@lookingforward As one who’s been hammering for awareness of sexual assault in the military, I will have to say that the uptick in reports I do see as a good thing. I do think the issue has received some increased focus and attention at the top and there has been efforts to address it through encouraging people to report and starting to take it more seriously. It’s baby steps, IMO, but a start. There still exists a culture of silence and misogyny in many quarters. I think it is analogous in many ways to not being able to look at a particular colleges sexual assault reports and get the full picture. At some schools, victims feel more comfortable coming forward, at others they do not and the report rate is very low. The Pentagon admits that there is underreporting and there has been fear of retaliation. I do think they are working on it, however, so that is why an uptick in reports can be seen as a good thing. Much room for progress remains, IMO.
That number includes restricted and unrestricted reporting. It includes cases where the accused is a military member, and the victim isn’t in the military or wasn’t in the military at the time of the incident. The volume of anything will look large, when dealing when a population of 1.2 million active duty.
Dos, the increase in reporting may reflect increased trust. But I suspect its too son to have some full picture.
I looked for the link. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sexual-assault-reports-u-s-military-reach-record-high-pentagon-n753566
But I also see this http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/01/politics/military-sexual-assaults-pentagon-report/index.html
The two need a careful read, together, to see what agrees and, I think, where some line is blurred. Both are May 1.
Let me add, I know some of us have avoided this situation, throughout life. And what does happen isn’t limited to the military, obviously. But with 6200 reported, I just think t’s too soon to say, “Great News!” These things resolve slowly.
I’m trying to say this with respect for those who had great experiences.
I hear you, @lookingforward.
One of your links includes this reminder of a recent event which speaks to that misogynistic, testosterone filled culture I was talking about:
“The Marine Corps has been rattled by a scandal involving a private Facebook group called “Marines United” and its surreptitious distribution of explicit images of women in the armed forces, often with obscene, misogynist commentary.”
@doschicos But dos, I totally respect your concern in this area, you could easily substitute Fraternity or Football team for military.
No amount is O’k but I thought @roethlisburger had a good point that this is 6200 out of 1.2 million. That is 1 in 194 people. For college they say 1 in 5.
@gearmom I agree. My kids don’t go to schools with football teams, nor any or robust greek life. 
College environments do differ, for sure.
As far as numbers, read the reports themselves and focus on young female, enlisted which is the OP’s daughter if she follows her current talk.
Both my Dad and FIL were in the military before entering the state department, no question that you can learn a lot about leadership in the military. My son the new Navy ensign was a Bernie supporter, so yes, it’s not all conservative. He also speaks conversational Arabic.
I’d be leary about my kid going straight into the military from high school, but it is certainly the right path for many.
Just in case she does decide to go right into the military, she would be eligible for the GI bill and she would be a highly sought after applicant to many of the top schools as a veteran.
OP, glad you are going to investigate this with your D. It could be a serious interest or just a short lived teen aged passion. Military service makes moms both proud and nervous. Can she talk to other women in the service? Can they brief her on what it would mean to get a degree first vs waiting? Tell her the good and bad parts?
I have many close family members who have been in the military. Some loved it and thrived, others just did their time and got out.
Neither of my kids has been interested in military service. I did encourage them to consider ROTC. One child did a summer program that had a simulated boot camp component (kid is dual citizen with country with mandatory military service). Although he excelled in the program, he did not want to serve.
@hannuhylu: DH and I are two years further along on this road than you. Our son went to an elite prep school with a fully funded 529 and Ivy-level stats. Our jaws hit the floor when he told us just prior to junior year that he would be applying to service academies as his first choices. We were NOT a military family (guess we are now), and I have to say that I still tend to side more with the comments of “not my child,” but I would also say “not yours or anyone else’s either” as I just don’t get the attraction, and who is OK with putting their child in harm’s way? Don’t kid yourselves; all military personnel face that risk. Anyway, our son was the only student in his class to pursue this path, and his GC just shook her head every time we talked. As did just about everyone else. What the heck was he thinking?
