Since 9/11, more than 1 million parents have been deployed to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. For those parents, the difference between parenting before deployment and after returning home is stark — and not well studied

A new book co-edited by Dr. Abigail Gewirtz, Institute Director at ITR, examines crucial questions around parenting and military deployment in the 21st Century. Parenting and Children’s Resilience in Military Families, edited by Gewirtz and Adriana M. Youssef, explores questions like:

“How does deployment influence parenting? How is parenting of the at-home caregiver affected by the absence of the deployed parent? How might effective parenting at different child developmental stages mitigate children’s worries and fears about their deployed parent and promote healthy adjustment? How might the experience of motherhood be changed by military service in general and deployment in particular? How are deployed fathers influential for their children’s development and adjustment, and how can they be supported in these efforts? And, how might military parents transmit military cultural values, such as service, to their children?”

Gewirtz in a nationally recognized leader in research on trauma, resilience, parenting, and promoting children’s healthy development. Among her major research projects is the After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT) program, which develops tools to support parenting and resilience among military families coping with the stress of deployment and reintegration.