There are tens of thousands of women in the military who are single mothers, and one local woman who refused to leave her child suffered the consequences for doing so.
Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother from Oakland who had her 10-month-old taken into child welfare services after refusing to be deployed to Afghanistan last week, is one 40 percent of women in the military who must balance child-rearing and service to the country.
According to a report by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization, "more than 30,000 single mothers have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as of March 2009."
But Hutchinson is not alone in facing the difficult decision of creating what the military calls a “family care plan” or face discharge. In an article in Forbes, Sgt. Andrea Chandler, translator and single parent, took an assignment that required her to leave her 2-month-old and husband, whom she later divorced, or risk being discharged.
Despite the child care offered at the military base where she is stationed, she must pay for civilian care offsite because after returning from deployment overseas, the center was full.
A University of California, Los Angeles, study of nearly 200 families and reported by USA Today in June, "A year after parents returned from combat, 30% of the children exhibited clinical levels of anxiety — levels requiring possible treatment. The children’s average age was 8."
This week, "Crosscurrents" on KALW Public Radio interviewed Hutchinson. The Army, for its part, has issued its own report.
