Single Parents Struggle in Military

Publish date: 2024-07-31

When Sgt. Charles Haskins reported for his new assignment at Fort Belvoir last fall, he discovered that the Army base in southern Fairfax County had no room for a single father with a 3-year-old daughter.

"All they tell you is go find the nearest hotel," said Haskins, 28, who at 11 p.m. on an October night confronted the arduous task of trying to balance an Army career with single parenthood -- the type of situation that has become one of the most difficult personnel problems for the U.S. military.

Winning custody of his daughter "was a shocker -- I wasn't prepared for it," said Haskins, a supply sergeant who has spent 11 years in the Army. "Neither was the Army."

For Haskins, single parenthood has meant military transfers, reprimands in his personnel file for infractions such as bringing his daughter to physical training, and a continuous struggle to find child-care services compatible with the odd hours of military duty.

For the U.S. military, the dramatic increase in single parents comes as military leaders are trying to readjust to the needs of an all-volunteer force that is vastly different from the bachelor, male-dominated force of the Vietnam era. It is an issue, leaders say, that bears directly on the readiness of an all-volunteer service and the retention of troops in an era when the pool of potential recruits is dwindling.

Pentagon officials estimate that more than 50,000 single parents with custody of their children are serving in the armed services, although the total is unclear because the services use different methods to calculate their respective tallies. The single-parent population in the Navy has exploded from 5,100 in 1980 to an estimated 25,000 this year, according to officials at the Norfolk base's family services center.

Those growing numbers have meant increasing problems for the military as it seeks more money for day care centers and other special services at a time when budgets are tighter. Although many of those programs are aimed at helping all military families with children, officials say they are particularly crucial to single military parents.

In the past two years, the Defense Department and individual services have created high-level positions to organize family service programs. The Army's budget requests to Congress for child-development centers, of special importance to single parents, leaped from zero in 1985 to $ 45.6 million for fiscal 1987, acccording to a House Armed Services Committee report.

"The issue is being elevated and something is being done about it," said Bill Coffin, director of the Pentagon's family policy office. "In the early '80s, the initiatives came from military wives and people in the military were not listening."

Athough the number of single parents in the military is increasing at about the same rate as the number in society at large, military officials say the problems for military parents are magnified.

"They have stresses civilian parents don't have -- deployment, relocation, 24-hour duty," said Alice Stratton, the Navy's deputy assistant secretary for personnel and family matters, a position created a year ago.

To help single parents cope, the old-style family service centers that once existed primarily to lend pots and pans to new base residents have expanded programs to include special group counseling sessions for single parents. The Navy has established several shipboard counseling groups to provide emotional support for single parents at sea during long separations from their youngsters.

Even with the new attention on the issue, the demand for day-care centers and family services far outstrips what the military is providing, according to Pentagon officials. Housing for service members with children is limited on some bases and nonexistent at most remote and overseas locations. Almost every base day-care center in the United States and overseas has a long waiting list, officials said.

With a few exceptions, a single parent with child custody is barred from entering the military services. "We're growing enough of our own [single parents] without bringing them in from society," said Col. Donald S. Palmer, chief of the Air Force's human resources development division. "We can manage the situation now with the number we have."

But some parents, like Pfc. Connie Peresada, circumvent the regulation by signing custody of their children to another guardian during enlistment and basic training and resuming custody later.

Two months before Peresada, 28, was scheduled to move to her new assignment as an eye technician at Fort Belvoir, she telephoned to arrange base housing for herself and her two young daughters. But when she arrived in June, Peresada was told she would be put on a waiting list because of the shortage of family housing.

"I had a rude awakening," said Peresada, whose husband was killed in an accident two years ago. "I had two daughters, and I had no housing and no transportation."

She spent her first weeks living with her stepfather in Maryland. She left the house at 4 a.m. to reach her job by 8 a.m. With no automobile, she said, she hitchhiked the first 30 miles, caught a train from Brunswick, Md., to Rockville, took the Metro to Huntington and then a Metrobus to Fort Belvoir.

When she fell asleep from exhaustion one day while sitting in her supervisor's office, the supervisor "restricted me to the base two days a week just so I could get some sleep."

Peresada said she finally wandered into the base's Community Service Center for assistance. The center, which its director said is increasing efforts to assist single parents, found temporary housing for Peresada in northern Virginia. She hops a Metro bus with Joy, 7, and Sarita, 5, for the two-hour commute to Fort Belvoir, then drops off the youngsters at separate base day-care centers on her way to work.

"Everyone at the eye clinic is very lenient," said Peresada, noting that she frequently is late to work and remains on the waiting list for on-post housing. "But it upsets me that I can't be here when I have to be. One year in the service, I'm trying to establish myself."

The increasing number of single parents -- as well as the proliferation in recent years of married enlisted troops with families -- has forced the military to reassess many of its requirements for troop deployment. Most of the services refuse to allow children to accompany parents assigned overseas if there are no family housing or child-care services.

Sgt. Haskins' experience is representative of the problems facing many single military parents, according to military officials. Soon after he won custody of his daughter following a divorce, Haskins was transferred to Fort Belvoir from the unit in Germany where he had served 10 years.

"It was a deployable unit," Haskins said. "We weren't welcome there."

Haskins said he discovered his supervisors weren't much more receptive at his new assignment.

Because babysitters were difficult to find at 5 a.m., when Haskins was required to report for physical training, he brought young Natalie with him. That ended with letters of reprimand in his personnel file and orders forbidding him to bring his daughter.

Haskins eventually was transferred to a new battalion where he said the commander is more tolerant of his hardships as a single father. A neighbor looks after Natalie in the morning during physical training until Haskins can drop her off at the base day-care center before reporting to his job at 8 a.m.

In contrast to the civilian population, in the military most single parents are men -- primarily because the services remain overwhelmingly male. Navy officials said 80 percent of the single sailors with children are men.

The attitude of the military toward single parents has changed significantly since the General Accounting Office reported in 1982 that the Army was considering discharging all sole parents or assigning them to positions coded as "nondeployable," which would not require sudden, long trips into the field.

"Some commanders believe that, in the event of war, the parental responsibilities of these service members will take priority over their call to duty," the GAO study said.

But the proposal to discharge single parents "raises questions of equity. Would it be fair? Would it be legal?" said Lt. Col. Craig MacNab, an Army spokesman.

Military officials also said they place a premium on retaining service members because of increasing costs of training recruits.

"We're not wasting the money we spend on families," MacNab added. "If the family is not happy, we don't keep the soldier."

The services have tightened requirements that military parents prove that they have arranged guardians for their children in the event the parent is deployed. That has become particularly important for single parents, especially in the Navy, which often requires sea duty.

Single parents who cannot rely on other family members to serve as guardians frequently turn to outside private services because the military makes no provisions for long-term care of children while parents are deployed, according to Karen Blaisure, young families coordinator at the Navy's Norfolk family service center.

Blaisure said a private service in the Norfolk area will place military children in civilian households at costs from $ 300 to $ 800 per month for each child while parents are at sea, which can be six months or longer.

The Navy's Stratton said some civilians are preying on single military parents by charging up to $ 1,000 just for the use of their names as designated guardians. "It's heartrending," said Stratton. "They didn't have a name and they have to have somebody."

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Single Parents Struggle in Military