Risky business? Parenting children of deployed Danish soldiers

Abstract

This article focuses on children’s reactions to military deployment from the perspective of their parents. Based on ethnographic fieldwork among Danish soldiers, their female partners and young children over the course of military deployment, the article illustrates how parents’ attempts to access whether their children will suffer from the long-term absence of their father influence parenting practices and experiences of military deployment. Inspired by anthropological perspectives on parenthood, the article argues that the pressure on parents to be ‘involved’ in the upbringing and care of their children is magnified in the Danish case of soldiers and their partners because of cultural understandings of the military as well as ideals of gender equality and sameness. With the purpose of preventing future harm on their children, the article further argues, soldiers and their partners mobilise strategies to limit the uncertainty experienced in relation to deployment. Such strategies include preparing children for deployment, routinising everyday activities and making the absence of their father comprehensible.