Bereaved Military Children: Deaths in Service and the Support Around Them

In the United States, the only country where they have been counted at scale, children whose parent dies in military service are usually young, and the death is often sudden. The best US evidence shows their rates of depression, adjustment disorders and trauma-related diagnoses rising sharply in the two years after a father’s death^[1][2]. Yet we found no country that routinely publishes a count of these children, and the support built around them has barely been evaluated.

When a parent in the armed forces dies, a child loses more than a mum or dad. The family may also lose its home on or near a base, its school and friends, and the community that understood its way of life. Many of these deaths happen in peacetime, from illness or accidents, rather than in combat. Some still bring ceremonies and public attention, which can comfort or weigh on a child. This study sets out what is known, from several countries, about these children and the support around them. A companion study looks at bereaved military families as a whole, including widows and parents.

Most deaths in service now happen away from the battlefield

Few countries publish regular statistics on deaths in their armed forces, and none we found records how many of those who died were parents. They do show how these parents died: mostly not in combat.

In the United States, 19,378 active-duty service members died from 2006 through 2021, according to Defense Department data analysed by the Congressional Research Service. About a quarter (24%) died in what the department calls overseas contingency operations, mainly Iraq and Afghanistan. Accidents were the largest category of death (32.0%). Next came self-inflicted deaths (25.4%), then illness or injury (17.9%). Being killed in action accounted for 14.1%^[3].

In the UK, 60 members of the regular armed forces died in 2025, a rate of 43 per 100,000 personnel. Over the ten years 2016–2025, cancers (25%) and suicide (25%) were the leading causes, followed by other accidents (16%). Two people died from hostile action in that decade, one in Syria in 2018 and one in Iraq in 2020^[4]. Some recent deaths recorded as accidents may yet be confirmed as suicides at inquest^[4]. Suicide among service personnel, as anywhere, has many causes, not one, and much can be done to prevent it.

For children, this matters. Many deaths in service are sudden, which we look at in our study of sudden and expected deaths. And a child whose parent died of cancer, in a road crash or by suicide may not fit the public picture of a “military death”; our study of children bereaved by suicide covers what is known about that group.

Counting is harder still in countries at war. In Ukraine, a summary published by the Children of Heroes of Ukraine Foundation, a charity, reports that “no single official count exists” of children who have had a parent die since the full-scale invasion of 2022. The official figures it has gathered range from about 1,600 to more than 13,000. They measure different things: children who lost both parents with no relatives to care for them (1,610, Ukraine’s Human Rights Ombudsman, September 2023), or children given the official status of orphan or of a child deprived of parental care (more than 13,000, Ministry of Social Policy, April 2024). None is a count of children whose parent died serving in the armed forces^[5].

The children are young, and many live far from military support

The only large study we found that describes the children themselves is from the United States. It identified all 15,938 US service members who died on active duty in the decade after 11 September 2001, from accidents, combat, illness and other causes. Just over half (55%) left a dependent spouse, and 56% of those spouses had children^[1]. The children were young: their mean age at the death was 10.3 years. The authors note that many of these young dependents were related to a service member who “experienced a sudden and violent death”^[1].

The same study found that 60% of families with a surviving spouse and children lived more than 60 miles from a military installation, and this did not change with time since the death, which ranged from 1.3 to 11.3 years^[1]. Most of these children were growing up away from the services built around serving families.

A review in The Future of Children pointed out that a parent’s death in combat “can also mean that survivors lose their very identity as a military family when they must move away from their supportive military community”. It also found that most services at the time focused on injured service members “rather than those of their families”^[6]. For a child, the death can bring a house move, a school move and the loss of friends who shared the same way of life, all at once.

We found no comparable published count of bereaved children for the UK, Canada, Australia or other armed forces. The UK’s official statistics on deaths in service do not report whether those who died had children^[4].

In the first two years, diagnoses rise sharply

The strongest evidence on children’s mental health after a military parent’s death is a US case-control study published in 2026. It used military health care records for 1,212 children whose active-duty father died in 2001–2006. Each was matched with a child whose father was alive, on age, sex, earlier use of military health care, the father’s rank and his deployment history^[2].

