Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Peer review/Military brat (U.S. subculture)/Archive 1

Military brat (U.S. subculture)

A few weeks ago I stumbled across the article for military brats which was absolutely abysmal. I started editing it to make it better and it was immediately nominated for deletion. The person who nominated it thought that being a military brat was derogatory and subjective. It survived that nomination, but it motivated me to make a quality article. I've spent a lot of time over the past 2.5 weeks researching the subject and attempting to make it into a promising article on Military Brats and would like to get your feed back on the subject.Balloonman 08:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Kirill Lokshin

This is pretty good. Some suggestions for further work:

• The last few sections of the article (particularly "Statistics" and "Pop culture") trail off into bulleted lists and trivia; they ought to be rewritten in prose form.
  • I think the Statistics section is valid and should be kept/worked out. What are your thoughts about the "Pop Culture" section? That is one of the area that I inherited from the pre-existing article, and I'm not sold on it.Balloonman 22:13, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    • As purely a list of trivia, it goes against the project's guideline on popular culture sections. There may be enough material to rewrite it as a decent overview of how military brats are depicted; but I'm not sure it's worth the effort unless there's something particularly significant to be said about it. Kirill Lokshin 22:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
      • Removed it and created a new article List of famous fictional military brats which will need to be expanded/worked on to or risk being deleted. Balloonman 22:34, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• "Works cited" should be "References" and "References" should be "Notes".
  • Done.Balloonman 18:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• The rump "See also" section should be eliminated; linking the list from the body of the text shouldn't be too hard.
  • DoneBalloonman 18:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• Where multiple footnotes are present in the same place in the text, I'd try to combine them into a single note.
  • DoneBalloonman 07:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• The images might look better staggered along both margins rather than bunched up like they are now.
  • Done.Balloonman 18:33, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
• The extended quote in "Frequent and unexpected moves" seems a bit out of context, and isn't properly cited.
  • Removed per suggestion. Balloonman 22:11, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Beyond that, rigorous copyediting would probably be helpful, at this point. Kirill Lokshin 17:56, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

• • Sounds good, I'll try to incorporate your suggestions this evening or tomorrow. As for the copyediting... yeah, I know... spelin an gramer were never my strong suit. But I'm working on it. I just looked at the "frequent moves" section and there are 12 citations, could you be a little more specific on where/what you would like to be better cited? Thanks for taking a look at this I really appreciate it. Balloonman 18:14, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
    • I think I see what you were referring to with the quote... I'll take a look at it later.Balloonman 18:35, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Wandalstouring

Nice article on US military brats, but not on military brats worldwide. At least a photo of some Commonwealth troops would be nice. Some issues like school and holidays are too US specific, I suggest to clearly flagg them as US (=national) related.

I really like the intro:

"Military brat (or simply brat) is a term for someone whose parent or parents serve or served in the armed forces. A typical military brat grows up in a culture where frequent moves, authoritarian families, extreme patriarchy, protracted overseas experiences, parental absence, the threat of parental loss in war or preparation for war, and the militarization of the family are perceived as normal."

During my compulsary military service in the Bundeswehr we had one in our platoon whose father was a high ranking officer. He was one of the few airforce privates to end up on a navy base (where his daddy was) in the Mediterranean during his service. In some countries they might receive special treatment or get along much faster (usually the first weeks are a bit terrifying for many recruits). The brats on the contrary have already some knowledge how things are handled.

Another point could be that they are not likely to do civil service in countries with a compulsary military service and in countries with professional armies they might tend to join the armed forces (some statistic available?). Wandalstouring 02:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I added another section to the article. I agree with you about the problem with the US focus, unfortunately, I don't see any way around this. In order to be included in Wikipedia the sources need to be authoritative and verifiable. This means that virtually all of the information is going to be on US Brats. Apparently prior to the 1980's everything that was known about brats was anecdotal or based upon clinicians reporting on observations of their patients---no objective research. In the 1980's the US Armed Forces began sponsoring research into the effects of growing up as brats. Because of this sponsorship, virtually all verifiable/researched information is on US brats. In the new section I cite the above, and I add a paragraph with some of the differences between US armed forces and other countries armed forces. (Volunteer v non-Volunteer/high mobility v low-mobility/overseas v non-overseas/"police actions" v defending one's homeland... numerous differences that might affect the brats.)Balloonman 17:17, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I will ask someone from the UK, but I'm pretty sure there is more research about the children of soldiers than just what you have. Perhaps you use the wrong search parameters. Brat is possibly not used everywhere to describe this topic.