But here’s the thing. Our son eventually turned 18, and there wasn’t a dam n thing we could do about it. Yes, he’s at an academy training to be an officer rather than enlisted, but he is still in the army, still in the military, still subject to the commitment and service requirements, and still facing that pesky potential for making the ultimate sacrifice during a time when the world is not getting any safer. We tried like heck to talk him out of it. It seems like all we did is talk. We probed every aspect of service we could think of with him to make sure he understood what he was getting into – as much as could be understood before the fact. Some of our questions included:
Do you understand how long the commitment is?
Do you understand that you will not be calling the shots?
Do you understand that the Army/Navy will use you where it sees fit, based on its needs, not yours?
Do you understand what an order is and its ramifications?
What is your understanding of “service?”
Whom are you serving?
Where do you see yourself in service?
Do you understand what you might be giving up?
Are you willing to go this alone with no application support from us?
Do you understand the term “ultimate sacrifice?”
Are you willing to make it?
Are there any conditions or circumstances under which you would not make it?
Do you know how much we love you?
His answers were thoughtful and deep and showed us that he had been thinking about this path for a very long time before he mustered the courage to bring it up with us. This was no overnight whim as it seems your daughter’s might be. I’m with the posters who encourage you to talk to your daughter about the level of commitment she would be making and all the consequences of that commitment. Keep an honest dialog going. Listen to her answers. Try to see where this is coming from. Continue to probe. I say we tried to talk our son out of this madness, but we did it respectfully out of love and concern; we did not attack him or badmouth the military. We just tried to get him to see the magnitude of a decision to follow this path. Instead, he helped us to see that he was giving breath to a basic principle upon which he was raised: To him whom much as been given, much is expected. We talked to him about all the other ways he could give back, but serving in the military just felt deeply right to him. Eventually, we ran out of unanswered objections and there was nothing left but hugs and respect.
When that appointment came, we were neither happy nor proud but, as I said, he was 18 when the envelope arrived, so we bit our tongues, held back our tears, and buckled up for the long ride. He has two more years at the academy before he commissions, and he hasn’t wavered. Today I can say that although we still worry about his future and the military seems no shinier to us, we are proud of what he is willing to sacrifice, what he has stepped up to, what he stands for, the man he has become, and the love and respect he still shows us. We have no doubt he is in the right place for him and that he will be a fine, fine officer, so what we think has become immaterial. We keep our worries to ourselves.
I suspect that if your daughter’s announcement was done for shock value or is a passing fancy that does not withstand deep scrutiny then this, too, shall pass as they say. But, if she does decide to test her mettle in the military, she will be making an adult decision with or without your support, and I can tell you that “with your support” will better serve her.
(As an aside, to those of you who say your strong-willed not-about-following-orders liberal children would not be military material, I’m laughing. I was absolutely sure those traits would ultimately keep our son from ending up where he is. I was so, so wrong.)
If you look at the number of casualties in OEF and OIF, most of them have been in the army and marines. The risk of a combat injury would be much lower in the navy or air force.
I haven’t read every post so I hope I’m not only repeating what others have said.
- I think that miltiary service is very honorable and requires strength and courage.
- I’d be concerned about either men or women relatives (especially my own children) being in the military because of health and safety risks during and after their service.
- I would express my concern but I wouldn’t attempt to bar my child from enlisting or applying to a service academy.
- I would want my child to go in armed (pun not intended) with full information about the realities of military service and the legal obligation to which she was agreeing.
Good luck.
It certainly sounds a hell of a lot more realistic than some earlier posts.
This thread brings tears to my eyes, I feel so proud of all of you in the way you are discussing this topic. Just like hearing the national anthem will brings tears to my eyes forever ever since I started working in a military environment. These people are incredible on so many levels.
