Parenting Styles of Military Fathers

Sharing Parenting

• Because military fathers have to spend so much time away from home, Wilson says, they often need to develop strategies with their partners to keep parenting styles consistent. When parents agree on the rules and basic style of their parenting, their children experience a consistent home life even though they know that their father might be deployed. In the course of deployment, military fathers also have to use innovative means of connecting with their children, through video chat, phone calls, letters, or even recording a bedtime story for a toddler.

Degrees of Involvement

• A 2011 study done by Elaine Willerton and other researchers at Purdue University for the ̶0;Journal of Family Psychology̶1; found that many military fathers think about their responsibility to their children in terms of their mortality. They are concerned about instilling important values in their children and about being a role model for those values as, much as possible and as quickly as possible, in case they give their lives while their children are growing. Many military fathers were especially involved in self-examination about their role, wanting to emulate or reject the example their fathers had set for them. Many military fathers also worried about not being involved enough in their children̵7;s̵7; lives because they had been deployed.

Avoiding Discipline

• Contrary to popular beliefs about the authoritarian parenting style of military fathers, Willerton̵7;s study discovered that many military fathers actually avoided discipline while they were in the home out of feelings of guilt for being absent or a sense of disconnection from the family routine One father expressed that he didn̵7;t feel he could discipline his kids from afar, either, because he didn̵7;t want his infrequent contact with them to be negative. Because of these insecurities about their long absences, many military fathers actually leave discipline to the stay-at-home parent and take on a secondary parenting role. Some fathers also expressed a concern about seeming unreliable because they couldn̵7;t control their schedules in the military, and therefore couldn̵7;t make many promises about spending time with their children.

Psychological Presence

• Willerton et al termed military fathers̵7; emotional and mental pre-occupation with their children ̶0;psychological̶1; presence, because the fathers they studied remained psychologically engaged with parenting even when deployed. Military fathers in the study spent ̶0;considerable cognitive energy̶1; assuring their children that they were thinking of them while overseas, preplanning care packages, gifts, and holiday celebrations around deployment times, and attempting to monitor behavior from other countries. They also spent considerable psychological energy attempting to reintegrate into the family in a way that was best for everyone once the father returned home. In conclusion, the parenting styles of military fathers are varied and complex, and rarely fit the stereotype.