Coparenting Processes in Military Parents Across the Deployment Cycle: Lessons from Afghanistan and Iraq

Over 40% of service members deployed during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are parents of dependent children. Being a military parent in a wartime environment necessitates constant adaptation not only to the fluidity of children’s developmental movement, but to the transitions, planned and unanticipated, uniquely associated with deployment.  Whether a military parent is in a committed relationship or single, he or she is also coordinating the care of children with other caregivers in a process of coparenting. Coparenting is defined as a dynamic interaction involving the coordination among adults responsible for the instrumental care, upbringing and socialization of their children. During deployment, the deployed parent must relinquish parenting and co-parenting responsibilities and is highly dependent upon at-home caregivers for parenting support and assistance.  Recent research captures the complexity of the deployed parent’s role when there is the capability for real-time communication with family members from overseas. Deployed fathers also described the competing demands of ensuring the safety of their own troops and themselves, caring for child nationals, and attending to their own children’s needs. Reintegration is a dynamic and ongoing process that involves reevaluating and re-committing to family relationships, work, household and parenting/co-parenting roles and expectations, in addition to adjusting to changes that have occurred individually and within the family during deployment. Upon reunification, the coparental relationship must be renegotiated as the returning service member and family seek to reconnect.

Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to examine the processes involved in coparenting in a sample of recently returned service members and their spouses or partners who are caring for very young children.  Little is known about how military parents maintain parent-child connections, communicate during deployment about their children, parenting concerns and challenges, or how care of young children is coordinated in the context of wartime deployment.  

Methods: The current research draws upon data gathered to inform intervention development with military parents. Data collection included in-depth interviews, ranging from 60 to 120 minutes, with 70 service members (40) and spouses/partners (30) within one year of return from service in Afghanistan or Iraq. Over 90% of families were connected to the National Guard/Reserve. Trained interviewers followed a detailed guide with a focus on parenting and coparenting challenges, processes, and needs in relation to deployment separation and reunion.  All interviews were audiorecorded and transcribed verbatim.  Data were analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) in Atlas.ti. 

Findings: Participants offered rich description of the multiple domains of coparenting throughout the deployment cycle, including the threats to caregiving imposed by deployment separation, war-related parental trauma, and reintegration realities. Parents also offered new insight into innovations and creative strategies for maintaining effective parenting and coparenting in wartime that can be applied to normative peacetime separations for military families and for civilian parents in other contexts.

Conclusions and Implications: Coparenting is an understudied but constant phenomenon for all parents. The lived experiences of these families in navigating coparenting during wartime suggest important avenues for future research and strategies for supporting the efforts of military parents.