Complex spaces of involvement during and after paternal deployment: Danish children’s emotions and relationships with their fathers

Abstract

A growing body of research indicates that children of formerly deployed soldiers are at risk of experiencing negative outcomes, but studies are lacking in terms of the exploration of children’s emotions from their own perspective. This article is based on qualitative interviews with 26 children (age 7–20) from 19 Danish families with formerly deployed fathers. The children’s emotions are complex and ambiguous. While deployment leads to a distanced relationship between children and their fathers, following it, some form a close relationship following deployment. However, other children become responsible for maintaining their relationship with their father, altering the generational order.

Keywords

Paternal deployment children emotion emotion work child-father relationship

Introduction

At school, we talked about happiness and soldiers. My teacher was amazed when I told her how hard it is. People say [….] how lovely it is that we have our soldiers, but I said: “yes, they go there and think they can make a difference, and come back and ruin their families’ lives”. The other children didn’t understand it because they had only heard that the soldiers were the good guys who went there and took care of the bad ones, but that is not what happens. When they return home, it is hard for all of us. (11-year-old boy)

Children and the military are usually imagined as discrete and monolithic spheres of social life (Beier and Tabak, 2020). However, the above quote from an 11-year-old Danish boy, whose veteran stepfather is now divorced from his mum, illustrates how deployment has emotional consequences for the child and family. Military deployment changes—and in this case, contributes to breaking—family relationships and serves as a poignant example of how children (and spouses) are affected by this. New theoretical work on children and militarization calls for seeing the latter as a social and cultural process that deeply affects children’s lives, including within the family (Beier and Tabak, 2020; Solomon and Denov, 2010). Thus, rather than seeing children and the military as two separate spheres, we should see the boundaries between the two as indeterminate, looking at how militarisms circulate through minute and mundane aspects of everyday milieus and the multiple ways these boundaries are navigated, negotiated and blurred.

Having a father working in the military is one particular context of ‘situated fathering’ (Marsiglio et al. 2005). This concept is based on an understanding that contingencies of physical space in conjunction with social and symbolic issues, affect men’s identities as fathers and their involvement with their children. Indeed, scholars of fatherhood and family are increasingly interested in the intersections of policy with the ‘intimate, embodied and banal practices of parenting across different contexts and landscapes’ (Jupp and Gallagher 2013; e.g., Menzel 2022; Moran et al., 2016). Thus, the research in this article, take the perspective of children whose father is a formerly deployed veteran and explore their lived and emotional experiences.

Previous research on partners of deployed soldiers and veterans suggests that having a deployed partner alters the ideals of a good family life, moral statuses, emotions and relationships (Allen et al., 2011; Andres, 2010; Andres et al., 2012; Heiselberg, 2018a), with implications for children. A growing body of research on the impact of parental deployment, particularly paternal, has documented a variety of negative outcomes for children, including emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems, poor academic performance and family stress (e.g., Blamey et al., 2019; Engel et al., 2010; Frederiksen et al., 2021; Lester et al., 2010; McGuire et al., 2016; Pfefferbaum et al., 2012; Richardson et al., 2011). This research also shows that the impact on children is heterogeneous and differs depending on the cumulative effects of deployment length and parental wellbeing post-deployment (Cunitz et al., 2019; De Pedro et al., 2011).

However, when these studies document the effects of deployment on children, they tend to present children as passive and do not explore children’s experiences of deployment. Thus, in order to better understand how fathers’ deployment influences children’s emotional lives, it is necessary to supplement such studies with qualitative research exploring deployment as a process, focusing on how family relationships are mediated by paternal deployment (but see Frain and Frain, 2020). Drawing on a Danish qualitative study of 26 children from 19 families with fathers deployed before they were born or during their childhood, we explore these children’s emotions in relation to their fathers during and after deployment. In the Danish gender and military context, we ask the following questions: What emotions do the children experience during and after paternal deployment, and what emotion work do they do? What characterizes the children’s relationships with their fathers and what positions are they able to take in relation to their fathers?

