Is the Well-Being of Children of Danish Military Deployed Fathers Poorer than Children of Civilian Controls?

Signe Frederiksen (), Mette Lausten (), Søren Bo Andersen, Helene Oldrup and Anni Brit Sternhagen Nielsen
Additional contact information
Signe Frederiksen: VIVE – The Danish Center for Social Science Research
Søren Bo Andersen: The Danish Veterans Centre
Helene Oldrup: VIVE – The Danish Center for Social Science Research
Anni Brit Sternhagen Nielsen: The Danish Veterans Centre

Child Indicators Research, 2021, vol. 14, issue 2, No 17, 847-869

Abstract: Abstract Military deployment increases the risk of exposure to potentially traumatising events as well as the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses. This may have adverse consequences for the family of the deployed, including negatively affecting the well-being of children. Well-being among children of formerly deployed military personnel has mainly been studied in the United States. Research from Europe and especially Scandinavian countries is scarce, and no knowledge of the well-being of children of formerly deployed military Danish personnel exists. Since 1992, Denmark has deployed more than 30,000 soldiers and other personnel to international conflicts/warzones, and at least 14% were parents when deployed. Exploiting survey data, we examined well-being among a representative sample of 1590 children (age 11 and 15) of formerly deployed Danish fathers, compared with a representative sample of 4722 children (age 11 and 15) from the background population (controls). Well-being was examined through children’s subjective well-being measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), as well as through their perception of their family, self-evaluated school outcomes and relationships with friends. The analyses show that children of formerly deployed fathers, in general, are doing as well as children of the background population; however, the 11-year-old children of formerly deployed fathers are more challenged compared with children of the background population, both for subjective well-being and in having more conflicts with their parents.

Keywords: Well-being; Children and young people; Survey; Military (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12187-020-09769-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:chinre:v:14:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s12187-020-09769-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... f-life/journal/12187

DOI: 10.1007/s12187-020-09769-x

Access Statistics for this article

Child Indicators Research is currently edited by Asher Ben-Arieh

More articles in Child Indicators Research from Springer, The International Society of Child Indicators (ISCI)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().