Is urging my soon to be 19 year old son to look at the military as a career a good idea or not?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I don’t know if the military is the cure-all everyone seems to think it is. Sure it may help some kids straighten out and fly right, but it’s just as likely he can spend a few years with a fairly unremarkable career as a PFC and come out still with no idea of what he wants to do. He’s not exactly coming out of West Point here.

I mean do you really learn how to take care of yourself in the military? You are given an MOS (army talk for a “job”). You are provided with a baracks to sleep in, transportation, clothes to wear, and a schedule to work. You learn how to do as you are told, but do you really learn to figure out what you want to do in life and how to get there?

Next thing you know his enlistment will be up and he’ll be back home, still with no direction in life.

It doesn’t make sense for you to keep paying for schooling he isn’t interested in nor does it make sense for him to just spend the next decade living at home playing Warcraft. I’m not saying you should just throw him out on the street, but I think you need to sit down with your son and come up with some ideas of what he might want to do with his life and a timeline for getting him out on his own.

Your son needs to learn that this is his life and people are not going to take care of him forever.

Nitpick but the proper term would be “ergomaniac”. The colloquial “workaholic” (a portmanteau of “work” and “alcoholic”) is the term in common usage. “Workism” and “workic” are not terms in common usage.

And wouldn’t workism would be “discrimination based on work”?

22

Not that it’s much of a jump, but if he’s an Eagle Scout, he’ll get an automatic jump to E-2 or E-3 on completion of basic training. It doesn’t make any difference in terms of authority, but it is a higher pay grade, and he might have a leg up on time-in-grade for E-4, if they require that kind of thing.

And… I’ve heard too many tales of the military de-fuckup-ing young guys to believe that they don’t have unique skills in that regard.

Hell, a fairly aimless, slacker type friend of mine enlisted, went to OCS, served a tour in Iraq, and now has his shit together with a career plan for when he gets out in a few months. (since he has some graduate psychology course credit, he wants to get his social work certification and work with returning Soldiers for counseling and that kind of thing.)

23

Other than what I said above, my other piece of advice is for him to not go in the Marines. I have the utmost respect for our Marines, but it’s only for the gung-ho. Look at Air Force first.

24

I think he has more options than just slackerville and boot camp. He could get a job. He could go to a trade school. He could join the Peace Corp. He could start a lawn care business. He could get married and live off his wife. Get creative!

25

I was in Air Force ROTC for over a year. I only dropped out because I was scared to commit to anything at that point in my life. I often think I would have been better off if I stayed in. It is a good mix of military and civilian lifestyles with transferable job skills. My youngest brother just graduated from the Coast Guard Officer Training School. He came within milliseconds of dropping out but he made it and he is now stationed in Hawaii, his first choice as a Coast Guard Officer. I am very proud for both him and his wife. The Marines can certainly be brutal but some people thrive on that stuff. I wouldn’t like it though.

26

The military probably wouldn’t want him.

He needs to get a taste of what it’s like to live on his own and pay his own bills, whether that means in the military or with 4 other guys in a flat somewhere working at McDonalds.

The thing is as long as no one is gonna do anything he’s gonna take advantage of you. If he’s living with your ex-wife and she doesn’t put any pressures on him he’ll do what he like.

Pressure is not always a bad thing. I have made some really stupid choices in my life and one of the reasons they happened is no one ever bothered to say “Don’t do that.” Now I’m not passing the buck, I made these stupid choices and I accept I must pay for them.

At 19 the kid should be in school, AND holding down a part time job AND paying rent AND helping out to the household.

You’re not gonna solve his problem by pawing it off on the military. And since he’s 19 it really is HIS problem now.

(It doesn’t need to have value just as long as it teaches responsibility, for instance, for rent and board you cans say 25% of whatever his take home pay is for that week).

The way I always look at it is like this, when I was 11 my father died, when I was 16 my mum died and I was thrown out into the dark cold world. People will always say, “How could you have managed?” Well you don’t get a choice so you, well just manage.

Supposing tomorrow you and your ex-wife die, what happens to the kid? Well kid to you, adult to everyone else.

You’re not doing him an favours by being so “kind” to him.

I’m not advocating throwing him out into the world, 'cause he’s been encourage, but start small.

College for example should be paid for by HIM in totality. (Unless your divorce agreement requires you to pay). If he can’t pay, next up a job. Even a part time job. Times are tough you say? Fine, then off he goes to local Hospital, VA, or Salvation Army to put in 8 hours a day in charity work.

27

Change comes from within. Going in to the military could turn out to be the best thing this kid has done, or the worst, or something in between.

The penalty for blowing off a test in college is an “F”. The penalty for blowing off military duty starts with administrative punishment and can lead to criminal charges.

28

Yeah, I think that’s a point which might bear repeating. I used to work as an RA in college and I had experience with a couple of kids that came from a few years enlisted as Marines to college on the GI bill and they could be as directionless as any other cohort of first-year college kids, skipping-class or eating pizza in the cafeteria all day. I came home one evening to see one leaving in handcuffs followed by a cop carrying a small garbage-bag full of weed which he had apparently been dealing.

