with children aged between one-and-a-half and five who were enrolled in the military childcare centres at a large Marine base in 2007. Children aged 3 and older who had a deployed parent had significantly higher scores on measures of externalizing and overall behaviour than children of the same age without a deployed parent. The reported symptoms remained the same after controlling for parental stress and depression and were the same whether parents or childcare providers were reporting them.

You can find out more about this research at

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/11/05/wartime-deployment-influences-child-behavior/3271.html