MILITARY FAMILIES: THE PROFESSION'S INVISIBLE BACKBONE

Abstract

Last year's final issue of Contemporary Military Challenges, which was dedicated to organizational culture, also included two articles publishing the results of a survey on young people's interest in the military profession. This is a very topical issue as, in the last decade, the Slovenian Armed Forces has been facing a decreasing interest in the military. This is reflected in the gradual reduction in the number of personnel, although the interests of the state in terms of military activities are not reducing – quite the contrary. Ever since the beginning of the European migrant crisis in 2015, the Slovenian Armed Forces has been combining its regular functions with additional tasks assigned within the protection of the Schengen border, and recently has been actively involved in the activities around the Covid-19 epidemic. Nataša Troha and Nuša Gorenak from the Slovenian Armed Forces conducted a survey on a sample of 7,418 high school students and described the results in their article, Job characteristics through the eyes of the young generation: survey research “Youth and their motives for the military profession”. Nina Rosulnik and Janja Vuga Beršnak also conducted a survey of 221 male and female students, and presented the results in an article entitled What motivates the young people of the 21st century to join the military? The results of both surveys are interesting and very useful for all those involved in the Slovenian Armed Forces’ manning efforts. Their task is not easy for a number of reasons. One of the main ones is that the manning of the Slovenian Armed Forces is not only a challenge for the military, but also for the Slovenian state, its government and the state administration. It is a systemic challenge and it should be tackled as such. Interestingly enough, the police have managed to retain the number of their employees compared to previous years, while the Slovenian Armed Forces has not. So, what is the difference between the police and the military as professions? At times they seem similar, but again, at other times, we find them completely incomparable. Scientifically, this challenge, among others, is examined by military sociology. Returning to the research of our four authors and their findings we learn that for young people who do not yet have their own families, the notion of family as a value is a very important factor influencing their choice of profession. Troha and Gorenak established that, from a total of 24 statements, the question of whether it would bother them to be away from family and friends for a long period of time due to work ranked second among high-school students’ priorities, with an average score of 3.3 out of 5. Rosulnik and Vuga Beršnak, on the other hand, found that family ranks first among the values that are most important to young students. These facts provide yet another reason to devote more attention to issues related to military families. In the preparation of our thematic issue, we consequently agreed on a collaboration with Janja Vuga Beršnak, a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana, who is project manager of a research project entitled Military specific risk and protective factors for military family health outcomes (J5 1786), funded by the Slovenian Research Agency. It is true that we are focusing on military families for the first time in the history of Contemporary Military Challenges; however, in military sociology, this has been a long-researched topic. Military families are a very important, though often invisible, pillar of the functioning of every armed forces. The approach to military families is decided by each country, army or commander individually, depending on a variety of factors which will be revealed in more detail in the articles.