There are young people who flounder after high school, college drop outs or otherwise, who thrive in the structure of the military. While I don’t have statistics to support this claim, I would guess that some things like ADHD (while might exclude a potential enlistee if diagnosed beforehand) might actually be slightly higher in incidence among military members. That there is an opportunity to thrive is a really a special thing.
I still believe a junior or senior, male or female, needs to do their research and talk a lot with their parents before making this difficult decision. Once it is made, take pride, it’s special, it’s important, it’s what they want to do.
Sometimes, the ribbing between service members doesn’t always end with good humor. There was a few occasions when my cousin or one of the other Naval squadron mates during flight training or while on shore leave when one of the other squadron mates nearly/actually got into all-out brawls with service members from the other service branches when such ribbing banter prompted great umbrage from them or vice versa.
And sometimes, it could happen within the same branch due to other rivalries…such as my father’s experience as a conscripted junior officer* completing his mandatory 2 years of military service in the Army of his society of origin.
He recounted that there was a deep feeling of mutual contempt between the Academy graduate officers and conscript junior officers like himself who were university graduates. And that mutual contempt would sometimes boil over into “unofficial” fistfights between rival groups of officers(Neither group wanted to get the MPs involved).
The academy officers felt the conscripted junior officers weren’t “real officers” with the level/depth of training they received at the military academy along with some jealousy over the fact as academy graduates their mandatory service obligation was a minimum of 10 years with the government reserving unilateral right to extend their term without appeal whereas the conscripted junior officers only had to serve 2 years like the enlisted conscripts.
On the flipside, the conscripted junior officers regarded their academy counterparts as extremely rigid martinets whose level of academic education was lower because the academic requirements for admission to the military academies in my parents’ society of origin were such they were known as safeties for college-prep students who failed to gain admission to any of their society’s universities in that period.
There’s also the factor that in a society where every healthy adult male had a mandatory military service obligation of 2 years, that it bred a weird mix of pride in having completed it and at the same time, deep contempt of the career NCOs(mainly conscripted enlistees who opted/were forced to complete their service obligation before college) or Academy officers(conscripted enlistees and especially conscripted junior officers).
- Something akin to ROTC officers....cept they were obligated to go through officer training classes during undergrad and then serve their 2 years as junior officers if they were permitted to attend college first or in my father's case...forced to because he was too young to be conscripted before undergrad.
OP, why did you put the word daughter in quotation marks?
I can’t link them but for interservice rivalry fun, google the spirit videos for service academies. Lot’s of good natured fun picking at each other.
I outright don’t believe that. That happens in the movies, not in real life. I know a lot of vets, and simply having been in the military, no matter which branch, is akin to being members of a brotherhood. That fellowship even extends to those who have served in the militaries of other countries.
This is another myth that comes out of popular culture rather than reality. I never saw anything like that when I was in the military, and having worked with officers who came out of military academies and elsewhere, I have a hard time imaging it happening.
Just an anecdote: I have a good friend who works in an area that does construction for the army. Her company builds gardens at military hospitals, for example. She respects servicemen and has expressed her opinion. A few years ago one of her sons decided to drop out of college and enlist. She freaked out! To her credit, she kept her cool in front of him and had her son talk to vets and current soldiers at a variety of levels. Her message was that he should finish his degree and if he still wanted to enlist, to do it then. He didn’t listen. His thinking had already jumped to him being in the army. To make it worse for mom, he decided to marry his girlfriend before he was sent to basic training. Yes, she was even more freaked out.
Fast forward to the present. The son is still serving as a medic and is very happy in both the military and his marriage. His mom has been a model of accepting decisions made by adult children with which you disagree. She says that sometimes our kids know better what is best for them to do.
My parents also flipped out when I went into the military. They got over it.
I will admit that when my daughter mentioned she was thinking of enlisting, my thoughts were that it would help her mature, which was good, and that she’d have guys hitting on her constantly, which was bad.