Parents' wartime deployment affects child behaviour

Children with a parent deployed in a war zone appear to exhibit more behavioural problems, research claims.

A study published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine today claims that children aged between three and five displayed a greater number of problems than their peers who do not have a deployed parent.

More than two million US children have had parents deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan during the wars there, 40 per cent of which are younger than five.

The report looked at 169 families with children aged between one-and-a-half and five who were enrolled in military childcare centres at a Marine base.

Of the 169, 33 per cent had a deployed parent, with an average deployment length of 3.9 months.

Children aged three or older who had a deployed parent had significantly higher scores on measures of externalising and overall behaviour problems than children of the same age without a deployed parent.

"Such reported differences might be dismissed as distorted perceptions of the child by the distressed non-deployed parent; however, the association remained after controlling for parental stress and depressive symptoms," the authors of today's report claim.

"Larger, longitudinal studies are needed to ascertain whether there are changes in children's behaviour from the time before parental deployment, during parental deployment and at the time of reunification."

David Schonfeld and Robin Gurwitch, from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Centre, added in an accompanying editorial: "Findings from this study highlight the need for increased attention to the mental health concerns of young children of deployed soldiers as well as the mental health concerns of the soldiers and non-deployed spouses.

"They raise questions of how to best determine deployment length and what preventive measures can be taken to reduce stress and distress to the non-deployed spouses and children left behind."