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Before Christine left for Afghanistan, Clinton Collins slept dead to the world. Now his sleep is fitful as he listens for his little girls in the middle of the night or an unexpected phone call from his wife. He wakes up every morning at six, lets the dogs out, starts the coffee, picks up scattered toys, and checks his e-mail, in the few quiet moments before the girls come looking for him. Kennedy, 12, rises first, andhits the shower. Four-year-old Taylor staggers down the hallway, wiping sleep from her eyes, with Reagan, two, tottering behind.
At the kitchen table in their home on Nellis Air Force Base, just outside Las Vegas, the four crowd around the laptop, their morning ritual. Reagan knows the Skype ringtone now and runs toward the computer, yelling, "Mommy! Mommy!" when she hears it. Christine appears on the screen. It's evening in Afghanistan, and her face is drawn after another 12-hour shift as an Air Force trauma nurse at Bagram Airfield hospital. Taylor, working at a bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal, breaks into a wide smile. "Hi, Mommy!" she says. Kennedy leans over her dad's shoulder for a better view. This is the last time they expect to see Christine for nearly a month. She leaves the next morning for remote villages in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. As she has confided to her husband and oldest daughter, this will be a dangerous mission. Kennedy knows what could happen and says she's "freaked-out." Collins worries but hides it, just as he hides his concern over yesterday's suicide bombing at the entrance to Christine's base. If the girls see that he's anxious, they'll wonder why and grow anxious too. Christine wipes away tears. "I miss you, my girls," she says softly, trying not to wake her roommate. She has told her daughters this many times, but she tells them again.
Christine's face disappears. Collins sends Kennedy out the door to the bus stop down the street and loads cereal bowls into the dishwasher while the family's three dogs—a German shepherd, a terrier mutt, and a long-haired Chihuahua—wrestle and nip underfoot. The doorbell rings, and a neighbor, also a nurse, drops off her four-month-old baby, whom Collins watches once a week. The neighborhood on the base is a close-knit community, with ranch-style homes, shade trees, and immaculate lawns. Most neighbors know one another, and by now Collins has developed a reputation on his cul-de-sac as the babysitter they can go to in a pinch. "We take care of our own," he says of the Air Force, in which he served for almost eight years.
He slings a red-and-gray Eddie Bauer bag over his shoulder, picks up the baby, and herds the other kids toward the door. "This is not a diaper bag. This is a man purse," he says, laughing. "Nobody has to know what's in it." He straps the kids into car seats and drives toward Taylor's preschool, across the sprawling desert installation, where F-15s take off from nearby airfields and roar overhead on training flights above the craggy mountains that ring Las Vegas. "A lot of moms look at me and say, 'Haven't you gone crazy yet?' They're implying that I shouldn't have made it as long as I have," he says.
A New Trend
The stay-at-home wife-and-mother who runs the household while Dad's at war has been the norm in military families for generations. But today, women account for about 200,000, or almost 15 percent, of personnel, and men are stepping into the caregiving role. "This is a new thing for the United States military," says Linda Spoonster Schwartz, Connecticut's commissioner of Veterans' Affairs. Schwartz is a Vietnam-era veteran who rose to the rank of major in the Air Force during a time when mothers were not allowed to serve. "There were some women deployed during Desert Storm. But never so many and never for so long [as now]. We haven't faced this issue before."
Even under usual circumstances, war zone deployments are phenomenally stressful for those left behind. They may be even more challenging for war dads. In the past three decades, the military has created a vast support network to assist wives and their families, providing counseling, child care, even lawn care. But the few men who have attempted to plug into the system say they feel awkward and often unwelcome.
"It's no different than in society," says Charles Figley, a Tulane University psychologist who has testified before Congress about the challenges that deployments place on military families. "Nursery schools are set up for moms; most child-care workers are female. Supermarkets are geared toward women. These are relatively minor things, but collectively they send a signal to men that says, Go away—you're out of place."
His Daily Routine
Collins arrives at Taylor's preschool, the Nellis Child Development Center, and wades through a throng of mothers dropping off their children. Of the caregivers for the 98 kids who attend, five are men whose wives are deployed. It's been five years since Collins left the Air Force Security Forces as a staff sergeant so that Christine could pursue her nursing career. He's been staying home with the kids ever since. Collins knows that some of his old Air Force buddies on base are puzzled by his choice. Sometimes they shake their heads and tell him they don't know how he does it. "They want to talk guns or Ultimate Fighting with me, and here I am carrying a Barbie doll in my hand."
At Taylor's preschool, parents are offered a "break" night once a month, when staff will watch kids for several hours. But Collins says he has never used one or joined any of the support groups available. "I've never felt too comfortable hanging out with a bunch of women, sitting down to talk," he says. Christine's deployment is "difficult," he acknowledges, "but I know it's only temporary, and I can press through it on my own."
Collins's reticence is hardly unique. Taylor's teacher, Amina Simmons, says none of the other dads partake of break nights either. A recent comment from one father she invited was, "No no no. I'm fine." "He was dragging. He had rings under his eyes," Simmons says. Men "do a really good job, but they don't want help from anybody."
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