Military Fortress Research Paper

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The Fortress Whether you are a service member, a spouse or a child living the military lifestyle there are complexities that a civilian may not know how to relate to. The military fortress described by Hall (2008) is not just the physical community service families live in or the lifestyle, but is also the mental and psychological aspects. There are many aspects that make up the fortress such as secrecy, stoicism, and denial. Besides those three behavioral parts of the fortress, there are common positive and negative aspects of the military lifestyle that touch many different parts of life, overlapping each other. One aspect of the fortress is secrecy. Secrecy is important because if something happens within the family they don't want that to reflect negatively on the service member, possibly hurting their career (Hall, 2008). Also, it is important for family members to watch their individual actions and not do anything that could look bad for the service member (Hall, 2008). The stigma of getting counseling also relates to …show more content…

Life changes and feelings can include; relocation and frequent separations; earlier retirement compared to civilians; lack of control over promotions, pay increases, and benefits; feeling detached from mainstream or civilian lifestyles, isolation; social effects that rank can have on family, etc., (Hall, 2008). Families do have strengths that are common to and often a result from living within the fortress. These families strengths typically include: having a well provided for and safe life; even though these families may relocate often, typically they will have more support than civilian families that do the same (Hall, 2008) Also, children are able to accept new children at school; life actually becomes somewhat predictable and juvenile delinquency and school problems are less than what would be expected given all the circumstances (Hall,

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