| Women At War - Part 4 |
FRACTURED FAMILIES By Pamela Martineau and Steve Wiegand -- Bee Staff Writers Last of four parts For weeks after her mother left for Iraq late last year, Shaymyia Stallworth didn't sleep in her own bed. Instead, the doe-eyed 5-year-old curled up in a reclining chair in her grandmother's Del Paso Heights living room, clutching a photograph. "She sits in that chair and holds her mother's picture," said Joyce Smith, Shaymyia's grandmother. Shaymyia didn't want a bedtime story either. Instead, she asked her grandmother to turn the chair toward the front door, just in case her mother should walk through it. That's not likely to happen anytime soon. Shaymyia's mother, California National Guard Sgt. Sharon Stallworth, 36, could be in Iraq for as long as 18 months. That's an eternity to the single mother's six children who are living with their grandparents while Mom is at war. "I tell the kids - 'We've just got to tough it out together,' " Smith said. “ 'I know it's hard for you, but we've got to do it.' " Tens of thousands of children across the nation are toughing it out while one - or sometimes both - parents are serving in Iraq. Department of Defense statistics show that 42.5 percent of all U.S. military personnel, including National Guard and Reserve members, have children, and a third of those children are age 5 or younger. Moreover, this is America's first war where a significant number of mothers in uniform have been deployed for prolonged periods. While female soldiers are less likely to be married than their male counterparts, those who are married are more likely to have children. And women in the military are twice as likely as men to be single parents. Critics of the practice of using mothers to help wage wars, particularly conservative groups normally aligned with the Bush administration, argue that it borders on barbarism. "It's wrong, it's immoral, it's not what any decent and moral society does," said Allen Carlson, a distinguished fellow for family policy studies for the Family Research Council, a conservative advocacy group on social issues. "You protect mothers, that's what we have an army for. You don't put them on the front lines." For many women, however, the war in Iraq doesn't boil down to a simple, or simplistic, moral issue. Instead, it's part of the paradox of military life. The military has provided Sharon Stallworth with a living wage and a promising career path - both hard to find when you have six kids and no college degree. Those factors make the military particularly attractive to African American women like Stallworth. While African American women make up about 12.7 percent of the U.S. female population, they represent 34 percent of the military's female enlisted personnel. "I think for many black women, the military represents one of the best opportunities to get security for their families," said Brevet Gen. (Ret.) Rosetta Burke, who spent 35 years in the Army Reserve and National Guard, and is president of the National Association of Black Military Women. "Not only a paycheck, but educational opportunities, and medical care ... things that seem out of reach any other way." But the stability of Stallworth's full-time job with the National Guard also came with the potential for great instability. She knew she could be called up for a lengthy deployment when she signed up 10 years ago, but it seemed unlikely. The Korean War had been the last major call-up of reservists where soldiers served more than a few months. Relatively few reservists and National Guard troops served in Vietnam. And actual fighting during the 1991 Persian Gulf War lasted less than six weeks. Still, Stallworth's family begged her not to join up. She dismissed their fears: "We do floods and fires," she told her mom. For years, her duties were even more mundane than that. Stallworth worked for the Guard full time for most of her career, doing administrative work at the 2668th Transportation Company's armory on Meadowview Road in south Sacramento. The job was like many other civilian administrative positions, with regular hours save for the monthly weekend warrior sessions and two summer weeks away for additional drills. It also provided a solid income for a woman raising her children without a spouse. ("He cheated. He's gone," are the only words Stallworth offers about the breakup.) But the family's stability began to crumble last fall when Stallworth's unit received new orders. Mom was going to Iraq. No special treatment Following the Gulf War, which was the country's first major post-draft military conflict, then-President George H.W. Bush appointed a commission to study the issue of deploying parents, especially mothers, to war zones. The panel recommended that single parents with preschool-age children not be allowed to deploy in times of armed conflict, and that in two-soldier families, only one of the parents be allowed to go overseas. The administration successfully opposed those recommendations. In a letter to congressional leaders, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell said that barring single parents, or one parent in a military couple, from war zones would "weaken our combat capability by removing key personnel." "It's important for us to remember that what we are asked to do here in the Department of Defense is to defend the nation," Cheney said in 1992. "The only reason we exist is to be prepared to fight and win wars. "We're not a social welfare agency." Since then, the military's growing dependence on women has further cemented the Pentagon's policy of no special consideration for mothers. Military parents are required to have plans approved by their unit commanders for the care of their children if they are assigned duties that prevent them from doing the job themselves. The plans are supposed to include designating legal authority to someone to care for the children and make medical, educational and other decisions, as well as financial arrangements, for them. In Stallworth's case, her mother holds legal authority over the soldier's offspring. Should that arrangement fall apart, Stallworth has designated her siblings to step in. If the siblings can't handle the kids, they'll