As we all know, life is not a bed of roses. We all face challenges and struggles to be somewhere, to become someone.
Talking about challenges, we should know that we all face different challenges,trials and tribulations. You cannot compare someone’s challenges with someone else’s.
All marriages have challenges, and there are certain challenges unique to military marriages. It’s major challenges are separation, less to no communication, deployment and fear of loosing you spouse anytime.
Military families are often forced to adjust to changes imposed by military demands. These demands often deprive the soldier of the opportunity of attending to personal and family relationships and responsibilities. This too sometimes become problematic.
Military demands often require the soldier to be away from their families. Deployment is one of the major factors that require changes in the family functioning. The changes brought by deployment often cause stress to the family members. Prolonged and enforced military separations have a profound impact on military families.
Characteristics of the life style of military families include risk of injury or death of the soldier in the course of his/her duty and periodic separation of the soldier from the rest of his family.
Many studies revealed that military families are vulnerable to stress as a result of military demands.
The study revealed that military families are exposed to a great deal of stress as a result of military demands. The impact of separation due to deployment has a direct effect on children, mothers and fathers. Although there was no interviews done with defence wards, the information obtained from the parents showed that defence wards are also the hardest hit in the process.
There are many similarities between wives and husbands experiences to challenges of separation due to deployments. These include the loneliness, boredom, separation etc. However it is interesting to find that the couples also acknowledge the benefits of separation due to deployment.