Operation ME Investigators Contribute to New Book

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, distinguished professor and director of the Military Family Research Insitute at Purdue University, has partnered with four investigators from MFRI’s Operation Military Experience study to co-author a chapter in the book, “Parent-Child Separation: Causes, Consequences, and Pathways to Resilience.”

The chapter, “Parental Deployment and Military Children: A Century of Research,” puts into historical context current research about parental deployments and military children. Co-authors are Shawn Whiteman,  professor and associate dean for research, College of Education and Human Services, Utah State University; Patricia Lester, the Jane and Marc Nathanson Family Professor of Psychiatry, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California, Los Angeles; Valerie Stander, research psychologist, Millennium Cohort Family Study, Naval Health Research Center; and Sharon Christ, associate professor, Department of Statistics and Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Purdue University.

As the researchers write, over time, military family policies have evolved into more systematic, intentional supports. In reviewing research into parental deployments and military children for major conflicts in the 20th century, they discovered “considerable diversity in children’s adjustment as well as resilience of military children.”

One important aspect of this research, they write, has been an examination of the mediating and moderating factors for both individuals and family systems affected by deployment. The authors point to a number of unanswered questions, some of which will be addressed in the Operation Military Experience study. The nationwide study, scheduled to begin in spring 2022, will investigate adolescents who, as young children, had a parent deploy after 9/11.