Another missing point are the children of female soldiers and pregnancy during their military service time. Can you add some info on that? Wandalstouring 02:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I'll look into the children of non-traditional military families (I actually have an article that calls families where the mother is in the service a "non-traditional military familes!" I would love more articles/sources from non-US sources...Balloonman 03:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Kevin Myers

Nice article. Personally, I'd resist the advice to attempt to turn this into an international article. "Military brat" is American, or perhaps Anglosphere, terminology. To try to turn something very specific into something global in the name of countering bias is to make unwarranted assumptions about other cultures, not to mention creating even more bias in the long run. If you include military brats in Germany, what about Korea? Or Syria? Or Honduras? You can't mention them all. Better to clearly specify at the outset what the article is about, rather than create the impression that the article is about a global subject. I'd simply add something like the following phrase to your introduction:

In the United States (or the English-speaking world, perhaps), military brat (or simply brat) is a term for someone whose parent or parents serve or served in the armed forces...."

With that wording, you don't have to cover the rest of the globe under the "military brat" label, although you still might add a section about related experiences elsewhere. Now, if you think you can indeed write an article about military children around the globe, then ignore this advice. But then, "military brat" would really be the wrong title for such an article. —Kevin 03:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I considered that approach, unfortunately, the term brat is used in Britain, Canada, and Australia, so it definitely has an international flavor and I've met people from non English speaking places that referred to themselves as brats. Balloonman 05:37, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

ALR

It's a pretty comprehensive article about a US phenomenon, I note the concerns above about making it less US-centric but there are huge issues to deal with it you tried that. I'd suggest that you want to look to renaming it to reflect the content. In the UK the term is only really used in the Army context. For me the problems beging right in the second sentence, you describe a very USian military culture which is very different from most others, here in the UK we've been involved in counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism operations since the end of WWII, Canada have been operated as a Peace Support capability for many years and has evolved a corresponding culture which is closer to ours. The most similar to the US that I can think of is the Aussi army, again specific to the army not the RAN or RAAF. This is not really the place for a philosophical discussion of how military cultures develop but it serves to illustrate the difficulty in trying to create a generic and overarching article for a diverse range of forces. Incidentally the bit about patriotism is completely alien to me and I've had two commands and served with all three services......

Similarly the section on military values, and growing up in the military as a whole, is very US centric and doesn't consider other contexts. I appreciate that this is because the justification you've found is biased towards the US and I'm afraid I'm not aware of anything that's been done in the UK on children in particular. There is some generic material on the family unit in a deployment situation, but that emphasises spousal relationships and remote discipline so I'm not sure it would be useful here, in any case what I have is Commanding Officers handbooks so couldn't be considered reliable.

The issue of school life could use some stuff about the academic performance over time, rather than just the transient effect after a move. Is there anything from longer term studies about aggregated achievement, university dropout rate etc.

The Class issues I'm not convinced are generic either, I'd like to see evidence of it being an offence to form friendships between the commissioned and non-commissioned personnel. And the segregation of sports and social facilities. The whole issue about how one engages with subordinates and seniors does vary according to branch and specialisation and is probably most strict in the cavalry and foot guards. Most specialist areas have a high proportion of Late Entry Officers so the described level of barrier doesn't exist.

I appreciate that all that probably looks quite negative, but I think in summary it is a good article. It describes a very peculiar military culture and how children fit into that, it would pay to re-title it to reflect that, broadening it would lose the focus and generate an unmanageable mush of information and conflicting experiences.

ALR 11:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

This sentence cause me to laugh out loud---literally--- what I have is Commanding Officers handbooks so couldn't be considered reliable. Thanks for the feedback, and no I am not taking any of what you said negatively. I appreciate the time and thought that you've put into your response.Balloonman 18:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

The issue of school life could use some stuff about the academic performance over time, rather than just the transient effect after a move. Is there anything from longer term studies about aggregated achievement, university dropout rate etc Yes, US Brats are more likely than non-US brats to earn a college degree (60% v24%) and much more likely to earn a graduate degree (24% v 5%.) While these numbers are higher than the general public, they are lower than non-brat Third Culture Kids (where the numbers are 84% and 39%.) But this is to be expected because brat parents are less educated than non-brat TCK parents. Diliqency rates are lower among brats, IQ and standardized test scores are higher in brats than non-brats. I'll add them back in... I did like your idea of making this a US Phenomenon... and perhaps changing the name... I'm not sure as to what, but it does make sense.Balloonman 21:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)