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

[Entropy]

J Wolfsberger,

I just want to say that getting on-base child-care only covers about 12 hours a day maximum. If she is deployed in Iraq and the husband is on the road for work, then base day-care is not a solution. And even then, there is never enough base day care and there is usually a long waiting list to get on.

Since this woman's extended family is not local, the choice is either to provide a non-family member (neighbor or friend) with the legal authority and responsibility for the kids, send them out-of-state to the extended family, or have the husband quit his job. Those are not easy choices and are not always possible.

I have faced similar problems since my wife is active duty (I've been in the guard/reserve for about 8 years now - I got off active duty after meeting my wife because of the challenges to dual-military families). We have been lucky that my mother-in-law has been able to come down and care for the kids when we both have been TDY or deployed. I don't know what we would have done otherwise, so I'm very sympathetic to this family's situation, particularly since she's getting called up from the IRR. Personally, if it were not for my mother-in-law as the interim guardian for our kids, I would probably not be in the service today because we'd have a very hard time finding someone to fill that role in the case where we're both ordered away. We have to keep a detailed family-care plan, along with all the necessary power-of-attorney's, etc., updated continuously with both our commands - it is a requirement. I assume the Army has similar requirements.

Ken has spoken eloquently here about the US military's 1940's personnel and management system. Well, here is an example where that model meets the reality of the 21st century family. That old model is built on the assumption of a "nuclear" family with a single, male military wage-earner and an at-home spouse being the norm. That's not the case anymore and this story is another example of that broken system IMO.