Deployment makes moms single parents
Groton — For the past six months, she’s waited in the cold at the bus stop. She’s made sure the kids got to school on time and their lunches were packed. She’s driven them to doctor’s appointments and sports practice. She’s read them books and tucked them in at night.
She cut down this year’s Christmas tree, which took several attempts to get into the house because it was almost 2 feet too tall. She’s mowed the lawn and plowed snow from the driveway. When the kids act out, she punishes them. When they miss their dad, she consoles them.
“I’d prefer not to do this alone, but knowing that I can makes it easier,” said Kelsey Smith, 32, a Navy wife and mother of two. “We proved to ourselves that we could do it.”
Smith’s husband, Josh, a sonar technician on the USS Minnesota, returned Wednesday from deployment, but for the past six months she’s had to be both mom and dad.
Preparing for deployment meant Josh was gone for much of 2017. Soon after they bought an older colonial home with a good-sized yard in the city of Groton, a 10-minute drive from the base, Josh left for pre-deployment workups with their belongings still in boxes.
Forty-two percent of military families experienced more than six months of family separation in the previous 18 months, according to an annual military family lifestyle survey by the nonprofit Blue Star Families.
When Josh left for deployment in
“He tells me what we’re going through is much more difficult. All he has to think about is work. We still have to do life.” KELSEY SMITH, NAVY WIFE AND MOTHER OF TWO
September 2017, Smith wasn’t sure what to expect. It was the family’s first deployment, so everything was new, even the house. Josh had more confidence in Kelsey’s ability to do it on her own than she did — at least initially, she said.
At night, after putting the kids to bed, Smith felt lonely.
“It was like, now what am I supposed to do?” she said. “He wasn’t usually around during the days anyways because of work, so at night is when I would miss him.”
But being alone at nights, raising the kids and managing the household responsibilities by herself became the new normal.
“He tells me what we’re going through is much more difficult. All he has to think about is work. We still have to do life,” she said.
She tries to get errands done during the days while she only has her daughter, Hadley, 2, to take care of, and Colton, 6, her son, is at school. On Tuesday nights, when Colton has basketball practice, she has to bring Hadley with her, meaning Hadley stays up past her bedtime. She’s gone to every game and practice, often taking videos on her phone per Colton’s request so Josh can later watch his first season of basketball. Though they’d never miss a chance to video chat with their dad, often Colton acts out afterward, and Smith has to calm him down.
Throughout the deployment, she emailed Josh at least once a week, often more, filling him on what he had missed — Colton lost his first tooth, Hadley’s been talking more and started taking gymnastics. The family are big Seattle Seahawks fans, so in her emails she sent the scores for each game and copied and pasted the play-by-play. Josh frequently requested updates on the house.
Being a single parent for stretches of a time, however hard, is an accepted part of being married to a submariner. The Smiths have been married for almost 10 years, with Josh serving in the Navy for about half that time. He plans to serve at least 10 years.
Smith, who has two bachelor’s degrees, one in family studies and the other in social services, is focused on raising a family for now. Once the kids are older, she’d like to work for an adoption agency or with kids in foster care.
According to the annual survey from Blue Star Families, 52 percent of military spouses are not employed. Frequent relocations make it difficult to maintain a career. There have been efforts to help military spouses in this regard. Last year, Connecticut made it easier for military spouses who are licensed attorneys in other states to practice law here.
“I definitely put my goals on hold. I’m not saying that in a bad way. That’s just the choice I’ve made,” said Hailey Carr, 27, whose husband Chris, also a sonar tech on the Minnesota, just returned from deployment.
Carr, who previously worked as a medical assistant, figured that after paying for child care, her take-home pay would be minimal, so she chose not to work.
Still, without her husband around, she worries whether she’s making the right decisions day-to-day for her son. Is she being too hard on him? Did she make the right choice about his ear surgery?
“As a mom, I beat myself up all the time about doing the right thing,” she said. She worries about filling two sets of shoes, being both mom and dad.
“I know I don’t fulfill dad role the best,” she added. “There’s things in his life that I can’t relate to, like coaching a sport. Everybody else’s dad is doing it. I would’ve helped with baseball, but he didn’t want me to. He wants his dad. Video games. He wants his dad.”
Now that the men are back, it will be another transition. Smith spoke of factoring Josh into the decision-making.
“With him being gone, I make all the decisions from what we will eat for dinner to how we will spend our days to big purchases that need to be made. Involving him in the everyday decisions will take time getting used to, I’m sure,” she said. But it will be a welcome adjustment.
“We’re definitely ready to have two adults in the house.”