In the first and second years after the death, rates of depressive disorders and adjustment disorders were 2 to 4 times as high among bereaved children as among the matched children. Rates of acute stress disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were 9.5 times as high in the first year. Boys and girls were affected in similar ways, and school-aged children had higher rates of acute stress disorder or PTSD than adolescents in that first year^[2]. The authors conclude that paternally bereaved school-aged children “may be at heightened risk for trauma-related diagnoses”^[2].

These are diagnoses recorded by doctors, not a measure of grief itself, and they show an association rather than proof that the death caused every diagnosis. Grief is a normal response to a death, not a disorder. But the findings show that for some children, the months after a military parent dies bring difficulties serious enough to need clinical care. We set out the wider evidence on mental health after a parent’s death in childhood in a separate study.

What surrounds the child shapes the grief

Outside the United States, most research on these children comes from countries that have been at war, and much of it is small or old. It points the same way: the child’s family and surroundings matter a great deal.

In Israel, researchers followed children whose fathers died in the October War of 1973. Eighteen months after the death, among 25 kibbutz children and 21 children from other communities, aged 3½ to 11½, the loss of a father was “a serious traumatic situation for a large proportion of the children” in both settings^[7]. Half of the 25 kibbutz children showed intense emotional disturbance. The researchers found that “pretraumatic family and environmental factors”, meaning circumstances already present before the death, were significant determinants of how long and how severe the children’s reactions were^[8].

A 2025 review of war-related bereavement in children and adolescents, which takes in civilian as well as military deaths, found significantly higher risks of PTSD, depression, anxiety, prolonged grief disorder and suicidal thoughts. It called for flexibly tailored support, including group, school-based and telehealth approaches^[9].

The meaning given to a death may matter too. In a 1997 Israeli study, 23 adolescents who had a relative die in war reported better wellbeing and fewer psychiatric symptoms than 19 whose relative died in a road accident, and than other adolescents. The groups were tiny and the relatives were not all parents; the authors pointed to “the different meanings ascribed to death in battle versus death in a road accident”^[10].

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, 50 adolescents whose fathers died in the 1992–1995 war were compared in 2011–2012 with 50 matched adolescents from two-parent families. After allowing for differences in income, family size and refugee experience, they did not differ in mental health or resilience. Their mothers, though, had more post-traumatic symptoms^[11]. In a further Bosnian sample of 50 whose fathers died before they were five, those who were youngest at the death had lower resilience in late adolescence, and the link with later depression ran partly through education^[12].

In France, children whose fathers died in the First World War were given official status under a 1917 law. Among 2,365 of them compared with matched children, those whose father died before they were born lived on average 2.4 years less as adults; there was no reduction when he died after the birth^[13].

Support exists, but little of it has been evaluated

Some countries and charities offer support aimed at children whose parent died in service, from peer support and camps to help with education costs. Very little of it has been studied for its effects.

In the United States, the national charity TAPS runs Good Grief Camp for children under 18. Volunteer mentors, “often with personal loss experience”, support the children; Legacy Mentors are young adults who had someone close die in childhood and now mentor other bereaved children^[14]. In a 2025 survey of 314 participants, former camp attendees and Legacy Mentors reported fewer complicated grief symptoms, and being a Legacy Mentor predicted fewer symptoms^[14]. This was a survey of people involved with the programme, not a trial, so it cannot show the camp caused the difference.

Education support is more common, and better documented in rules than in research:

We found no published evaluation of either scheme’s effect on children’s education. The UK scheme’s guidance page still gives award amounts for 2018–2019, so we have not quoted them^[16]. The UK scheme covers only deaths attributed to service, and excludes foster children^[16]. Australia also has an education scheme for children of veterans, but we could not open the official pages to check its current terms, so it is not in the table. Survivor pensions and other state support for bereaved families are covered in our study of state support for bereaved families.