The definition of a veteran in Denmark is a soldier who has been deployed at least once, and who may or may not, have ceased to be deployed. In the study, we wanted children and young people to look back and remember their experiences, to see how these experiences shaped their narratives and understanding of themselves. Also, for ethical reasons, we did not want to interview such children during and immediately after paternal deployment. This article includes families that have fathers both with and without post-deployment psychological consequences, and about half of the families (9 out of 19) families studied have a father experiencing such after-effects. Previous research indicates that about 10% of Danish veterans’ children have a father suffering from post-deployment psychological consequences (Frederiksen and Lausten, 2018). This enables us to focus on the particular challenges for children of veterans with psychological consequences.

Fatherhood and militarism in a Danish context

This study is set in a Nordic context, which is a particular gendered context, as Denmark belongs to the so-called Nordic gender equality regime (Borchost and Dahlerup, 2020; Eydal and Rostgaard, 2015), which emphasizes that both parents should share the care of their children, as expressed in the dual earner/dual carer model. New concepts, such as the negotiating family, intimate relationships and involved fatherhood, suggest that new ideals of fatherhood are replacing former patriarchal ideals (Bloksgaard et al., 2015). This shift in masculinity ideals has changed gender relations, and many Danish fathers are no longer simply providers but also active caregivers and participants in housework (Bach, 2019). One strand of this research suggests a ‘caring masculinity’ is emerging, characterized by care competence, an intimate relationship with one’s child and being someone who provides their children with love and security, thus emphasizing the emotional relationships with one’s children rather than the acquisition of status and resources (Brandth and Kvande, 2018; Elliot 2015).

Denmark is also a particular military context. Denmark has been involved in peacekeeping missions since 1948, but from 1992, Denmark began following an activist foreign policy involving international military interventions (Kyed et al., 2022). This means that Denmark is a new warring nation with veterans a new social category. The Danish Armed Forces and The Danish Emergency Management Agency consist of approximately 16,000 military employed (91.1 pct. men) excluding conscripts and Defence Intelligence Service. At least 14 pct. of first-time military deployed had one child (Lyk-Jensen et al., 2019). Since 2002, most army deployments have been off 6 months’ duration, but soldiers may be assigned to longer and shorter missions. The daily lives of military families resemble those of Danish civilians as they live in the same housing areas, their children frequent the same daycare centres and schools and spouses typically have civilian jobs. However, research have found that families where the father is or have been deployed are influenced by military life when it comes to the language and the relationships in the family e.g., by adapting to military lingo, having military themed toys, leaving more household tasks to the spouse (and children), and making it difficult for the female spouse to have her own career (Heiselberg, 2017, 2018a; Kyed et al., 2022). Veterans’ partners and children became formally recognized as a target group for the Danish military when the Veteran Policy was introduced in 2010 (Forsvarsministeriet, 2010, 2016, 2022). Support initiatives available for soldiers/veterans and their families have been initiated and implemented by the Danish Veterans’ Centre together with volunteer organizations since 2011.

In the following, we begin by outlining the theoretical framework by presenting perspectives through which we can understand how deployment sets the context for children’s lives and emotions in the family and how children’s emotions and emotion work can be understood. Second, we present the methodology for the study and, thirdly, the empirical analysis.

Deployment, complex spaces of involvement and children’s emotions

For children with deployed fathers, the military is a key context for their family lives. The effects that deployment has on the families and children of the deployed soldiForsvaresministerieters can be understood through the emotional cycle of deployment model (Tomforde, 2015): based on the premise that with increased participation in terms of deployments, a tension occurs between the family and the military, which each compete for the soldier’s attention (Segal, 1986). It is assumed that any prolonged separation between deployed soldiers and their spouses/families induces mental stress on those involved, but the amount of stress imposed on both soldiers and their families will vary during deployment. The emotional cycle of deployment model seeks to describe the different emotions and coping strategies that children and families of a deployed parent go through during deployment through four phases (Tomforde, 2015):

− Before deployment, the family’s first attempts to come to terms with the father’s absence are made but are hampered by the many professional obligations soldiers have. It is experienced as emotionally demanding, characterized by worrying about the future and emotional outbursts.

− The beginning of deployment constitutes an enormous change for the family at home as those involved must adjust to new roles. The deployed parent is absent, leaving all the childcare and housework responsibilities to the partner. Some partners experience this phase as lonely, and children may miss their fathers.

