Neither of my kids ever considered the military for even a nanosecond, but D has two friends who chose the military as a way to afford school. One was in the military to pay for medical school. She did her time working in a VA hospital and on a base in Korea, then she left the military. The other did ROTC in college, graduated 15 years ago, and has been military ever since. She is currently in the Space Force. She & D are no longer close, so I don’t know how she feels about the current situation in the military. She has never had to worry about being in battle due to her particular line of work.
My good friend has a S who chose to go to OCS (Navy) a couple years out of college. He flew for a couple years, and he was stationed on a ship - but he never saw battle. He is now a diplomat in the Middle East & is in a place I would not want my child to be … but it’s his life, and his parents respect his choice. I would be really interested in knowing how he feels about things these days, but I would never ask.
Absolutely yes. Our family owes much of its success to the standard set by our early immigrant relatives who served in the military including several aunts. My dad. Arlington
If the kids are 18, they are able to join the military with or without parental consent. And for many adult kids, parents issuing an ultimatum that they are not allowed to join the military, will lead to driving a wedge between kids and parents, rather than the kid choosing not to join the military.
My personal feelings about the military vary depending on position, future plans/goals, motivations, and other factors rather than a simple good/bad. For example, one of my friends in HS was especially into space flight, exploration, and similar. This led to choosing to attend US Air Force Academy. Today he holds a high leadership position (general) in Space Force. I’d fully support this type of decision and career path.
However, I might have different feelings about joining military if the primary reason was it provides a paycheck, and they don’t know what else to do.
When he “dropped his packet” 18 months ago to out-process, there was a high probability that he, in particular, would be denied separation (in their words, he’s the Army’s “top AI tech dog”). Long story, but only due to a technical glitch was the Army unable to issue the denial. It’s OK, though, as the Army will continue to benefit from his skillset in his new civilian role where he will have more agency and ability to advance national security from the outside than in.
I suspect the comment was meant not as shame in the military, but those civilian leaders who lead it. Nobody blames the soldiers for the words and actions of those who lead it.
My dad’s dad was an ensign on a fuel ship near Korea during that conflict. Until the day he died (recently), if he heard a gunshot or any other kind of POP sound, he would hit the deck.
My dad’s brother was a naval pilot after graduating from Rice – just after the Vietnam thing ended.
My folks were in college and then grad school during Vietnam, so they did not serve. I came along soon after.
In the week or so following 9/11 I was about to leave grad school behind for Naval OCS – took the ASVAB and had an interview – but I can’t keep my mouth shut, and I let slip that I have asthma, so that notion was nixed by the Navy. (they probably would have caught it at some point anyway…).
I respect and thank all who served, protecting us from those who would harm us and trying to help others elsewhere.
Let me add that, over the years here, I’ve posted that we had no idea where our son’s decision came from as we are not military on either side and nothing in his upbringing promoted such a choice. He was the only student at his boarding school to apply to a service academy, and his advisors and CC were baffled. A helpful neighbor even commented, “So…what happened? After that fancy boarding school, did you run out of money?”
But, guess what? It came out later that he learned from us, “To him whom much has been given, much is expected,” and from the headmaster at his school, “You’d better not consume a quarter of a million dollars of this world’s resources without considering the weight of that consumption,” and from Boy Scouts, “If not me, then who?” Sometimes we’re just oblivious to the messages our children are absorbing and how they internalize them.
I find the nexus of all these impulses fascinating.
A family in our synagogue- no prior service members- had two to different academies and one to ROTC. They were baffled. Another family watched confused but proud as one of their kids graduated from one of the academies, which inspired an OLDER sibling (already done with college and launched professionally) to apply to OCS. He has been deployed several times but so far, not to an active war zone. Like Choatie Mom’s son, he has deep technical expertise and is valuable behind a computer screen.
Like you, these weren’t military oriented families, but service to others, commitment to our country, needing to feel like they were giving back was really part of who they were and are.