So a tour of duty in the armed forces certainly isn’t a guaranteed ticket towards a directed life as an upright citizen.

29

Lets be honest. After boot camp someone who thinks:

“I’m happy to float along with miminal effort as long I’m being fed, housed and given access to a console”

Can pretty much do that in the military as well. Sure, the military will require him to up the effort level, but it isn’t as though he will have to have a direction to his life or work particularly hard.

Really the only way something will change is if there is a hard deadline for him to get out of his mom’s house and supporting himself.

30

The military should be for people who want to be in the military. Military service is not some catch-all solution for Lazy Kid Syndrome. I cannot think of anything good that would come of YOU forcing someone else to join the armed services.

Your kid needs to be allowed to fail. The only thing that really needs to happen is he needs to be booted out of the house. As long as he’s passing college - even if it’s not by much - that’s fine, but will be be kicked out when he’s done? If so, he’ll learn how to deal with the real world. If not, he won’t.

31

Please do not force a slacker to join the military against his will. If he’s not there by choice, my brother cannot rely on your son to watch his (my brother’s) back. I’ve been there (once upon a time), and the fact is, if someone doesn’t want to be there, they’re a danger to those who do.

Please give him the facts:

Pros: Medical care, paycheck, job training, food, shelter, instruction in anything and everything, college credit (even for boot camp-it’s PE credits), college money, college courses for free, obvious chain of command, clear rules, financial help, guaranteed pay raises, life insurance, etc.

Cons: Obeying orders, doing what you’re suited for not what you want, strict rules, lots of competition, herd mentality, being EXPECTED to do the job and punished if you don’t, extra rules you must follow, additional legal requirements, drastic hindrances on personal choice (at least at the beginning), possible death or maiming

This way, he can make his own decision. a 19-year-old is a grownup. Please let him be one.

32

My wife is in the navy. She calls it the worst and stupidest thing she ever did. We’re counting days until she gets out. She joined for some of the reasons outlined in the OP (pushed by her father). Her hatred for it grows daily, and it is making us look at permanently leaving the country once she is out (she has offered to smack people around the head who ‘thank her for her service’).

If you’re not already inclined to do as you’re told, subsume your own personality into an organization and don’t want to ask moral questions about what you do then it might be the place to be. Otherwise no

33

Out of curiosity how is it different than what she expected in a military organization? What moral concerns or boundaries do her duties as US navy enlisted person violate?

34

At age 17 I was in pretty much the same shape. Just substitute pool halls for online gaming.

I joined the Air Force with the mistaken, slacker idea that it would be better than getting a real job. Four years later I was discharged with veterans benefits, ready to attack college with a vengeance.

It may not be the right thing for everybody, but it worked that way for me and several buddys that I served with. The military can be a good place to grow up.

35

It is pretty much what she expected but she was under immense parental pressure to join. Although there is more hidden sexism than she was expecting. She has moral qualms about the way the military is used and doesn’t buy the ‘defending freedom’ line. She sees it instead as a kind of international bullying. She is also a little disgusted by a lot of navy culture “what happens at sea/deployment stays at sea/deployment” for example. She would and has tried very hard to talk anyone she knows into not joining up.

36

While those are interesting questions, might I suggest that the point, really, is already made, irrespective of the particular details? Not everyone who joins the Armed Services is glad for it or thinks it’s a great career choice. We don’t really need to get into this specific example.

37

Retired AF SNCO here.

I’ve seen a lot of slacker kids face facts and grow up in the military. It works for some of them.

In my last decade of service, though (ending in 2005), I began to see the AF not as willing to invest as much time and effort on non-grown-ups who enlist.

I think the bottom line these days is that the AF no longer wants to be in the position of raising other people’s kids–we’ve got headaches enough already, and plenty of people standing in line waiting to join.

When he’s a responsible adult, we’d be happy to talk to him.

AMAPAC

38

Nothing for nothing, but half the guys I play WoW with are US Military.

39

I’ve never raised kids so I don’t want to sound like I’m being too judgemental on the OP. But it seems to me that 19 is a little late to be worrying about these issues.

I wasn’t the best student in the world, but even as a little kid I had a sense that the people who worked hard and were disciplined tended to be successful in life and the ones who weren’t tended to end up in undesirable jobs. I also had a sense that it was important where I went to college and that I had to pick something that was related to what I wanted to do when I was an adult.

Granted I made mistakes. I liked architecture class in high school so I thought I wanted to be an architect or structural engineer. I went to one of the top engineering schools in the country and had 4 miserable years (at least academically) of studying a major I hated that I never did much with professionally. But there are worse ways to fail then graduating with an engineering degree from a prestigeous college.

So the question I have is why has your son not made these connections?

He seems very similar to my GF’s younger brother. My GF is very academically motivated, has an MBA from one of the top business schools in the country and works in finance. Her brother barely graduated college, lives at home in his mid 20s and while he does work, he needs to be pushed into doing anything. The problem is his parents never push him to do anything. So now he lives at home, uses any money he earns to hang out with his buddies or pursue his stupid hobbies and their house is filled to the brim with his crappy stuff.

40

I would never want my child to join the military. He could be killed.