− The next phase, during deployment, involves getting accustomed to separation and may last until the end of the deployment. This phase is more emotionally calm, and the feelings of loneliness and longing are less intense. If the deployment is potentially dangerous, this may cause worry and stress for the partner and children.

− After deployment, many partners have to get accustomed to one another again. The reintegration period can be a major upheaval for the family due to the renegotiation of roles and responsibilities and the reestablishment of the family dynamic, involving the relationships between the children and parents as well as those between the parents.

The deployment cycle focuses on emotional changes in the relationships between soldiers and their partner and their children over time as the soldier leaves, is away and returns home.

A second perspective is the psychological concept of ambiguous loss which complicates this understanding of phases (Faber et al., 2008). It refers to situations that entail family separation that may lead to boundary ambiguity and has been used to understand families with a deployed member. Ambiguous absence occurs when a person is physically absent, and the family becomes preoccupied with the absent relative. Ambiguous presence occurs when a family member is physically present but psychologically absent, for instance, because of trauma from past experiences. In this understanding, deployment and reunions may cause military families to experience ambiguous presence and ambiguous absence consecutively. From this perspective, the boundaries between being at home and away become blurred. Heiselberg (2017) makes a parallel suggestion in an ethnographic study of deployment from a family perspective. She proposes the concept of ‘relational space’, which emerges when ordinary family space and time are expanded using communication technologies to include the non-present soldier in everyday family situations. The concept ‘relational space’ seeks to capture the processes through which a special kind of family involvement is made tangible to persons not physically present.

A third perspective on deployment is that of mobile fatherhood, which is a form of fatherhood that takes place at a distance, such as fathers working in the military, long-haul trucking or oil rig workers (Aure, 2018). This perspective views mobility as a central and normal gendered process, which can be viewed as a particular context for family and child socialization (Aure, 2018). Indeed, communication technologies have created new forms of ‘being there’, independent of place, and have transformed family life by stretching social relations over distances (Madianou and Miller, 2011). Drawing on theories of fatherhood, Aure (2018) suggests the concept of a fathering matrix consisting of the following five components: engagement, availability to the child and responsibility for the welfare and care of the child, as well as the quantity versus the quality of time and the father’s role relative to the mother’s role. These components intersect with the spatiality of distance and the proximity between the father and child. This is a multidimensional matrix constituting fathering practices, where spatial absence or presence cannot be conflated with emotional proximity (Aure, 2018). This matrix can be understood as complex spaces of involvement for fathers and children.

The theories presented do not explicitly foreground children’s perspectives; indeed, understandings of families, including fatherhood, have typically only been equated with parental agency (Smart et al., 2001). However, over the past 30 years, children have increasingly been seen as actors in their own right, who make sense of their environment, initiate change and make choices (James and James, 2004; Tisdall and Punch, 2012). Thus, while children are positioned in the family based on the generational order, at the same time, they are capable of negotiating, resisting and challenging this order in their relationships with their parents (Punch, 2005). Nevertheless, more recently, childhood studies scholars have questioned the perceived overemphasis on agency in the new social studies of childhood, given the many constraints on children’s lives (Tisdall and Punch, 2012).

Emotions are an essential component of everyday family lives and father-child relations (Morgan, 2011). Ideally, the family and the home provide a place of security, warmth, comfort and free emotional expression. However, these positive meanings can be destabilized with paternal deployment, which may cause the family to take on negative emotional associations (Harden et al., 2013). In researching children’s emotions in the context of paternal deployment, it is crucial to acknowledge the ambivalent nature of emotions and children’s own accounts of these (Notko and Sevón, 2018). It also important to attend to children’s emotion work, referring to their management and control of emotions in order to meet other’s emotional needs and thereby maintain harmony and wellbeing in the family (Harden, 2012; Hochschild, 1983). Along with their parents, children perform emotion work in their families and actively try to make sense of the emotions they experience in different situations (Elden, 2016; Harden, 2012).

Methodology

This study is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with 19 veteran families during 2016–2017. The Danish Veterans’ Centre and private organizations working with veterans’ families helped recruit families. In total, 19 spouses (or former spouses) and 26 children were interviewed about living with a veteran partner/father. The children interviewed consisted of 15 boys and 11 girls (7–20 years old). The majority were 10–11 years old (10 children) or 13 years old (7 children). All the interviewed children had a father who had been deployed with the armed forces either before they were born (4 families) or one or more times during their childhood (14 families). Most of the fathers (13 of 18) had experienced three or more deployments.

