News from the home front: Communities supporting military families

Distress, support, and relationship satisfaction during military-induced separations: A longitudinal study among spouses of Dutch deployed military personnel.

“…About half of the surveyed spouses (51%) attended the meetings and activities; reasons for not attending were not being in need of support or not being able to attend (e.g., because of work responsibilities or travel distance). In addition, support arranged by the Netherlands Defense organization includes facilitating communication between families and deployed service members and professional support provided by social workers, psychologists, and chaplains (see Moelker et al, 2008; Op den Buijs, et al, 2010, for a more detailed description of support arrangements). However, families generally rely upon civilian health care services.…”

“…Hence, services might focus on facilitating well-functioning and perhaps more continuous (informal) support networks that provide emotional support to spouses (including understanding, having conversations, sharing concerns), particularly during separations when levels of distress are highest. Although family support centers and networks are available in many countries (Moelker et al, 2008), continuous attention should be paid to whether the support relations are still effective and match the specific conditions and needs of temporary separated spouses.…”

The Social Structure of the Liquid Self: Exploratory Lessons from Israeli Flight Attendants

“…We extend recent efforts to understand the circumstances, personalities and relationships of the modern self in the specific context of highly-mobile people (Illouz, 2008). Previous studies of extremely mobile occupations – seafarers (Thomas and Bailey, 2009), long-distance truck drivers (de Croon et al, 2004), soldiers on extended missions abroad (Moelker et al, 2008) – have shown that mobility affects all facets of life, and require agents and their social networks to realign their relationships across time and space. However, flight attendants experience an accentuated form of those occupations because the technology of flight created immediate mobility back and forth across time and space, the time travel between home and abroad is often shorter than half a day , and there is no ‘transition period’ between different locations and compartments of life.…”