Parental military service and adolescent well-being: mental health, social connections and coping among youth in the USA Mallory Lucier-Greer*, Amy Laura Arnold†, Rebecca Neilann Grimsley‡, James L. Ford‡, Chalandra Bryant§ and Jay A. Mancini¶ *Assistant Professor, Department of Family and Child Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA, and †Postdoctoral Research Fellow, ‡Research Scientist, §Professor, ¶Haltiwanger Distinguished Professor and Department Head, Department of Human Development and Family Science, The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA Correspondence: Mallory Lucier-Greer, Department of Family and Child Sciences, Florida State University, Sandels Building, 120 Convocation Way, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA E-mail: mluciergreer@fsu.edu Keywords: adolescents, military families, resilience, USA, vulnerabilities Funding for this research was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (NIFA award No. 2009-48680-06069, Jay A. Mancini, Principal Investigator) Accepted for publication: May 2014 ABSTRACT The association between parental military work factors and adole- scent’s well-being was examined. Data were collected from 1036 military youth. Using a within-group design, we examined adolescent’s well-being related to parental absence, school and neighbourhood transitions, paygrade/rank and participation in military-sponsored activities, and differentiated outcomes by sex and age. Two parental work factors primarily influenced adolescent’s well-being, parental paygrade/rank and engagement in military-sponsored activities. Parental paygrade/rank was the only factor uniformly related to poorer well-being, and this variable likely represents a more complex set of family circumstances. Engaging in military-sponsored activities served as a resource and was related to enhanced well-being. Individual-level differences and implications for social workers are discussed. INTRODUCTION Combat exposure (Blaisure et al. 2012) and psycho- logical demands (Jex et al. 2013) influence the well- being of service members and their families. Recent studies show that parental work factors impact the environment of the family and child outcomes (Tisdale & Pitt-Catsuphes 2012). This study extends the work-family spill-over perspective by incorporat- ing a bioecological framework (Bronfenbrenner 2005), therefore examining well-being as influenced by numerous contextual variables. From this person- in-environment perspective, examining a wide-range of parental work factors that influence the context of youth and differentiating outcomes by age and sex are essential to understanding the youth’s well-being. Adolescents in US military families (hereafter, mili- tary youth) were examined as there are a variety of potential stressors and resources available to them associated with their parent’s occupation and the mili- tary culture (Huebner & Mancini 2005; Mmari et al. 2009; Card et al. 2011). Adolescence is characterized by personal and physical changes, identity formation and the need to acquire certain skills in preparation for adulthood and few studies related to parental work, family environment and military life have focused on this group. Key adolescent well-being outcomes were examined, including mental health, social connections and coping, all related to later life outcomes in the transition to adulthood (Roisman et al. 2004). Differ- ences by age and sex were also examined because of the significance of those elements, generally, for adolescent doi:10.1111/cfs.12158 1 Child and Family Social Work 2014 © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd