Hundreds-of-thousands of Australians have close family members in the military. I am one of them. My sister is in the military and she loves it. I am excited to see my little sister pursue a career she loves, a career in which she thrives, and listen with pride as she tells me stories of her experiences. She knows I am usually keen to hear about it since my background is in civilian counter-terrorism research. I have long had an interest in her world and her in mine.
More recently I have had other thoughts about her choice to join the military. When exactly will she be around more? When can I see her? At present, it is 2 or 3 times each year at most. These thoughts of missing my sister crept in so slowly that I have gone from barely being aware of them to now feeling mildly panicked at times about how much of her life I am missing. It’s just as much my fault of course. I am ashamed to admit I have not visited her in any of the locations in distant parts of Australia where she has been based (but I will rectify this soon).
But a thought has been emerging lately, one my mum and other sister have already experienced acutely. This sucks. Reality is I see my ADF sister rarely and prospects are slim that I will see her more than only rarely for the foreseeable future.
Naturally, hundreds of thousands of Australians share this experience. According to Hughes et al. (2022), in a study of the experiences of families of military personnel and veterans, the challenges families of serving personnel face is a central reason for people requesting discharge from military service. Those that cite family as a reason leave service before 40 and women leave at a younger age. Women are also less likely than men to return after parental leave. Transitioning to civilian life is difficult for those who leave and their families, and young servicemembers face poorer outcomes after leaving (Hughes et al., 2022: 1).
Hughes et al.’s (2022) study focussed predominantly on the personal family unit – the partners and children of servicemembers. There was no mention of the mothers, fathers or siblings of young servicemembers and the impact on the family unit when they move away or deploy (both of which are inevitabilities considering, for example, the strategic significance of Army bases in Darwin and Townsville).
This situation is made more complex when groups like Open Arms offer free 24/7 counselling to only the ‘immediate families’ of servicemembers (Open Arms, n.d). Immediate families are defined as children and partners or ex-partners if a co-parenting arrangement exists. Parents and siblings can access free counselling in the event that the servicemember has died in the line of duty.
This is more than an abstraction for my family. Between the Ben Roberts-Smith controversy, deployments and war in the Middle East we have been – perhaps without fully realising all the dimensions of how we feel – stressed and anxious at different times.
The Army has developed various resources for the families of servicemembers. It is a field where considerable effort has been made. The Army Families Handbook provides general information about the support that family members of people serving can receive. Again, there is a strong emphasis on so-called immediate families.
By the time I had finished reading the Summary Report for the ADF families survey I might be forgiven for assuming family only means children and partners to Australian military organisations. If not explicitly then seemingly in practice.
[“When a different person comes home” – Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs]
Whilst this is understandable on one level, what of my sister’s situation and that of service members similar to her? Left home to join the Army at a young age, her first posting 3670km away (her second 3300km, her third a mere 2500km), no children and no partner. As such she is entitled to no formal support for her family members. Combined with her gender and age making it more likely if she leaves the military she will not return, and the likelihood that she will experience worse outcomes in her post-military life, this cannot be what the Australian government’s Department of Defence imagines when they seek to support young servicemembers. All of this says nothing of the traumas my sister will face if she sees action or is involved in a training accident (I hope mum doesn’t read this).
This is naturally an area of need for the ADF. It is of vital importance that young people, especially young women, see the defence forces as a serious and desirable career possibility. National security priorities alone demand that Australia has a diverse, experienced and confident workforce of people willing to take on difficult conditions at the nation’s most difficult times. Many of these times have nothing to do with war or deployment. The Army was front and centre helping Australians navigate the COVID-19 pandemic (Inglis, 2025).
This predicament also speaks directly to the ADF’s goal to raise the numbers of full-time serving women from just under 21 per cent to ‘at least 25 per cent’ by 2030 (Tish Van Stralen in Powell, 2025).
It is my hope that programs seeking to alleviate the anxieties and stresses of families of military service personnel – whether they are children and partners, or siblings, or mum and dad – can be part of the plan for retaining young women in the military. We at the Young People’s Sustainable Futures Lab intend on watching this space closely as we seek to support young people in their education and employment pathways.
Grant schemes addressing the retention of women in the ADF – schemes that promise that young people who join the Australian military are not required to sacrifice the happiness and well-being of the families they leave behind – would go some way to finding social and community-based solutions to these challenges. Such solutions may include expanding grant streams such as Defence Community Grants to expressly seek to support programs and projects that support young women in the ADF and their families. In the case of families of young service members – aged 25 and younger – family supports should clearly include siblings and parents, not just children and partners. This would be a highly productive area for the Defence Community Grants to fund.
Clever solutions may be close at hand and in the form of microcredential programs such as the ones offered by us at the YPSFL. Innovative and structured strategies for managing the challenges that early career military personnel and their families face could form the basis of a microcredential that significantly enhances the prospects and retention of young women in Australia’s defence forces.
References
Hughes, J., Gahan, L., Neelakantan, L., Siebler, P., McLean, N., Boh, J. and Cosgrove, M. (2022), Australian Military and Veteran Family Study, December, Australian Government: Australian Institute of Family Studies, Defence, and Department of Veterans’ Affairs, available at https://www.defence.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-07/Australian-Military-and-Veteran-Families-Study-Report.pdf, retrieved on 20 May 2026.
Inglis, T. (2025), ‘The long shadow of COVID-19’, Australian Army Research Centre, 18 March, available at The Long Shadow of COVID-19 | Australian Army Research Centre (AARC), retrieved on 1 June 2026.
Open Arms (no date), ‘Eligibility’, Australian Government: Department of Veterans Affairs, available at https://www.openarms.gov.au/who-we-help/eligibility, retrieved on 20 May 2026.
Powell, S. (2025), ‘ADF aims for more women to serve by 2030’, The Australian, 16 October, available at ADF aims for more women to serve by 2030 | The Australian, retrieved on 1 June 2026.