There have been some recent conversations about a draft. Do you feel like you have raised your child to have the mental strength to get through war?
As a Parent:
- Thread starter Whiskeydeltadeltatango
- Start date
My son, absolutely, though like most of his positive attributes, I have no idea what, if anything, "I" did to instill them within him.
My daughter would be fine. She's one tough nut.
My daughter would be fine. She's one tough nut.
my 13 year old boy won't even kill a bug in the house
I don't think he is the military type
I don't think he is the military type
Last edited:
Just refuse the covid vaccine and you’ll be free of having to join.
Why worry about such a thing. And, do you think anyone was mentally prepared for WWI, WW2, Vietnam, etc? The answer is no... they get sent to fight and you hope you come out alive. Worrying about something like this is a waste of time because if a war does happen... there won't be a choice.
She’ll be fine. Drone operator or coder.
Yes, I have, though he falls outside the current age proposal (he's 28).
It isn't a worry, as you said, we can't stop it. It's more of a parenting type question. Self reliance if you will.
Who are you having conversations with? A draft would kill any support for a war.
Last edited:
and, i think the answer is, not really, since we don't really fight wars much with "people" any more. personally, i think we ought to have a peacetime draft. we actually need more people, and reresenting a better cross secxtion of society, who have served, for various social reasons
No and who raises their child to go to war?
Also who even has the mental strength to go to war? The people that actually go to war come out with PTSD and all sorts of other mental issues due to their experiences in that war.
Raising a child trying to give them the mental strength to go war would be child abuse. You would have to subject them to violence and witnessing violence on a regular basis. Then they would either be ready for war or ready to go be a serial killer or mass shooter.
Every combat veteran that I've heard address this says that there is basically no way to know beforehand who will be able to handle the stress of combat and who will freeze. The toughest guy in boot camp might completely clam up in combat, while the mild manner, quiet guy might end up being the one that you want in the foxhole with you most.
We have some actual combat vets on this board, so maybe they can opine?
Not a chance. My son has no capacity for violence whatsoever. He couldn't even play football in high-school because he couldn't get mean enough to hit people.
No parenting can prepare a young adult for war.
The military tries but even then fails.
Nothing worse than a young man who survives combat only to be killed by his own hands after returning home.
We as a country need to help these soldiers after they come home.
The military tries but even then fails.
Nothing worse than a young man who survives combat only to be killed by his own hands after returning home.
We as a country need to help these soldiers after they come home.
Alright then.........
Not sure what you are going for but there sure as shit is a difference in nourishing the mental fortitude to overcome obstacles. That's parenting.
This is my son also. Even the thought of him going into combat breaks my heart. If he survived, he'd be a completely different person afterwards.
I told my kids it would be immoral to kill other human beings that have not threatened us in any manner.
I don’t believe the draft is morally acceptable. Forcing people into the most brutal aspect of human existence serves nobody.
I would never want my kids to go through a war and my kids will never be in the military for that reason. The military has nothing to offer them.
My boys, definitely. They're tough young men, smart and they're leaders. Prior to her freshman year of college I'd have said no to my daughter, but she's become much more confident and mentally tough in the past 12 months so she'd be okay.
All that said, I'd have a hard time supporting my kids go fight a war for our government right now. If we're talking about the current ukraine - russia conflict, nfw.
Now if we were attacked outright by another country, or russia decided to not stop at ukraine and tries expanding into Europe ala 1940s Germany that's a different story.
There's just so much corruption and bs going on in these conflicts, I wouldn't want my kids to risk dying for.
There is overcoming obstacles and there is experiencing the horrors of war. Those are two very different things.
Overcoming obstacles is working hard to get what you want, taking your failures and using them to drive you to make them better.
Going to war is watching your best friend get blown to bits and killing people because you were told by people above you that is your job.
I stand by my statement, if you trying to get your kids mentally prepared for war you are also mentally preparing them to be a serial killer or a mass shooter. Because no mentally healthy adult is prepared for that level of violence.
I'm thinking you are taking this one a little deeper than face value. The parents, both yay and nay, have been able to say yes or no.
I appreciate your response.
I think we would have zero idea growing up or raising kids who would or would not get thru a war.
Never? Not even during WW1 or WW2?
I don’t WANT a draft…but I think there’s times when it’s unfortunately necessary as part of a mobilization effort.
This plus a billion. Install a draft and my family will be moving out of the country. No way will my kids be going to fight our turd politicians battles.
Now, if another country was attacking the US, my entire family would be pulling up our bootstraps.
Todays youth are less prepared than any other generation.
Disagree.
If war of the future requires our sons & daughters to scream “GYAT!!” and “SKIBITY TOILET!!!!” because they are a bunch of “Sigmas” then we are absolutely prepared to take on the entire fuggin’ universe.
If it involves any amount of hard work….then I agree we are screwed.
Anyone who truly believes that they are prepared for war is an idiot...
Putting aside the moral dilemma of conscription, the main argument I hear for a draft is that some military, or military-adjacent, experience would help young people, especially men, become more focused and motivated.
I hear a lot of personal anecdotes from men who say they felt they were "adrift" and didn't know what to do with their lives, and being in the military helped them get some direction.
I respect their experiences, but not everyone is like that. Personally, I have never felt like I didn't know what I want to do with my life.
I hear a lot of personal anecdotes from men who say they felt they were "adrift" and didn't know what to do with their lives, and being in the military helped them get some direction.
I respect their experiences, but not everyone is like that. Personally, I have never felt like I didn't know what I want to do with my life.
I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the word if we were to create some sort of national service program - similar to some of the things offered in the New Deal; maybe forgive X amount of student debt or something in exchange for how long they serve.
A mandatory draft is not something I’d be in favor of barring a genuine, world war-type emergency.
I agree,.. I've often thought it would be good to require 1 year of national service post High School, similar to what Israel does,.. I think it would be valuable for the country, and also provide a lot of kids with some actual direction for their lives...
You would have to kill me for them to draft my kids for any modern day war...especially under this administration.
Is it out there beyond what people are hypothesizing or spreading conspiracies about?
Maybe I misunderstood, or maybe others have, but my understanding of the recent move to automate the selective service registration is that it was already a requirement anyway, but the manual process resulted in people being penalized for not registering like they were supposed to. Automating the process takes away those unnecessary penalties that weren't doing anyone any good. It doesn't need to be manual any more, so now it isn't. Better living through technology, and all that.
As to your original question, I have no way of knowing. I've tried to raise the daughter to be resilient, but that's more like overcoming a bad grade, or not getting the job she applied for, or a boyfriend breaking up with her, etc. I don't think any of the lessons I've tried to impart would have prepared her for being shot at, or seeing someone close to her get shot/blown up, or being taken captive and being tortured for information. The closes we got was ~5 years of Muay Thai, so maybe a little hand to hand. She's really small though, so she'd better pick out someone else that's tiny.
Both my grandfathers and several uncles fought in wars, none ended up with PTSD so that's just not true to make a blanket statement like that.
Yeah, any more they're not "fighting to protect our freedoms" as much as they're fighting to protect oil or other resources, or fighting to settle scores/penis-measuring contests. That's WAY different, and if that was the case, I wouldn't support it.
To be fair, maybe your grandpas/uncles simply did better at dealing with it than others did.
Idk if you want to call it PTSD or something else - and admittedly I’ve never served so I have no way of knowing personally…it just doesn’t seem possible to fight in a war, see friends of yours die next to you, and NOT have it affect you somehow. Whether that always rises to the level of what we call PTSD I don’t know; and like I said, some people are simply able to handle those issues better than others.
