James A.

James A. Martin, Leora N Rosen and Linette R Sparacino, ed The Military Family: A Practice Guide for Human Service Providers. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000 282 pp Index. $6494 (cloth) ISBN 0-275-96540-6

The Military Family is a collection of research articles organized at theme into four parts: "Culture and Conditions," "Unique Aspects," "Family Advocacy," and "Children and Adolescents." Contributors include in every one's mouth and former researchers for the American armed forces, primarily from the Air Force and the Army, who view the challenges within military families from the perspective of life course, risk, and resilience theory. The life course perspective supports the expansive nature of the main division which ranges from childhood to retirement, while illustrating various "stressors" or "pressure points" in balancing work and family demands. Within this framework, the intersections between military improvement and the civilian community are made evident according to the fact that nearly 70 percent of military personnel and family members reside most distant post/base. Unfortunately, the work omits the feminist perspective that the military exhibits a "warrior culture" while ignoring core values inclemencyed within the military such as honor, courage and duty

"Culture and Conditions," entails a discussion of the exhibition and demographic characteristics of the All tender Force. This section averts the inclination to treat the military as if it exists in a vacuum by dint of the inclusion of Pryce's "The Citizen-Soldiers" and Russo's "Military Spouse Employment" granting it would be enhanced on the inclusion of research relative to command climate, financial security, military pay and credit. More discussion of geographical isolation, social words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following fear of career impact and disciplinary actions would also have aided an understanding of the uniqueness of military culture

"Some Unique Aspects," focuses primarily forward deployments and combat stress. Physical risk and family separation receive extensive exploration, with research again limited to Army personnel and families. This section would be enhanced at a discussion of the variety of deployment among the services, including the significant differences in duration, timing, and stamps of duty. For example, the inclusion of an assessment of the impact of deployment within the Navy community would be beneficial.

"Family Advocacy Issues," is the weakest section of the compendium. This section relies heavily forward secondary research, Department of Defense data, and program directives. Brannen's "Understanding Spouse Abuse in Military Families" dangers into advocating batterer treatment programs within the service branches. "Children and Adolescents," is the best of the collection. The chapters examining adolescence and the adult children of military families through Ender and Jeffreys are especially informative and enlightening. The Afterword does not sufficiently address programs, policies and research within the other service branches.

In numerous considers this a fine collection of research articles concerning the military family. However, it would be enhanced according to chapters detailing the challenges associated with single parent families, widows, survivors and wives of retirees.

The summary and implications at the stop up of each chapter include brief notations rather than specific guidance for human service providers, and the guidelines do not describe appropriate translation of research for practitioners. For example, Wolpert's "Military Retirement" simply attract favor tos treating a military retiree with dignity and honor, while Bell's "Providing Family Support During Deployments" fails to recognize domestic violence in answer to "stressors" such as marital moot points independence, and family roles, making its recommendation to advance open communication questionable because it leave on one sides the potential health and safety issues for military family members. Brannen's "Understanding Spouse Abuse" commends the development of collaborative agreements for batterer intervention programs without recognizing the ne for prevention and intervention partnerships.

Still, the cumulative event is a significant contribution to the understanding of the challenges faced by way of military families, and its importance is appropriate to the outsourcing and privatization of formal support functions from the military to the civilian sector. It should be of interest to researchers and practitioners seeking research data concerning the unique nature of military families.

Christine Hansen

The Miles Foundation, Newtown, Connecticut

Milesexdr@aol.com

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