Article Deployment Status and Child Neglect Types in the U.S. Army Stephen J. Cozza 1 , Gloria L. Whaley 1 , Joscelyn E. Fisher 1 , Jing Zhou 1 , Claudio D. Ortiz 1 , James E. McCarroll 1 , Carol S. Fullerton 1 , and Robert J. Ursano 1 Abstract Increases in combat deployments have been associated with rises in rates of child neglect in U.S. military families. Although various types of child neglect have been described in military families, it is unknown whether deployment status is associated with specific types of child neglect and whether other factors, such as substance misuse, play a role. To determine the contribution of service member deployment status to the risk of specific child neglect types, data were collected from 390 substantiated U.S. Army child neglect case files. The contributions of deployment status at the time of the neglect incident and parental alcohol or drug-related misuse to risk of neglect types were examined controlling for military family rank and child age. Compared to never deployed families, families with a service member concurrently deployed at the time of the neglect incident were at higher risk for failure to provide physical needs, lack of supervision, and educational neglect, but at lower risk for emotional neglect. Being previously deployed incurred risk for moral–legal neglect. Substance misuse added risk for moral–legal and educational neglect. Findings indicate the need for tailored prevention strategies to target different periods within the deployment cycle. Keywords military, neglect, child maltreatment According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2013), nearly 80% of U.S. children who experience child maltreatment suffer child neglect. Similarly, the Depart- ment of Defense (DoD) reports that among military families, child neglect represents the largest percentage of child mal- treatment incidents. In 2014, U.S. military child neglect accounted for 63% of all incidents that met maltreatment cri- teria (Williams, 2015). These rates are of concern because child neglect is associated with long-term deleterious child outcomes including mood disorders, anxiety disorders, delinquency, sui- cidal ideation, and substance abuse (Gilbert et al., 2009; Scott, Smith, & Ellis, 2010). Despite the high prevalence, neglect has received little attention in the research literature compared to other types of child maltreatment (Stoltenborgh, Bakermans- Kranenburg, Lenneke, & van IJzendoorn, 2015). The examination of neglect typology has also received little attention. Dubowitz, Pitts, and colleagues (2005) noted “[n]eglect is a heterogeneous phenomenon; abandonment, lack of attention to health care needs, and inadequate food are very different experiences for a child. This heterogeneity suggests that operational definitions of neglect should con- sider multiple subtypes of neglect” (p.496). In a recent study of substantiated U.S. Army neglect cases (Cozza et al., 2015), multiple neglect types were confirmed, with lack of super- vision observed most often (35%), followed by emotional neglect (32%), failure to provide physical needs (26%), moral–legal neglect (4%), and educational neglect (3%). Notably, 86% of emotional neglect in this sample was due to witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) between par- ents. Differentiating between types of childhood neglect is clinically relevant as the type of neglect is predictive of unique outcomes (Egeland, 2009). For example, early emo- tional neglect predicts more long-term impairment than does early physical neglect (for review, see Egeland, 2009). Different neglect types (e.g., lack of supervision vs. emo- tional neglect) would be expected to be related to different risk conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2015) summarized risk factors for child maltreatment more generally to include child factors (younger age and special needs), parent factors (young age, lower education levels, substance use, and low income), family factors (family 1 Department of Psychiatry, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Uniformed Services University, Bethesda, MD, USA Corresponding Author: Stephen J. Cozza, Department of Psychiatry, Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Uniformed Services University, 4301 Jones Bridge Road, Bethesda, MD 20814, USA. Email: stephen.cozza@usuhs.edu Child Maltreatment 2018, Vol. 23(1) 25-33 ª The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permission: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1077559517717638 journals.sagepub.com/home/cmx