Half of the interviewed mothers had been in medium-/long-cycle higher education, six had completed vocational training, two were unskilled and two did not register their educational level. Of the 19 mothers, 17 were currently employed. 13 of the veteran fathers were employed, and about two thirds of them worked for the armed forces. In two thirds of the families, both parents were employed. Amongst the fathers, nine of the 18 suffered from post-deployment psychological consequences, making their families more vulnerable than the typical veteran family. Seven fathers were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and one father was being assessed for PTSD, while one had a serious injury causing mental dysfunction.

The interviews were mostly carried out in the homes of the families. The mothers and children were interviewed separately, sometimes consecutively by one interviewer, but mostly simultaneously by two interviewers. The interviews with the children included the following themes: daily life at home and school, family relations, relationship with dad and experiences during and after deployment. Various creative methods were used to support the dialogue and to take a more playful approach (e.g., the use of concentric circles, object-based methods, timelines and mood icons) (Gabb, 2008; Thomson, 2008). The interviews with the mothers used a life story approach to map the relationship with the veteran from the beginning, focusing on the deployment and aftermath, the children’s lives and reactions, parental roles, networks and support from the military.

The interviews were recorded, fully transcribed, anonymized and coded using the software program NVivo. Cross-sectional thematic content coding was carried out, focusing on what was being said rather than on how or to whom it was said (Riessman, 2008). The focus was on the children’s emotions during and post-deployment coded in relation to fathers with or without post-deployment psychological consequences. The analysis was structured in sub-themes, which were placed into dialogues with the sociological debate on caring masculinity, mobile fatherhood, emotions and children’s perspective.

A limitation to this research is that the interviews were carried out retrospectively, with some interviews being carried out several years after their father’s last deployment. This means that the children’s and their mothers’ accounts may be lacking in details as some emotions are forgotten or changed in one’s memory. This however does not make the retrospective sense-making less important. Another limitation is the overrepresentation of children with fathers with post-deployment psychological consequences. While this means that these children’s unique experiences are well represented in the study, there may be less variety in the descriptions of experiences by children with fathers with no post-deployment psychological consequences.

Empirical analysis

The analysis is divided into two sections, during and after deployment. In these two phases, we explore the children’s emotions, emotion work and relation to their father.

Present at a distance – emotions when dad is deployed

During deployments, the partners and children have ongoing contact with the fathers via phone, Messenger, FaceTime, Skype or other means of communication. The calls are often scheduled, and some children can call their fathers on a more flexible basis whenever they need to talk. This means that although their fathers are away from home, talking to them is part of daily life for the children, creating what can be termed relational and involved spaces of family life (Aure, 2018; Heiselberg, 2017). In these spaces, the fathers are physically absent but emotionally present.

Embodied feelings and expressions during deployment

Most of the children describe many physical, social and emotional troubles during their fathers’ deployments: stomach aches; headaches; trouble falling asleep; mood swings; extroverted behavior, such as hitting other children and being involved in many conflicts; and introverted behavior, such as keeping to themselves and feeling anxious. One example is 13-year-old Malte, whose father was deployed several years ago and with no post-deployment psychological consequences. Malte says of the time his father was deployed:

“Sometimes, my stomach hurt, but I didn’t really know why, and then I realized that it was probably because I missed my dad … My stomach just hurt. Not like when you’re sick, but it just hurt really bad”.

His mother adds that during his father’s deployment, Malte was withdrawn and did not want to talk. These symptoms can be interpreted as embodied ways that the children express their emotions during their fathers’ absence. It suggests that they find it difficult to verbalize their experiences, maybe because they were not verbally mature enough to do so during their fathers’ deployments or because they have no context in which to do so.

Similarly, several children have talked to psychologists. In Danish programs for children¹ or during their contact with psychologists, children are given a space and a discursive repertoire to verbalize their emotions and to perform emotion work. For Malte, the support groups for children and teenagers became a place where he learned to articulate why he was hurting: “getting your thoughts out there”.

