Jake Barone Mrs. Ritter Humanity and Empathy

Jake Barone

Mrs. Ritter

Humanity and Empathy

War Tears Families Apart

The thought of "war" conjures images of men in combat, but what of the families left behind? Throughout history, families have watched their men go to war. In more recent history, they have watched their women go to war as well. These soldiers are sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and fathers and mothers. The families they leave behind are affected when someone goes to war. There is continual worry when a soldier is deployed; families worry for their soldier's safety and pray for his safe return. People go to war all over the world and the stress experienced by families is the same. There are no cultural or ethnic boundaries when it comes to the effects of war on a family. War tears families apart and family life may never again be the same as it was before the conflict.

The experience of war changes the individuals who have to fight. For example, during the civil war in Mozambique, child soldiers as young as six years old were recruited or even kidnapped. Some of the boys never recovered from the experience after the war was over (Wray 2004) and had trouble forming relationships in their adult lives. Young children who were taken away from their families never had a chance to know their parents and siblings. Even if they could find each other after the war, it was like a meeting of strangers. Another example of how war impacts those in battle is found in the novel A Long Way Gone, which tells of a child soldier in Africa and his struggle to reclaim normalcy and find meaning in life when the war is over. The story's narrator, Ishmael Beah, had to return to Sierra Leone after going before the United Nations to tell his story. He thought, "If I was to get killed upon my return, I knew that a memory of my existence was alive somewhere in the world." Dave Eggers, in his book What is the What?, stated "But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them." Beah wanted to be sure that did not happen.He wanted to know that his life mattered for something, and that he would not be another dead child soldier whose name no one knew.

Life is hard for the families left behind. An entire culture is affected when a country is at war, as shown in the stories told in Krik? Krak! The people of Haiti are broken and demoralized after years of conflict in their country. They have lost their homes and their loved ones. Some, as in the story of Little Guy, have completely lost hope. In Children of the Sea, a family continues to mourn the loss of their son. They have to relive his death again when soldiers burst into their home and demand the child be turned over to them. "Madan Roger was creaming, you killed him already, we buried his head, you can't kill him twice." In a way, the family is being killed twice, once when they lost their son and another with this painful reminder. In the same story, Children of the Sea, the narrator chronicles a brutal act that soldiers commit upon families, which changes the families forever: "They have this thing now that they do. If they come into a house and there is a son and mother there, they hold a gun to their heads, they make the son sleep with his mother, if it is a daughter and father, they do the same thing." (

In the United States, families of active duty military generally have the supports and services available on a nearby military base. Families of reservists, however, may not be able to avail themselves of the same services because of geographic limitations (Adler 2003). Since 9/11, more than a million children have seen a parent deployed (Ramirez 2009). It is difficult for children to suddenly find themselves part of a single-parent household or in the care of a relative. Children worry about the parent who is deployed. They also react to the stress they observe in the parent who remains at home (Ramirez 2009).

When the war is over and the soldiers come home, life does not automatically return to normal. One might expect to find Libyans in a celebratory spirit after the fall of Gaddafi, but the country is still devastated as people try to put their lives and families back together after years of brutality (di Giovanni 2011). The family dynamics are never the same if a parent is killed in action or returns home from the war with serious injuries (Ramirez 2009). In some cases, so much time passes that the old family dynamics can never be reclaimed. Sixty years after the Korean War, a small number of people are permitted reunion visits with family members. Sadly, thousands of Koreans die each year without ever realizing their dream to see a loved one again. The Korean governments have failed to reach a solution that would enable everyone separated by the war to reconnect with family members (Donas 2010).