On my fourth and final ship we averaged one pregnancy every month from a contingent of 60 females. Those billets were gapped for months.
We waited for a FC1 for over a year while she finished school for a 1 of 1 NEC. It held up our CMTQ (cruise missile tactical qual). She reported on a Monday and was gone on Wednesday - pregnant. She’d pulled the same stunt on a previous ship and there were no repercussions for her.
Strange how most shore commands are at or above full manning, but the ships rarely get above 90 pct.
Just wondering: did she get credit for a “sea tour” based on two days on the ship before announcing her pregnancy? And I’m guessing that after announcing she was “with child,” the ship never saw her again. Nice little scam she was running...
I have yet to meet a CPO/SCPO/MCPO who doesn’t have horror stories about the impact of “sudden,” pre-deployment pregnancies on ships. And you can hear similar anecdotes about female pilots in the Air Force and other branches. If the woman flies an aircraft with an ejection seat, she’s grounded from the moment her pregnancy is confirmed. Let’s say it happens at the two-month point; for the next seven months, she will be grounded, and won’t resume flying until after her return from maternity leave (12 weeks after delivery). Up until the child is born, the aviator can still perform ground duties, but if you need her to instruct and/or fly the line, you’re out of luck, and someone else has to pick up the slack.
You’ve just lost a qualified aviator for almost a year. By the time she returns, she will have to requalify, a process that will take a couple of months. So, after an investment of years of training (and millions of tax dollars), a valuable resource is lost for over a year. And if that officer is serving a normal, three-year tour, that’s one-third of her assignment spent outside the cockpit. To be fair, women in transport/mobility/ISR aircraft can fly longer, but at some point, they all go DNIF and they won’t be back for a period of months.
Women in the military have every right to start and expand their families while in uniform. But the services ought to have some flexibility, too. The sailor who gets pregnant during the run-up to deployments on sea tours should be administratively separated, for the good of the service. Likewise, a female aviator who decides to have two or three kids during back-to-back operational tours would (probably) be better served by returning to the private sector.
At the end of the day, it’s all about readiness, and the absence of key personnel—even junior enlisted members—affects mission impact. However, no one wants to raise the pregnancy issue for fear of being called a sexist—or worse. Today’s “woke” military will put on a full-court PR offensive in defense of their “sisters in uniform,” while silently—and at the same time—officers and NCOs at the tip of the spear mutter about women like that sailor, whose maternal instincts seem to kick in when it’s time to go to sea for 6-9 months.