Effects During Adolescence of Early Childhood Exposure to Parental Wartime Deployment

多重调整困难与最近父母的部署有关， 自2001年以来，有200万名儿童的父母被派往军队。暴露于父母战时 部署也可能对儿童产生长期影响，但这些影响尚未得到系统的解决。 研究了早期暴露的后果可能在青春期左右特别明显， 人们做出的决定对他们以后的功能有着重要的影响。拟议的研究将评估 早期暴露于父母的部署和后来的青年调整的直接和间接影响。父母的 心理健康和家庭过程将作为调解人进行审查，父母和子女的 脆弱性和支持也将被视为可能调节父母之间关系的因素。 部署和青年调整。包括人口统计、部署和医疗记录在内的存档数据将 结合从513个家庭的两个孩子和最多两个父母那里收集的新数据， 在数据收集开始时年龄为11至16岁。儿童至少经历过一次父母部署 持续至少30天，至少有一名6岁以下的儿童。数据将通过访谈、调查和 在家访期间观察家庭互动任务。结果将是儿童 社会情感发展、行为和学业成绩。分析将检查变异性， 考虑到家庭内数据的依赖性质，创新 这项研究的特点是，它将包括参与者谁已经离开军队服务，以及那些谁 继续服务。焦点儿童的sibrides也将包括在内，以便可以分离部署效果 儿童的特殊因素。我们预计，在那些开始接触艾滋病毒的年轻人中， 更早，更频繁或更长时间，和/或暴露于父母经历的部署 更有创伤性我们预计这些影响将通过父母的心理健康， 效率，关系质量和家庭功能，他们将在更大的存在更强大 脆弱性和较少的支持。这项研究将扩大有关儿童在家庭中的风险和复原力的知识， 并对学校、社区组织和卫生保健提供者具有潜在的重要意义。在 不到十年，在我国历史上最长的战争中出生的孩子们将超越 这将不再可能衡量早期接触父母战斗的影响 青年适应的部署。

Multiple adjustment difficulties have been associated with exposure to recent parental deployments among the 2 million children whose military parents have been deployed since 2001. Exposures to parental wartime deployments also may have long-term consequences for children, but these have not yet been systematically studied. The consequences of early exposures may be particularly evident around adolescence, when young people make decisions that are highly consequential for their later functioning. The proposed study will assess the direct and indirect effects of early exposures to parental deployments and later youth adjustment. Parents’ psychological health and family processes will be examined as mediators, and parents’ and children’s vulnerability and support will also be examined as factors that could modulate relationships between parental deployment and youth adjustment. Archival data including demographic, deployment, and medical records will be combined with new data gathered from two children and up to two parents in 513 families where children will be aged 11 to 16 at the launch of data collection. Children will have experienced at least one parental deployment lasting at least 30 days, at least one child prior to age 6. Data will be gathered via interviews, surveys, and observation of family interaction tasks conducted during home visits. Outcomes will be indicators of children’s social-emotional development, behavior, and academic performance. Analyses will examine variability both within and between families over time, taking into account the dependent nature of within-family data. Innovative features of this study are that it will include participants who have left military service as well as those who continue to serve. Siblings of focal children also will be included so that deployment effects can be separated from child specific factors. We expect to find less positive adjustment among youth whose exposures began earlier, were more frequent or prolonged, and/or who were exposed to deployments where parents’ experiences were more traumatic. We expect that these effects will operate through parents’ psychological health, parenting efficacy, relationship quality, and family functioning, and that they will be stronger in the presence of greater vulnerability and less support. This study will expand knowledge about children’s risk and resilience in families, and has potentially important implications for schools, community organizations and health care providers. In less than a decade the children born during the longest war in our nation’s history will have moved beyond adolescence and it will no longer be possible to measure the impact of early exposure to parental combat deployment on youth adjustment.