"Bring your kids to your recall to active duty" day?

[Uboat509]

Does her recall to active duty necessarily mean that she will deploy? I know lots of people on active duty who are stateside and their duty hours fall well within the hours of the post daycare center. I think she's got a good case for not deploying. But a case for not being recalled to active duty? Is free health care and job security in this rough economy - both of which are benefits of fulfilling an obligation that she already accepted - such a hardship?

It also means paying for two households, not a cheap prospect at the best of times. Further it means she has to shut down her daycare business and then try to restart it once she is back off of active duty. It further appears that the kids will be separated from their father for most of the duration of her activation as he apparently was not able to come with her due to his job.

My hunch is that you are asking that rhetorically, but I think it is a good question. On the other hand, it is anyone's guess and I doubt that anyone wants to ask it or investigate it. I wouldn't. But, with that in mind, I would second the earlier comment about the personnel system needing to catch up with today's norms.

I know two married couples for whom a pregnancy was unplanned and precluded the wives from deploying. The realization that they could not deploy with their subordinates (both were officers) was only overshadowed by the joy of another child. But I also know that pregnancies in our MSB and FSB's had an uncanny correlation with deployments, to include NTC rotations prior to OIF or combat deployments once OIF kicked off - often times the pregnant Soldiers were not married and were hard pressed to narrow down the list of possible baby-daddies to what a reasonable person would regard as a short list. The size of the pregnant PT formation should be considered an EEFI because it is the best indicator of a unit's deployment timeline.

Our current system seems to be an honor system that lacks any honor code by which it can be self-policing. There are legitimate unplanned pregnancies, to be sure. But the number of unmarried Soldiers who fill the ranks of the pregnant PT formation, coincidentally at the same opportune time, many of whom cannot say with certainty who impregnated them, suggests that the honor system is being taken advantage of.

This is a different issue. I have known women who intentionally got pregnant to avoid deployment. This really ticks me off. Not only do these women make all women in the Army look bad when they do crap like that but they bring children into the world that they don't really want. I can recall one in particular who had two children by two different fathers who spent of of her time trying to pawn her children off on her friends so that she could go party. She made me sick. I think that one of her neighbors called child welfare on her. I PCSd before the case was resolved but I do hope that she lost custody of those poor kids. They deserved better.

But I digress. As I said, this is a separate issue from the one discussed in the article. I don't honestly believe that any woman ever got pregnant to get out of an IRR commitment.

SFC W