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Military Brats

Kerry's picture
Sun, 2007-08-12 17:44 - Kerry
A person doesn't have to be adopted or in foster care to be displaced and feel the effects of abandonment and attachment disorders and depression discussed throughout the entire PPL website.  Consider the following definition of military brat from wikipedia:

A "military brat" (also known as a "brat", "base brat", "army brat", "navy brat/junior", "marine brat/junior", "coast guard brat", or "air force brat") is a term for a person whose parent or parents have served full-time in the armed forces during the person's childhood. In conventional usage, the word "brat" used alone may be derogatory; in a military context, however, it is neither a subjective nor a judgmental term for most, and it is a term in which many in the military community are comfortable with. In the United Kingdom, the term "pad brat" is also used.

Although the term "military brat" is used in other English-speaking countries, only the United States has studied its military brats as an identifiable demographic. This group is shaped by frequent moves, absence of a parent, authoritarian family dynamics, strong patriarchal authority, the threat of parental loss in war, and the militarization of the family unit. While non-military families share many of these same attributes, military culture is unique due to the tightly knit communities that perceive these traits as normal. Although they did not choose to belong to it, military culture can have a long-term impact on brats.

As adults, military brats can share many of the same positive and negative traits developed from their mobile childhoods. Having had the opportunity to live around the world, military brats can have a breadth of experiences unmatched by most teenagers. Regardless of race, religion, nationality, or gender, brats might identify more with other highly mobile children than with non-mobile ones. A few can struggle to develop and maintain deep, lasting relationships, and can feel like outsiders to U.S. civilian culture, but most assimilate quickly and well as they have to do so with each move

 
One of the newest videos featured on PPL is performed by one such "military brat".  She was  
  • Born: 25 October 1985
  • Birthplace: Austin, Texas
  • Best Known As: R&B singer who did the crunky "Goodies"  

You can find it HERE

Comments

Sun, 2007-08-12 21:17 — neophyte

forcing its own broken families

You know, I see the US as a country that likes to break its own families, and it amazes me how so many adoptees don't see it. I read the blogs and the other websites, and it seems as though there's two camps among our own kind.  There are the happy-settlers who band together in blog-teams, and they seem to be focused on birth certificates and finding their birth mothers.  Some like to bash the adoptees who join support groups because they are angry because they were abused by their adoptive parents.  Then there are the forgotten foster-care fall-outs or displaced ethnic misfits seeking their own families through friends and strangers alike. You know what?  I think that's bull shit, because it just proves how divided and ignorant the United States truly is, and how adoption does not serve the child well!  Where are our leaders and adoption advocates is all of this?  Making new laws that hide numbers and price-tags of children being misplaced so people asking questions can't find-out the real answers and the truth will never have to be disclosed - that's where they are, and that's what they're doing.  They're planning for their own future so it's ensured, so they don't get caught or blamed.  It's a shameful game of politics, and it needs to end, because it's destroying lives by the generation. 

In a world of broken families, for the life of me, I cannot understand why the US won't sign the United Nation's Convention on The Right's of A Child, but then, given the US's history with declaring war on other nations, why would it sign such a promise to protect the rights of children when it's a country that can't even protect the rights of it's own people?  After all, look what it does to it's own military families!

I need a drink, and it needs to be a double.
Sun, 2007-08-12 21:21 — Simon

Adopters

Wow, that was an insightful post Neo.

A drink well deserved.

Hanging out here, reading posts and some of the articles I've come to realize adoption is in no way in a child's best interest and is only a legal practice that serves adoptive parents.

Adoption is not child-care!

Had my adoptive parents been care takers, instead of adopters, I would have respected them much more. I would have had a family I couldn't live with, but at least I had had people taking care of me. Instead they made me adopt, live a life in which I was supposed to be someone I was not.

damn, I'm getting all serious and angry again.

I need a drink too.