Great Lakes, Illinois. (May 8, 2025): In this photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Stuart Posada, Seaman Kyra Brinsfield is greeted by family after a graduation ceremony at Midway Ceremonial Drill Hall. She is one of more than 40,000 recruits who train annually at the Navy's only boot camp. For a select few American families, serving in the military is a generational thing.

Children of service members, affectionally called “Military Brats,” are twice as likely to join the military compared to their civilian counterparts. The Defense Department estimates there are approximately fifteen million Americans who are former or current military brats. They represent an important, and often invisible, subculture of the American public that is critical to our national defense.

According to the Department of Defense, military brats are statistically more likely to join the service due to their upbringing and familiarity with military life and a powerful desire to follow in their parents' footsteps. Recent studies indicate that around 44% of military-connected teens surveyed intend to enlist in the future with 18% planning to do so upon high school graduation. So, what makes these young people so special?

First, children who grow up on military bases experience unique challenges and life events that are completely foreign to their civilian brethren. It is a life filled with uncertainty, constant change, and a keen sense of community with other military families. Some of the unique challenges they face include adjusting to new environments as they change duty stations every three years. These relocations often include living in foreign countries and experiencing different languages and cultures. Growing up in such exotic places often makes military children “worldly” beyond their years and they develop a keen sense of resiliency. As young children, they endure the constant loss of close friends which makes them extremely adaptable with a knack for making new friends quickly. Consequently, these frequent moves mean they never have a traditional “hometown.”

Perhaps the hardest aspect of growing up in the military are times when their parents are deployed, especially during wartime. War related stress takes an enormous toll on service families that includes constant anxiety and sudden grief at the loss of a parent.

Military Brats have a saying; “The first year you make friends, the second you get to really like them, and the third you say goodbye.”