My dad was career Air Force so I was steeped in military life, although he retired when I was 7. I am grateful that the AF giving an uneducated sharecropper kid a way to a better life for him and for all of us.
Ds2 toyed with the idea of West Point but never got serious about it.
I wouldn’t be thrilled if my kids had chosen the military, but I would’ve supported their choice. One of ds2’s bffs went to school on an ROTC scholarship and spent several years in the National Guard to meet his service requirement. He was sent to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Current politics caused him to quit the Guard.
My thanks to anyone willing to serve our country. I was at the George HW Bush Presidential Library today and marveled that someone of such privilege tried to join the military early after Pearl Harbor. Bush had to wait until he was 18 and signed up. Then I marveled that they’d let an 18yo fly fighter jets!
I’m married to a service academy grad and raised our kids in the same town as the service academy dh attended. Dh served his commitment plus a few years but was already out of the military when our kids were born. It is very common due to the huge influence of the academy’s presence here, for local kids to apply and attend, as well as kids of alumni, so we know lots of kids who have and do attend, including my nephew. While the “free” college degree is appealing from a financial perspective, if any of my kids had pursued a service academy education or ROTC, I would be supportive, but not enthusiastic. I would be even less enthusiastic if they chose to enlist. Would I be proud of them? Absolutely. However, given the state of the world today, and especially with our current administration, I am glad none chose to join the military. But the choice was always theirs, not ours to “allow/not allow.”
That said, my oldest daughter went to college in a huge Navy town. As my husband/her father jokes all the time, she didn’t learn from her mother and fell in love with a Navy guy. On top of that, he is part of a helicopter squadron (being on a ship is one thing, but flying?!). They have been married three years now, and he just left last month on his first deployment (since they have been together) to you know where for who knows how long. So while military service wasn’t something we faced with our own kids, I am now worrying about my SIL halfway around the world. He has already served eight years. Depending on what happens in the next couple of years, I wouldn’t be surprised if he decides to stay until he is eligible for retirement.
As others have said, once they are adults you don’t have much say. My son graduated from Tufts with a degree in International Relations. He spent two years at home with internships at the Clinton Foundation and The International Crisis Group. (The latter actually was interested in hiring him, but he only stayed long enough to finish the project he was working on which was organizing a conference.)
Anyway what seemed to us like it was coming out of left field he said he was planning on taking the exam for Officer Candidate School for the Navy. (In retrospect this was a kid who made me read all the books about naval warfare in the Pacific during WW2 when he was six and who played naval war-games all the time on the computer.) He had good reasons, he felt that he could make more of a difference inside the institutions of government than any NGO did. He got pretty cynical about NGO work.
Anyhow he did well on the exams, made it through OCS which was brutal, put up with watch schedules etc. He re-upped during the summer of Covid as he didn’t like the prospect of job-hunting and at that point he still hadn’t been to sea. The next tour took him to Japan and he did go out on ships, but I think only a few months at a time. His next tour will be on a ship, but not until May at the earliest. We are really worried this time for obvious reasons.
I had talked to my daughter about it because I think it would have really suited her personality. She volunteered on an ambulance corps and really enjoyed the camaraderie and being mission driven. She ended up getting a serious boyfriend early on in college (getting married 8 years later!), and I think it’s awfully difficult to combine being in the military with being married to someone not in the military, particularly for a woman.
The military changed my dad’s life for the better. He grew up poor (11 people in a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom house, and neighbors dropping off food), and it is only thanks to the military that he was able to go to college and later to law school.
Joining the military can most definitely be life changing, whether for better or worse.
I can’t imagine what I’d be doing if I hadn’t joined the Air Force. I’d probably be a Boeing engineer, like my dad pushed for. The Air Force paid for my college degrees, all my aviation training, and made a clear life choice path. It was such a straight line to a career, so simple. I do not envy people who have to figure what they want to do with their lives!!
Of course, aircraft carriers provide much smaller runways than land bases, and landing on aircraft carriers means trying to hook the wire as well. See the following video:
