Public narratives around Defence families often emphasise resilience and adaptability in military children, though this framing can obscure more complex and long-term impacts of growing up in environments shaped by service-related stress and trauma. Limited research, institutional focus, and cultural expectations have contributed to a gap in recognition and support for children of veterans, raising questions about how their experiences are understood, measured, and addressed over time.
Visit any Defence or veteran institution across the world and you will find variations of the same story told about children of veterans. We are resilient. We are fine. There’s nothing to see here.
From Canada’s Atlas Institute for Veterans and Families: “We celebrate the strength, perseverance and resilience of military children…Like the dandelions that thrive wherever they are carried by the wind, military children often journey in various directions and flourish where they land.”
That the dandelion is the metaphor used to describe us speaks volumes. Other children can be hothouse flowers needing nurturance and care. Defence children are expected to be as tough as weeds and capable of flourishing in barren soil.
The reality behind the myth
When the story being sold is that you “thrive wherever you are carried”, no one looks too closely at the reality behind the myth.
Many reports mention the key role families play in veteran wellbeing, but the reality of what this can mean, and the toll this can take on veteran children, is far less discussed. If we did care to look, we would find many children of veterans growing up in homes shaped by untreated PTSD, addiction, mental illness, anger, volatility, withdrawal, and absence. In any other context, this would be recognised as serious childhood trauma. Yet, in Defence families, this is spoken of as “the ups and downs of military family life”.
Since Penguin published the memoir I wrote about my experience growing up as the child of a Vietnam veteran with untreated PTSD in 2016, I have been regularly contacted by adult children of veterans spanning different generations and conflicts. Many share stories of challenging childhoods that are strikingly similar to mine.
Over the past 10 years, I have heard repeated stories of children who grew up being treated like a soldier instead of a child. Of learning from a young age to be tuned to the mood of a parent instead of themselves. Of living with the constant pressure of modifying behaviour on the fly to manage parent volatility. Of swallowing needs and emotions entirely to avoid setting a parent off. I have heard of unrelenting anger and fear, complete disengagement, fractured family relationships, walking on eggshells, and role reversal that has extended well beyond childhood.
The silence we are trained to keep
Given how many millions of veteran children exist in the world, and the similarities of our experience growing up in homes with PTSD-impacted parents, why do children of veterans remain so invisible?
Children of veterans from countries all over the world have reached out to me because my book is the first time they have read about an experience like theirs. It is the first time they have realised it wasn’t just them. The worldwide lack of recognition of children of veterans as a survivor cohort in our own right may at first seem baffling, until you realise just how effective the conditioning of our childhoods has been in training us to stay quiet.
Long after we have become adults, we often still have a lingering fear of getting in trouble, rocking the boat, or making things worse. We have been trained from birth not to be burdens, to sideline our own needs in service to the family unit. Many of us still operate within dysfunctional family structures, where trauma has not been dealt with, historical hurts are unaddressed, and there is no capacity for open discussion. Our family relationships are often already stretched to breaking point.
We also live in a society where, while real support for the humans who are veterans is inadequate, the narrative of “the veteran” is sacrosanct. In publicly talking about the violence and neglect I experienced growing up, I have been called disrespectful, accused of malice, and been challenged after a speaking event about my “crocodile tears”.
I have had people respond with indignation that I would dare to share a story that might affect the cardboard-cut-out-veteran-hero story politicians so love to get behind on ANZAC Day. They seem to perceive my naming of my own reality as an attempt to deny my father’s service-related suffering, instead of an act of truth-telling to correct a narrative that has erased children of veterans as bearers of their own scars of service.
My intention has never been to hurt veterans. I know and love veterans and want them to receive all the support they need. That what I say might disrupt the “unbreakable hero” narrative is for the good in my opinion. No veteran needs that sort of unachievable ideal to live up to, especially if it impedes them from reaching out for the support they need.
The research gap
Though often obscured through euphemism, the pattern of war trauma transferring from veteran parent to child has been present since the time war began. However, while research into veterans has become ever more nuanced, research into the impacts of military service carried by veteran children remains notably thin.
Studies into children from Defence families are often constrained by the concept that the main challenge children of veterans face is related to being moved around a lot. While this can have a serious impact, it is not the only issue we face. It amazes me that institutions and systems seem so certain of our resilience when they haven’t in any way adequately explored the specifics of our childhood experience that made that resilience so necessary.
I also question the validity of measuring the resilience of Defence children when most studies are age-limited and tied to status as a dependent. Whether someone survives a childhood is not a measure of resilience. Whether they thrive afterwards, is.
The few studies that are available on veteran children show those who grew up in military families experience high rates of mental health, trauma, and related problems compared to those growing up in civilian families. It can take decades to understand, process, and feel the full impacts of the kind of childhood trauma many veteran children experience. Yet the lack of recognition or support services that exists for adult children of veterans seems to reflect an assumption that the impact of growing up in a military family is minimal and ends as soon as we are not living with our parents.
Without research into how we are faring 10, 20, 30, 40 years post-childhood, the nature and impacts of our experiences on our life trajectories will not be understood. If we don’t adequately measure mental health, wellbeing, relationship, education, and socioeconomic data of veteran children through their life course, we will never have a clear picture of the price they have paid for the unacknowledged burden they have carried, or whether this is something we actually bounce back from.
The institutional non-response
Over the 10 years I have been advocating in this space, I have reached out to many institutions who allegedly support and value veteran children. DVA. Defence. ESOs. While some small organisations have been supportive, the larger systems that hold the power to make meaningful change in this space have responded with silence.
I have spent years scratching my head at their lack of engagement. Do these systems actually believe that veteran children are more resilient than other children? Is there a concern that, in prioritising children of veterans, we will remove funding from already underfunded veteran support services? Are systems deliberately trying to avoid knowing the extent of the damage that can be caused from growing up in a military household because no one wants to be accountable?
Though there are few studies on veteran children, those that do exist point to elevated suicide and mental health risks. Yet no one seems to want to treat us with the potential life or death seriousness we warrant. Veteran children, and, it seems, the adults we grow into, are a problem no one wants to acknowledge. Apparently, we are flourishing wherever we land.
Veteran children deserve to be seen, studied and supported. Our parents deserve parenting and family support programs and services that acknowledge the full cost of service on the whole family. And the institutions that claim to value military families need to demonstrate their value with something more than silence.
