Major Mom

The rights of women have been changing for decades, but their roles in a family have not. As time has gone on, women have gained rates in government ,the work force, and daily life. But the responsibilities one has at home has not changed. One huge change in rights for women was the choice to join the armed forces. So is there a choice to be made? Is it black and white? If you want to serve in the armed forces as a woman, having a family is not an option? But what if your pregnancy is a surprise? Or you’ve been off duty for two years and all of the sudden get a deployment notice with a 1 year-old at home. It’s a sticky situation that I was able to get some answers on.
Women have been involved in some way with every war in history, but their occupations have taken a turn. Currently, I’m reading, “Testament of Youth” an autobiography by Vera Brittain. Taking place in World War I, Vera becomes involved in the nursing side of the war. Having a loved one, and family member in a war can encourage someone, man or woman to get as involved as they can. Making them feel supportive, and in a way, closer to that loved one. Vera states in a response to a letter from her parents,

Nothing – beyond sheer necessity – would induce me to stop doing what I am doing now, and I should never respect myself again if I allowed a few slight physical hardships to make me give up what is the finest work any girl can do now. I honestly did not take it up because I thought you did not want me or could not afford to give me a comfortable home, but because I wanted to prove I could more or less keep myself working, and partly because, not being a man and able to go to the front, I wanted to do the next best thing.

Although Vera is not a mother at this time, it shows the clear difference in the rights and expectations brought onto a women during that era vs. today. But now, this day in age, women are able to “go to the front” and fight in our wars. Something that didn’t need to be compromised during WWI for women was the care of their children. It was always the father who was off fighting and mom was at home with the kids, raising the family. In the present, mothers could be forced to leave their children at home to fight for our country, but the debate being, Are they obliged to do this even if they have children and disagree with the task at hand. In the episode ‘For Family, For Country’ Military Moms Do It All on NPR, three military moms were interviewed on how they balanced work and family, and also their thoughts on military mom, Lisa Pegan, who got out of returning to fight after fighting the fact that she now had two children and couldn’t return to the forces. Petty officer Pilar Arteaga stated that she thought “Lisa Pegan’s decision brought women in the armed forces down a peg. And that being a woman in the armed forces, you find yourself proving yourself a lot more.” Arteaga is a single mom who has had to leave her son with friends and family on numerous occasions because of deployments. All of the mothers in the interview continued to work in the armed forces until they were able to retire, while raising children. And all believe that it can and needs to be done by all women across the board.
But the debate still runs, should women be obliged to fight or not? Especially if the government isn’t going to provide caregivers for the children if the woman doesn’t have any. Is it really that simple?

NPR 2009

Tell Me More

“For Family, For Country’ Military Moms Do It All

PTSD. What’s it all about?

“Now, he will spend a few sick years in Institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?”

Disabled By: Wilfred Owen

I could have put this whole poem down for my entry, but I didn’t want to fill up with my blog with only that. But, in this poem, if you start from the beginning, describes someone sitting in a wheelchair, waiting for dark to come. This one vivid picture comes to my head. An older man, sitting on a street corner, possibly in one of his army green jackets, his medals and awards arranged on the breast pocket. Scraggly looking, not well taken care of or showered. and without legs. Owen describes, “Legless, sewn short at the elbow.” I also immediately consider this man to be just out of WWI, WWII or Vietnam. To me, Owen is describing a veteran, going through the really crappy part of coming home from war, experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD), when we didn’t know too much about it.

PTSD is a scary thing. A lot more veterans are affected by it then we will ever know. I listened to a podcast through my spouseBUZZtalkradio feed and learned a lot about PTSD and what it means for the veterans and their loved ones. One of the huge differences between previous wars and our current, is numerous deployments. Meaning a soldier could come home for the war and could be deployed in a year, then home for another year and gone for two. This can be extremely hard on the soldier and their families.
PTSD is an anxiety disorder and similar to depression, can be treated easier if caught sooner. Soldiers have a hard time reintegrating into life back in the states, not being at their base any more but at home. Some will still check the perimeter of their homes nightly, constantly looking through the house to make sure things are as they should be and most commonly will have awful nightmares about the war. One women said, after her husband was deployed from desert storm and they were staying at Fort Bragg, she woke to him choking her in his sleep. Talk about scary!

My basic point of my entry is that a lot of the poems written by British poets of WWI could easily be connected to PTSD. But at the time, no one knew what that was.

Military Families

For my blog, I chose to discuss military families.  Whether it be wives, husbands, children or parents who have someone serving overseas.  I currently only have 5 feeds that I’m subscribed to but will be subscribing to many more!

My favorite feed is my military podcast feed. It’s called spouseBUZZtalkradio and it’s a podcast held by mostly army wives speaking with other army wives about different things that they and there families are affected by with there husbands being overseas.  The most current podcast they did was about what a deployment is like when the soldier comes home with any type of physical injuries or post-traumatic stress syndrome.  My family matters blog speaks about numerous topics that have to do with ways to help families who have soldiers overseas while they are away, emotionally and financially and also when their loved ones come back.   I chose these blogs because I thought they could really help me relate to women, men and children who have a father, mother, son, etc. overseas.  I’ve never personally experienced that and it amazes me how strong some of these people have to be to go through that so hopefully hearing straight from them what their lives are like day to day will help me relate a little bit more.

I subscribed to the New York Times Middle East feed.  This doesn’t have anything directly to do with military families but this is the war they are affected by and I hope that keeping up with that will help me understand more what they might be specifically referencing in their blogs.

Military Families Speak Out is a blog that specifically focuses on family members trying to do something about the rights of their loved ones and themselves.  I thought this could help me get specific issues that are becoming of have been problems for military families. Whether it be support during the war or after.

I subscribed to milblogging because I can get it straight from our soldiers.  This is probably the most direct way to stay in tune with what’s going on with them overseas. I can’t figure out how to make my subscription more specific with that one, so hopefully I’ll be able to figure it out!

I subscribed to two google news feeds that are both entitled “Military Families.” Both of these feeds pull up any topic that you can think of. I think both of these will great sources if I need to find something more specific or very recent.

I found this youtube video focused specifically on army families but I thought it focused on a lot of what my blog will be about.

sorry if the link doesn’t work…still figuring all this out. : )