The New York Times’s latest explanation for why we can’t win wars… “You Can’t Defend a Nation When Soldiers Don’t Have Child Care”:
After the draft ended in 1973, the composition of the armed services began to change. More women, people of color and lower-income Americans joined up. A steady paycheck became “the principal rationale to induce persons to join the all-volunteer force,” according to testimony given before a 1978 Senate subcommittee hearing on the Army. One unanticipated consequence was the growing number of families with young children living on Army bases. “At times of alert,” Representative Robin Beard, a Tennessee Republican who had written a report on the Army, told the subcommittee, “the battalion headquarters and company headquarters would be filled with children.” Soldiers with children had “no place to take” them.
The child care problem wasn’t limited to emergencies. As costs rose relative to incomes, more military spouses had to enter the work force, and child care gaps became constant.
From 1985 to 2022, the number of active-duty single parents in the military increased 67 percent…
We supposedly have a fertility collapse among native-born Americans in the aggregate, but a baby boom for unmarried (“single parents”) members of the military. Maybe this is because women who are deployed are highly likely to become pregnant? “Active duty servicewomen have high rates of unintended pregnancy” says this 2013 paper, which cites “difficulties faced by deployed women”:
I’m still waiting for our lavishly funded military to disable Iran’s oil production and electric power generation so that the country can’t rebuild and restart its weapons factories. Maybe the military is waiting for me to go to the nearest base and take care of a toddler?
Loosely related, a U.S. senator from Connecticut roots for the Islamic Republic of Iran:
He/she/ze/they previously said that the war was “illegal” (which means that anyone in the U.S. military can refuse orders to participate?) and said our military effort was “destined to end in failure” (due to lack of child care?):
Last year, my employer hired a 20-yr US Navy vet (full Navy 20-yr retirement at age 38, full 20-yr Navy pension, plus a 100% disability pension, plus Tricare for life). While enlisted and on active duty, this young Navy enlistee bore three children from her first sailor husband, then three more from her second sailor husband. She was pregnant and on light duty/medical leave for close to five years of her twenty years of service, and never required to go out to sea.