go to Stallworth's grandmother back East. That's plan C. In some cases, the military will offer a hardship exemption should a tour of duty pose an undue burden on a soldier's family. Exemptions usually are granted when a child or caretaker is ill, or becomes ill while the soldier is away. Stallworth said she did not even apply for a hardship exemption, figuring she would not be eligible. The day of reckoning It is late November, the day before Stallworth will have to say goodbye to her children. The family is sitting in Grandma's living room. Some of the children, dressed neatly, sit quietly side by side on the couch. Shaymyia sits on her mother's lap, twirling Stallworth's long, thin braids. She doesn't smile. She doesn't talk either, as Mom describes the seemingly endless discussions she has had with her kids lately about her military career, discussions tinged with pain and guilt. "They don't want me in the military anymore. They say - 'Quit. Quit your job.' But I can't," says Stallworth, who plans to re-enlist when her term is up in 2007. Speaking quickly in a strong voice, she tries to explain her love for her military career by comparing it to their love for playing sports. "I wouldn't ask them to quit basketball," she says. "So they shouldn't ask me to quit the military." The children have their own perspective. They rattle off the major life events their mom will miss during her tour in Iraq: an entire basketball season for four out of the six kids; two graduations - one for a sixth-grader, the other for an eighth-grader; Christmas; at least six birthdays. And the kids blame themselves for driving her away. "After you left I felt guilty for all of the times I was bad," says daughter Nikeal, 14, describing how she felt when her mother was in pre-deployment training at Fort Lewis, Wash. "If you hadn't of had us, you wouldn't be in the Army," Nikeal adds, implying that her mother wouldn't have joined the military if she didn't have to support so many kids. "No," Stallworth replies firmly. "I wanted to do it since I was in high school." When asked whether it's harder to have a mom go off to war than have a dad go off to war, Willie, 11, quickly offers an answer. "A mom keeps the house up and a dad don't care," he said. The other children remain silent. "It's hard," Willie said later. "When my mom is here I just do better. I just feel more comfortable. I feel safe." The next day, while Shaymyia lies disconsolately on the couch, Stallworth bundles up the other children for school. She is leaving this morning for Fort Lewis. From there she will go to Kuwait, and then to Iraq, where she will be an "88 Mike" - military jargon for truck driver. Stallworth has rented a car to take the kids to their new schools, where they transferred when they moved in with Grandma. But everyone is overwhelmed with emotion when they arrive at the first campus, so much so that they can't go in. Stallworth takes them back to Grandma's house. She leaves them, sobbing. Single mothers feel the heat Critics of the Pentagon's policy on parent deployment contend that children, particularly preschoolers, suffer more when it's Mom, rather than Dad, who is sent off to war. Social scientists say there is only skimpy empirical evidence to support that contention so far, since this is the first prolonged conflict where large numbers of mothers are being deployed to the combat theater. "I think that whether there is a difference is going to depend on how the child-care duties are divided when both parents are home," said Shelly MacDermid, director of the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University. "If Mom did the cooking and most of the child-related things, then the day-to-day lives have the potential to change a lot more." But MacDermid and other researchers acknowledge there are other issues at work when the mom involved is a single parent, particularly because children sometimes form stronger emotional bonds when they live with only one parent. For Air Force Tech Sgt. Karen Foster, that issue takes the form of her youngest daughter, Megan. Foster, who joined the military in 1987, left for Iraq in late January. "She doesn't like to be too far away from me," Foster says of her 12-year-old during a pre-deployment interview at the family's home in Davis. Asked about her mom's looming departure, Megan says four words: "I wasn't expecting it." Then she breaks down in tears. While Foster views her separation from her two daughters as part of the job, other moms say that price has proved too high. For Rebecca Humbard, the final straw, after 20 years in the National Guard, came when one of her two teenage sons nearly dropped out of high school while she was in Iraq. "I'm getting out," the Antioch woman said during a cigarette break from post-Iraq training at Camp San Luis Obispo. "I can't leave my kids again." The spouses and children left behind when Mom is off to war have their own war stories to tell. They tell tales of juggling basketball, soccer, taekwando and doctor's appointments with only one adult available to drive - usually an adult working full time. Teenagers tell tales of nearly flunking out of school because their mother wasn't around to nag them to do their homework. Dads talk of scurrying across the room to shut off the television to spare the children from yet another bombing in Iraq. And they tell stories of trying to grapple with a young child's depression, when the child has no words for his pain or his fear. A mother's love Sharon Stallworth has plenty of words to express her pain and fear. But a few days before she leaves for Kuwait, then Iraq, she's not interested in using them. Sitting on her bunk in the women's barracks at Fort Lewis, she talks instead about how she spoils her children. As evidence, she takes two stuffed bears out of a box. The bears, for her two youngest, are dressed in military uniforms. If you squeeze their paws, a tape-recorded message of Stallworth's voice plays. "It's Mommy Boo," the bear says. "When you go to sleep at night and when you wake up, Sharvy and Nikeal will come count the days for you until Mommy will be back. "I love you. Good night."
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