In the army they prepare their men to give their best to face obstacles they may encounter when deployed or any other orders they may receive. But no one prepared them for separation from their loved ones. Nearly half of the men on missions and serving our country are married, and just under half are married and the other half have children (insert demographic quote table). So what does this mean for these men? Does this make them bad parents because they are employed, or does it simply mean they fail to be involved in their children's lives in the typical way, such as seeing them every day, asking them how their day was, skipping holidays and birthdays and big moments of their children's lives and so on. Within a single soldier's deployment cycle there are many emotions and factors that play an important role, especially for fathers. The first step in the cycle is the pre-implementation phase. This leads to a lot of stress, both for the soldier and for the family members involved. Since the gap between the discovery of their deployment and the actual departure of some soldiers could have a very short and limited period of time between notification and deployment or a very long time, both time intervals can have a huge effect depending factors such as whether the parent is single or divorced and how many children or whether the family is expecting their first child. The second phase is to look ahead. _____________________. Next in order is the hardest of all, the time to say goodbye. The saying it's not goodbye, see you later is also not necessarily true for military personnel and their families. When saying goodbye to children, some service members often avoid everything together and leave while the child is sleeping... middle of paper... as well as ethnicities. The men were asked about their experiences as a military man and as a father and how they handled it all. The questions were created from four different sections, their perception of their father's relationship with their child before deployment, how they communicated with their child or children during deployment, and what the experience is like when they are reunited with their children . Based on the question and answer sessions, __ developed a way to define the different ways in which a father can be involved in the lives of his children, defined as cognitive, affective and behavioral. (thick package)Works CitedDeVoe, ER, PhD., & Ross, Abigail,MSW, MPH (2012). The parental cycle of distribution. Military Medicine, 177(2), 184-90. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1000457474?accountid=38003