Posted on 11/15/2009 4:28:16 PM PST by Lorianne
The U.S. Army is dealing with an emotional and complicated case involving an Oakland woman. She's a single mother, scheduled to be deployed to Afghanistan, even though she has no one to care for her 11-month-old baby.
The woman is a 21-years-old single mom, who was almost on her way to Afghanistan. However, she is not the only one. A report released last month says 30,000 single mothers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 9/11.
For now 11-month-old Kamani Hutchinson is being cared for by his grandmother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland. A few days ago she flew to Savannah, Georgia after learning the Army had put Kamani in Child Protective Services.
(Excerpt) Read more at abclocal.go.com ...
During my 21 years of service I found most single parents to be just as supportive to the military as their childless married/single peers. Unfortunately, there were some who were a burden on their unit and needed to go. This woman sounds like one of those. The military is here for a reason and that is to break things and kill people....bottom line. If a person can’t help with that mission because they have a child and don’t make plans to have that child taken care of when they deploy....then that person has to go.
Agreed. When I was in if a woman wanted out all she had to do was get pregnant.
If you got married and wasn’t E-4 or above you got no off base living allowance. The saying was “If the Navy wanted you to have a wife it would have issued you one.”
The issue is single parents not being able to concurrently fulfill their responsibility to their children and to the military. Some comments on this thread are vicious attacks on single mothers, with little discussion and debate regarding single parent issues in the military. In addition, there are very few comments about the lack of responsibility of males who father these kids, but fail to be a father. Sickening and this mentality will only perpetuate the problem.
Close, the actual saying is, "If the military wanted you to have one they would have issued it!!!"
In my Navy the exact quote was *she wasn’t issued in your seabag*
He can re-up in the army are the air force, tell him to head on over to personal. Are drop by a recruiters office.
there is no room for this BS In the military.
*Gee Sarge.. I cant go, the cat has hemorrhoids”
It’s ridiculous
“What the hell are ANY women doing in the Army?”
SERVING THEIR COUNTRY.
There are way too many single parents in the military. Even when I was in 20+ years ago there was one dumb broad after another desiring to get pregnant, sleeping with many men, or simply thinking living together wouldn’t result in her being pregnant and left alone. The men were allowed to skip out and never held accountable. Society even then was falling apart.
“I can’t believe the vitriol directed at women because they give birth”
Wow, that line of logic could say Timmy McVeigh wasn’t a bad man, he just had a bad day and nobody cared he was angry.
“They just do”
That sad fact that feminists refuse to recognize.
Oh - they’ll tell you that statement you made is ignorant in “this day and age” with birth control - and abortion.
But birth control is not 100% affective, and many women find they cannot bring themselves to abort.
And so you’re still left back at square one - women get pregnant - they just do.
I guess I just don’t see where it is anyone except the parent’s responsibilty to find a place for the kid? If she chose to have this child by herself then it is up to her to figure it out or get out of the military. It is possible that she has no idea who the father is and without unlimited funds you can’t find that out easily.
So, who is going to take their place? Actually right now it might not be a problem what with the Obama Uber recession, but when these women signed up under Bush, the Army, and to a lessor extent the other services, were having problems meeting their recruiting goals. There pretty much was no choice.
Now if things weren't stretched so tight, and so many stateside services being provided by contractors (like moi) the Army could probably juggle things around so that women with very young children could service stateside for a time. However, when the women signed up, part of the deal, heck it was part of the deal back in the 80s, for men and women alike, that if they were responsible for the care of children, they must have a plan in place to provide for their care, should the service member be deployed, or sent on an unaccompanied tour somewhere.
Where did you get that idea? National Guard are dual hatted as state organized militia, and federal reserve. Each officer has to have "federal recognition". Guardsmen carry the same ID as federal reserve members. They are just as required to deploy overseas when activated as federal reservists, since they *are* federal reservists, and as active duty members.
How do I know? I was one, in between being a "pure" federal reservist, and following being an active duty member.
'Course it was a looong time ago, but those rules haven't changed.
I thought the main purpose of the National Guard is for home duty. I know they are obligated to serve as directed, as needed.
I think it odd that Marine reservists ready-to-go stay home their entire five year hitch, and National Guard troops were being returned repeatedly to the Middle East.
Yeah...we have some real doozies here. It’s a very unfortunate situation. The woman had a family plan and the woman that was supposed to take care of her child while she was gone flaked out under the stress of running a business (day care) and taking care of 2 ailing family members on top of this little baby. I don’t know of any loving parent, MALE or FEMALE, that would be able to leave the country under the circumstances. There’s nothing in the story to indicate that she did anything other than prepare to leave for her deployment until her family plan fell apart at the last minute. Clearly, that makes her deserving of all this scorn and hatred shown in this thread. (note extreme sarcasm)
Of course, it would have been nice to have known this would happen before the deployment but many people underestimate the amount of care and supervision that an 11month old requires. It appears that the woman's crime was not having a back up plan to her back up plan.
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