Coping with the absence of parents: growing up in military families in Slovenia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Growing up in a military family with long-term and frequently absent parents presents unique psychosocial challenges to children and families. The purpose of this paper is to examine what growing up in a military family with absent parents looks like from a child’s perspective, what the biggest challenges are, and how children cope with them. We took a life course approach and conducted retrospective, semi-structured in-depth interviews with 13 adult children from 11 military families in Slovenia, which revealed that prolonged parental absences leave a strong impression on children’s individual biographies and everyday life. This influence is evident in their present and past everyday life throughout their life trajectories. It particularly affects relationships with parents and relationships between parents, leads to frequent changes in daily routines and disrupts the family balance as well as causes anxiety and fear for the parent. From the children’s perspective, it also affects their parents’ parenting practices (how their parents raised them) and how they manage their lives.