The temporal patterning of emotions of worry and longing

When the children talk about their emotions of longing and worry during their fathers’ deployments, they articulate different temporal patterns for these emotions. These emotions appear when their fathers leave, they arise unexpectedly or they are constantly there. Some children explain that the emotions of longing and worry appear around the time their fathers leave for their deployments:

“Yeah, I don’t notice it that much in my daily life. But of course, when he’s about to leave … That can be hard”. (Molly, 13 years old)

Other children explain how their feelings of longing and worry are not present all the time, but sometimes they ‘pop up’. Josefine, who is 17 years old, recalls the following:

“But it’s just always been, you know, is something happening to him right now? It’s like, I’m doing my thing, and then I’ve forgotten all about it, right? And then, out of the blue, this thought pops up in your head. Has something happened to him? It could be anything, anytime”.

However, the feeling of longing and worry can also be more constant:

“I was very sad about it, and generally, I just wasn’t doing that great back then … I was worried that he wouldn’t come back. I just thought it was a long time. Basically, it was just strange”. (Patrick, 13 years old)

Thus, the children’s feelings of longing and worry have different temporal patterns. This suggests that the children’s emotions in relation to their fathers’ deployments not only depend on the emotional cycle of deployment but also have other temporal patterns, depending on how they manage their emotions.

Contact with dad during deployment – navigating emotional closeness and physical distance

Emotions such as longing and worry can be unwanted (Bo and Jakobsen, 2017). They can color a person’s life, and some may experience a need to control them. Emotion work can be understood as trying to control an emotion (Hochschild, 1983). This also characterizes the children in this study, who use different strategies to manage their unwanted emotions when their fathers are away.

The children and their families take advantage of the fathers being accessible via various communication technologies, which means that the children can talk to them from home, but also potentially in other settings, such as when they are at a friend’s house or in childcare. The children use two types of strategies during the contact with their fathers, reflecting different ways of seeking to control their emotions: One strategy involves immediately contacting their fathers when they miss them. Marvin, who is 11 years old, is always encouraged by his family to call when he misses his father, even if he is at somebody else’s house. Marvin often initiates calls and talks to his father in order to manage his worry and longing. This can be seen as a way of reestablishing the positive emotions in his relationship with his father, despite the physical distance. Another strategy to manage emotions in relation to an absent father is to minimize contact with him. Many of the interviewed mothers say that their children are unwilling to talk to their fathers when they call. One example is Patrick, who is 13 years old and chooses to have less direct contact with his father during deployments:

Patrick: “I didn’t like being reminded what I had and what I had lost, or could lose, more accurately”.Interviewer: “So, it was easier not to talk to him?”Patrick: “Yes, I preferred writing a message”.

In doing so, Patrick attempted to create emotional distance from his father to avoid the unwanted emotions of longing and worry, which can be seen as a strategy for maintaining the positive emotions in relation to his father.

These two strategies used to control emotions can be seen as the limited ways that the children can exert their agency in an ambiguous situation: when their father is physically absent but emotionally present. The children have no control over their fathers’ absence, but they can manage their own emotions and exert agency in terms of when and how much they talk to them. Seeking contact or withdrawing from contact with their fathers are two different ways of managing the situation of missing their fathers.

Feeling close to dad and other emotions – after dad’s deployment

After deployment, the fathers return home to become part of their families’ daily lives. In this space, the father is physically present for the children, but not always emotionally so. Also, some fathers, return with psychological consequences.

Emotions when dad returns from deployment

When a father returns from a deployment, it is typically a happy time for the family, but it can also be difficult, as the boy in the opening quote in this article explains: “When they come home, it is hard on all of us”. Thus, some children react by rejecting their fathers. One mother explains how her four-year-old daughter rejected all interaction with her father for 4 months after his return from deployment. A mother to a 13-year-old boy explains how her son was very angry after his father’s return from deployment: He acted provocatively towards his father and questioned family rules, which led to more conflicts in the family than during the period of his father’s deployment. When some children react by rejecting their fathers when they return, it can be interpreted as a way for them to protect themselves from getting too emotionally involved. They have experienced their fathers being absent, which caused longing and worry for them, and they may fear that they will leave them again. Thus, a father’s return may be an ambiguous situation for his children.

