This study investigates the process of resilience from the perspective of military wives
during deployment. The study had two main goals: 1) to further understand the
deployment experience, as it is lived personally and within the family, and 2) to develop
a theory-based resilience model, guided by family stress and resilience theory,
highlighting the role of communication within the family resilience process. According to
the FAAR Model (Patterson, 1988; 2002), resilience involves three components:
meanings, demands, and capabilities. Based on the goals of the study and the three main
components of resilience, five broad research questions guided the study: How do
military spouses perceive, interpret, and make meaning of their experience with spousal
deployment? How do spouses cope with the spousal deployment experience? How do
spouses perceive the family deployment and coping experience? What supportive resources and responses are most helpful for military spouses during spousal deployment,
and why? And what supportive resources and responses are most unhelpful for military
spouses during spousal deployment, and why? The data are also viewed through a lens of
ambiguous loss theory (Boss, 1999; 2004; 2006; 2007), as deployment is a stressful
situation that incorporates uncertainty, loss, and a presence-absence paradox for spouses
and families. To investigate these questions and develop these theories, in-depth
interviews were conducted with 26 military wives who were currently experiencing
deployment. The results illustrate various aspects of women’s perceptions of their
deployment experiences, including how they make sense of these experiences. Women
did not only discuss their own personal experiences; they also reported experiences at
relational and family levels. Paralleling these tri-level perceptions of the experience,
women’s approaches to coping also occurred at individual, relational, and family levels.
Different coping strategies within each level are outlined and discussed. Finally,
women’s perceptions and evaluations of the responses they receive from others, both
supportive and unsupportive, are reported and discussed. Based on the results, a
transactional model of family resilience, highlighting the central role of communication,
is proposed. Implications for theory (e.g., stress and resilience theories, ambiguous loss
theory) and practice are discussed. Future directions for research are explored. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6609 |
| Date | 22 October 2009 |
| Creators | Rossetto, Kelly Renee |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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