Juvenile Law Commons^™

Military Law: Time To Mandate Best Interests Of The Child To Restrict Deployments Of Parents That Affect Preschool Children, John A. Lynch Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

As America viewed the first massive deployment of its all-volunteer force at the beginning of the first Persian Gulf War, one journalist commented:

When this war is over, Americans need to do some serious thinking about the all-volunteer armed forces, the one legacy of the Vietnam War with which the nation seemed comfortable. Among other things, we have to decide whether a single parent, and, in many cases, both parents, should be deployed in war zones.

Is the nation's reliance on an army of volunteers worth the emotional grief that comes from ripping military parents away from their children? Do …