Feeling close to dad through leisure activities

Almost all the children talked about the activities they do with their fathers. They describe indoor activities, such as watching movies and soccer and computer and board gaming, and a remarkable range of outdoor activities (e.g., camping, sheltering, sailing, walking trips, swimming, riding mopeds and motorcycles, hunting, fishing, searching for old coins with metal detectors and shooting and playing with toy weapons). The children talk fondly of these activities. For instance, Mille, who is 10 years old, shares the following:

Interviewer: “What is the best thing about your dad?”Mille: “It’s probably that you can do a lot of things with him. Like go to a shelter or just hang out”.

Through these various leisure activities, the children express experiencing close relationships with their fathers. In particular, the children of fathers with post-deployment psychological consequences talk about doing outdoor activities, suggesting that such activities are particularly important in such relationships.

While it has been argued that such outdoor activities can be seen as an aspect of militarization (Kyed et al., 2022), here we want to suggest that these activities also can be seen as part of caring masculinities. Indeed, Nordic research shows that fathers engage in caring through masculine activities, such as practical experiences, hard work and outdoor challenges (Brandth and Kvande, 2018). Almost all the activities that the children mention are single event leisure activities. There are a few examples of recurrent activities, such as the case of Mikkel, who, for a time, participated in regular shooting practices with his father. Thus, the children typically describe the activities with their fathers as ‘fun’ activities separate from more regular daily and domestic activities. The activities that the children do with their fathers often take place outside the home and are examples of ‘side-by-side’ activities, which represent a particular masculine form of intimacy characterized by ‘doing something together’ (Brandth and Kvande, 1998). This suggests that the place and time of the intimacy between the children and their fathers follows a more traditionally gendered pattern.

(Over)adapting for a father with post-deployment psychological consequences

When fathers have post-deployment psychological consequences in the form of diagnosed PTSD, these often manifest themselves in emotional instability, frequent mood swings and occasional aggressive behavior. The accounts of the interviewed children reflect a spectrum of adaptions to their fathers’ behavior.

At one end of the spectrum, some children talk about how they try to avoid making loud noises, which may trigger a reaction from their fathers, or how they avoid bringing up certain subjects that may remind their fathers of their military careers or time in the military. By making such adaptions, the children assume the responsibility of nurturing their fathers’ good moods and maintaining a positive atmosphere in the family. These can be seen as examples of emotion work and of how the children empathize with their fathers’ perspective and accordingly adjust their interactions to maintain harmony and wellbeing in the family.

At the other end of the spectrum, some children make more extensive adjustments to their behavior and daily lives. For example, Asmus, who is 11 years old, lives with his mother but wants to spend time with his father, who has post-deployment PTSD and receives different types of support. His parents do not live close to each other, and Asmus chooses to travel 1.5 h alone by bus and train to visit his father. Thus, he assumes responsibility for the relationship as he makes sure that they spend time together. Asmus explains how, during his visits, they try to stay away from other people to protect his father. For instance, they go to the pool when it is not busy or avoid busy trains when they travel. Asmus therefore helps adjust the activities with his father to accommodate the latter’s capability and needs.

Another example is 13-year-old Johan, whose father was injured during deployment many years ago. The family has always had to be very considerate due to the father’s unstable moods and difficulty coping with sensory overload. For instance, the four children take turns spending the weekend with relatives to minimize the commotion at home. Johan also takes the initiative when doing activities with his father:

Johan: “… I noticed what he likes, and then we started doing those things together. Going fishing and things like that … instead of doing things that he didn’t like, which made him angry. So, I found some things that we both have in common and that he likes … and he doesn’t get angry as fast. He gets out and relaxes in a way”.

Thus, Johan takes responsibility for finding activities to do with his father that nurture his father’s good moods. In doing so, he proactively seeks to create a positive relationship with his father. This is an example of Johan’s emotion work, as well as an example of how he, as the child, takes responsibility for the harmony and wellbeing of his father. In effect, it is a reversal of the child-adult relationship, where Johan takes on the adult responsibility of maintaining the relationship with his father. This shows how the relationship between child and father is ambiguous; it is unclear who is the parent and who is the child.

