Mary Eberstadt brings up a situation that is, to say the least, bad for everyone: Mothers with dependent children are being deployed to war or hot zones. Most of the women are the primary caretakers of their children, and what’s worse is that a number of these women are single parents, so when mommy is shipped out, the children essentially become orphans.

The issue came to a head because of a mother of a 10 month old, who was unable to ship out to Afghanistan due to her childcare situation. Instead of quietly discharging her, she was threatened with a court martial and jail time.

(Lest you become up in arms over women in the military, they, too, bring unique skills to the institution. Besides being able to shoot a gun or fly planes, women are good at multi-tasking, which comes in handy in war-room situations—such as on an aircraft carrier, keeping track of many ships and planes, for example.)

I digress.

Some radical feminists and social experimenters, who care nothing about the children involved during mommy’s deployment, tragically refuse to make the distinction between women being deployed and mothers being deployed.

Eberstadt writes, “This is the feminist-driven dogma that babies and children can be separated from their parents, especially their mothers, for long periods of time without perfectly predictable forms of adversity ensuing from that separation. In a world where many busy moms now see their children only a few hours a day or week, the thinking seems to run, what’s so different about a business trip that lasts overseas for 15 months?”

We have a glut of studies about the detrimental effect that fatherless homes have one the well-being of children. Studies now show that children of mothers who are sent into combat zones face “collateral damage,” too. The length of deployment has an impact on these children, and sadly, their health or psycho-social problems do not resolve when their mother returns home.

In their haste for warm bodies, our public officials and radical feminists at large are lacking in wisdom—the wisdom to acknowledge that some policies are damaging children, taking a heavy toll on families, and weakening communities. So instead of sweeping the problem under the rug, let’s open it up for public scrutiny.