What the evidence asks of us

• Count the children. Neither the US nor the UK figures on deaths in service say how many children are left behind; the one US count of dependent children comes from a research study, not routine statistics^[1][3][4]. In Ukraine, “no single official count exists”^[5]. Publishing the number and ages of children bereaved by deaths in service each year would let services plan.
• Follow families when they leave the military community. Most bereaved US families with children lived more than 60 miles from a military installation^[1]. Civilian schools, family doctors and bereavement services need to know when a child’s parent has died in service, and what that may involve. Researchers have called for “a greater emphasis on family-focused care”^[6].
• Watch the first two years closely, especially for younger children. Diagnoses of depression, adjustment disorder and trauma-related conditions were raised in each of the first two years, and school-aged children were at particular risk of trauma-related diagnoses^[2]. Health systems serving military families can check in early rather than wait.
• Support the surviving parent too. In Bosnia, mothers of children whose fathers died in the war had more post-traumatic symptoms than other mothers^[11], and in Israel the family’s circumstances shaped children’s reactions^[8]. We look at this in our study of the parent who is left.
• Evaluate what is already offered. Peer support, camps and education schemes are well established, but the evidence on their effects for children is a single survey^[14]. Funders could build evaluation into programmes they already pay for.

The research does not show that these children are bound to struggle. It shows a period of real risk soon after the death, shaped by what surrounds the child, and support that is generous in places but rarely measured. Services and policy can change both.

Language: this piece uses plain words such as “died” rather than euphemisms, because they are clearer. It uses “orphan” only where that is a study’s, law’s or dataset’s own term. Where it mentions suicide, it follows the Samaritans’ media guidelines.

Why we're publishing this

Children whose parent dies in military service are often seen as part of a story about the armed forces. We brought this evidence together because they are bereaved children first, and the research on their needs belongs in one place, cleanly sourced for the charities, schools and services that support them. The case is theirs; our part is to say plainly what the data show. This study is part of our research library on children and young people bereaved of a parent.

How to read this data

The death figures are official statistics: the UK Ministry of Defence’s accredited statistics for the regular armed forces, and US Defense Department data summarised by the Congressional Research Service. They count deaths of service members, not bereaved children. The US child count and mental health study use military records; the latter compares doctors’ diagnoses in matched groups, which shows association, not cause; its “times higher” ratios come from logistic regressions and may be odds ratios, which for the commoner diagnoses would overstate the difference in rates. The Israeli, Bosnian and French studies are small or historical. For all the journal studies we could see only abstracts. The TAPS study is a survey of people involved with the programme. The Ukrainian figures are official counts gathered by a charity, and none measures children whose parent died in the armed forces. We found no published study of bereaved children of service personnel from Canada, Australia or the UK, and no country that routinely counts them.

Use this data

Free to cite with attribution to Understanding Bereavement. Charities, schools, services and journalists are welcome to reuse these figures and charts. For the underlying figures as a spreadsheet, get in touch.

Important: This study summarises published research about groups of people for general information. It is not medical advice or bereavement support, and it cannot describe or predict anything about an individual child or family. If you are worried about a child or about yourself, please speak to a GP or another qualified professional.

Sources

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2. Ogle CM, Rice AJ, Zhou J, Fisher JE, Hisle-Gorman E, Cozza SJ. Mental health diagnoses in bereaved children following loss of active-duty service member fathers in 2001–2006: a case-control study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 2026. europepmc.org/article/MED/41921819
3. Congressional Research Service. Trends in active-duty military deaths from 2006 through 2021 (IF10899). Congressional Research Service, updated 2022. everycrsreport.com/reports/IF10899.html
4. Defence Statistics, Ministry of Defence. Deaths in the UK regular armed forces: annual summary and trends over time, 1 January 2016 to 31 December 2025. Ministry of Defence (Accredited Official Statistics), 2026. gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-armed-forces-deaths-in-service-2025
5. Children of Heroes of Ukraine Foundation. How many children have lost a parent in the Russia–Ukraine war? Children of Heroes, 2026. childrenheroes.org/en/how-many-children-have-lost-a-parent-in-the-russia-ukraine-war
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15. US Department of Veterans Affairs. Fry Scholarship. VA.gov, accessed 2026. va.gov/family-and-caregiver-benefits/education-and-careers/fry-scholarship
16. Veterans UK, Ministry of Defence. Scholarships for children whose parent died in service. GOV.UK, accessed 2026. gov.uk/support-military-bereaved-children