Being angry and afraid – withdrawing from and rejecting their fathers

Several children talked about emotions, such as being afraid and being angry. They explained they are afraid of their fathers’ moods and occasional aggressive behavior. Sara, who is 15 years old, explains: “I never know when I can go down to my dad [’s house], and when I’m down there, I don’t know if I can talk to him or if I should leave him alone”. Her father’s unstable and unpredictable moods force her to be constantly aware of her own behavior in relation to him to avoid triggering a negative reaction. Sara elaborates: “I’ve always been afraid of my dad, not for any particular reason, I’ve just always been afraid of him. Every time he gets mad, I feel scared. He really scares me when he becomes aggressive”. Sara also has fond memories of her father, but the overarching emotion is feeling afraid of him. To avoid this, she often chooses not to contact him, withdrawing from this relationship.

A mother explains how her daughter is very angry with her father as well as the military. The daughter remembers what the father was like before he had post-deployment psychological consequences, and the mother says: “She has said many times that the [military] has taken her dad. She is really mad at them. A few times she has shouted and screamed at him, wishing him dead instead. She is mad at him for choosing [to be in the military]” (mother of Josefine, 17 years old). The anger can be seen as a reaction to the loss of her father, as she remembers him. The children in these two examples are unable to manage their emotions to maintain harmony in the family; instead, they manage their emotions by avoiding their fathers or by expressing strong emotions.

Concluding discussion

During the last couple of decades Danish - and Western - countries have deployed soldiers as part of international missions. There is growing concern over the consequences of these missions in terms of the wellbeing of veterans, but also the wellbeing of their partners, and, increasingly, their children. Indeed, emerging research on children of formerly deployed soldiers documents negative outcomes for these children. This article contributes to the literature by exploring the lived and emotional experiences of children living with a father, who has been deployed one or more times, with some fathers suffering post-deployment psychological consequences. The details in the children’s accounts reveal important differences in their emotional experiences and emotion management. The article demonstrates, empirically, how some fathers during and after deployment, are positioned as distant and as not as involved participants in parenthood, in some instances re-positioning the child as the active and caring participant in the relationship - especially when fathers suffer from psychological consequences

The study suggests limitations to the perspectives of emotional cycle of deployment (Tomforde 2015) and ambiguous loss (Faber 2008). Both are based on an understanding of temporal phases related to deployment. The study show that children’s emotions are not neatly divided into phases, rather the process of emotions and emotion work is more ‘messy’ and nonlinear. Indeed, this study suggest that children’s various emotions related to the process of deployment may co-exist in different phases, have nonlinear development, and may continue long after deployment. Further, the relationship between father and child do not necessarily have a stable form, to which child and father return, rather the relationship is an ongoing process, which may be altered fundamentally altered in the process.

In Kyed et al. (2022) we outlined how veterans vary in their emotions and practices; and proposed different and conflicted masculinity positions available to homecoming Danish veterans. For children, this means, that not only the phases of deployment, but also the veterans relatively contradictory ideals of how to be a man, a father and a soldier is decisive for their emotions, emotion work and, in turn, father-child relationship.

More broadly, the article contributes to the literature on fatherhood and father-child-relationships, in particular, adding to the limited research seeking to explore mobile fatherhood and families with different emotional, spatial and temporal dynamics such as military families, which may challenge dominant notions of involved fatherhood (e.g., Menzel 2022; Moran 2016; Walker 2022). Indeed, the children (and their fathers) in this article, can be seen as an example of what Aitken calls ‘awkward and incoherent’ father histories and geographies (2009: 3), where fathering is understood a daily emotional practice, that is reworked differently in different spaces.

This article has begun the work of exploring the emotions of children whose fathers are formerly deployed veterans. However, this is a complex and overlooked domain, which needs further research. Thus, the article can be seen as a starting point for further investigation of children’s emotions and emotion work in the ‘akward’ context of deployment.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We thank all the participating children and young people and their parents and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments which have contributed to improving on this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The data collection for the study was financially supported as part of the 3 September 2014, political agreement on strengthened initiatives for Danish veterans, for example, research and support for relatives and children. The data analyses and the writing of the article were funded by the Danish Veterans Centre and the Department of Sociology and Social Work, the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Aalborg University, Denmark.

ORCID iD

Helene Oldrup

Note

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