75% of Teens Today Are Unfit to Serve in the Military. Really?

Well here is my take! I work on a base where everyone is enlisted and believe me, there are plenty of unhealthy, overweight, drug weilding, active military members! They too have many children underage but the gov still sends them off to war perhaps to die? None of the stats provided make sense, yes the numbers are off and woe to the military for pulling splinters out of civilian eyes when indeed a board is in their own eye!! Oh and yes, the numbers are off! Sheesh…

Well I do not know if the numbers are precisely accurate as many polls and statistics can be skewed in any direction. However, as a previous military member with a fiancée who is an army recruiter currently and has been active duty for 15 years I can speak to what I see. Several of the future soldiers that come in to enlist are overweight, every future soldier is drug screened and often they will have to address drug use before sending them to actually enlist. Generally it’s marijuana that comes up. There are other physical issues that may come up but i can assure you that every potential soldier that comes in is given every opportunity to be helped to get in.

Also criminal is a very common issue: Several things would preclude them from joining and several teens have from minor to not so minor criminal charges.

I know that I personally do not know of any of their future soldiers who have been denied entry for dependant issues, however if a single Parent comes in, there are some things they cannot do. But if they have a family care plan and joint custody generally there is a way.

Mental: The only time we have seen this come up is if someone changed their mind at the last minute and decided to reveal some past issue that they had kept to themselves until that point.

So from a perspective of what I see, generally the percentages are close.

In response to dlp: I don’t believe it was a matter of pointig the finger at the civilian world and stating the military is perfect. However, I can say that the military community takes care of their own Better than the general population. I can say that they are a close knit community and no matter where you go you of course will have people with issues whether they be health related or others.

But it seems as if you are coming across critically and I would implore you to take a closer look as to what these service members and their families have given up for us and our freedoms.

I know there are good and bad everywhere, But I know that in general the military population is required to be held to a higher standard and they do try to uphold that.

God Bless America and the service members and their families protecting our freedoms.

Seems to me that when they add the percentages together, they are overlooking the probability of overlap among the groups. Maybe they are reporting accurately the percentage for each group – considered individually; but they don’t indicate, for example, what percentage of those with illegal drug use also have a criminal record or too many dependents under age 18; they don’t indicate how many of those in mental category V also have medical/physical problems, and so forth. If we want an accurate picture, the question of overlapping factors has to be included.

I used to be a AF dependent and traveled around the world (as much as USAF allowed that is) and yes I saw many overweight, drug/alcohol addiction as well as many other issues that this report lists. So I wonder why now all of a sudden the are saying the the teens of today are unfit? Now as far as the report and the numbers listed in it being accurate…well I do not know about that. I do know that compared to the teens of my generatation or my oldest son, the numbers are getting higher for kids to have the following:
A gang related or violant crimial record
Kids of their own
Diagnosed with ADHD or Bipolar so they are put on stimulate or mood drugs. (Both my stepsons fall in this catagory and according to some .. but on all..branches of service they had or have to be off the meds atleast 2 yrs to be considered).
Have or come from a traumaic situation which has caused some to be diagnosed as having mental issues.
Tha believe that the current state of affairs that is going on with out younth of today is the result of our own doing. Doctors are too quick to give drugs or labels that create a problems with our kids self esteem or public view of them. The schools are not teaching the core lessons that need to be taught as they did when I was going to school (mostly because of cut backs). Parents and society have become more and more lazy so the same views of the older generations are being sweeped to the sidelines. Used to be that if you talked back, stole something, caused trouble or were rude to a adult, teacher or shop keeper your parents were called and there would be a punishment. Parents do not really care where their kids are or what they are doing…and if they tried to correct the situation or set boundries they have no power to do anything.
Now if a parent, teacher, or anyone over 18 yo touchs or yells at a kid the adult is accused of abuse and thrown in jail. There is not consequences anymore for bad behavior…(well there are but more often then not it is sometimes more overkill) the kids know this and use it to their advantage. Look at the numbers of teen deaths due to risky behavior, increase in drug/alcohol addiction for those under 18, the teen mothers, kids being labeled sexual preditors if they have sex under age 18…tell me how many of you didn’t do this when you were young (I can see a 21yo or older doing this with a girl under age of 18yo being called that..but again it goes bad ot the increase of sexual activity with the reducation of certain morals) the disrepect and attitute of the kids of today. If the military (our country) wants a better figthing force to protect our country then they need to give back the rights of the parents (don’t be so quick to judge that parent giving a kid normal punishment …spanking, extra work, washing mouthour with soap, etc. is doing child abuse). Bring back the morals and postive social views that this country was built on. The youth of today is a reflection of how bad the the break down in moral and social views of their/our world. I am just a mother that has raised 2 and current trying to finish raising a 3rd son. I have watched all of this fall down around my eyes then listened in amazement as society (parents, teachers and military)complain that the kids today are lazy, disrespectful of authority, violent and are not fit to serve in military, go to college or work in certain fields. They should be looking at the fact that they are a product of the enviroment that they grew up in and have to survive in.

I think that the overlap issue is a very good point. There has to be overlap. Most people, teens or older, who take illicit drugs usually also have a mental illness problem, it called dual-addicted. Also I would think anyone teen taking illict drugs is most likely to also have a criminal record.
Why would too many dependents be a problem? How many dependents could a young adult have? Besides, I think it would be good for the children to have a parent in the military. At least they would be taken care of in a better way than if their parent was on welfare.
I find it hard to believe that 35% have medical/physical problems. That is way too high for such a young age group. I live in Philadelphia, a major city, and I don’t see that many young with physical problems.
I work in a hospital and having a patient that young is rare.
Also, the numbers do not add up to 100%, the total is 73%. What happened to the other 27%? Or is my math that bad? No one else has mentioned it, what am I not seeing?
Conclusion, that survey is not based in reality, I don’t know why the Pentagon would release those kind of numbers, however, I don’t trust the Pentagon. I believe they always have their own agenda.

The overlap is a good point. My problem seems to be in the wording of the whole thing. I can’t see – in the stats of the study – where it’s all of today’s youth and not just ‘the youth who want to enlist’. Those are the words I keep seeing.

Unfit – during Vietnam I was assigned to a Naval Special Warfare Group, SEAL and UDT Support Operations, we’d take them in and bring them out. We did the same for Army Special Forces and Marine Recon Units and I can share that I never saw anyone unfit. The unfit just didn’t last all that long, many where send home in a box and if they were lucky a med evac plane. We seldom did physical training. In the morning it was equipment repair, re-cleaning our weapons, loading on ammo and anything else we might need, out lives depended on it! By 11 AM that was all completed, if we had a mission we study it in detail. Come noon or so all the crews that didn’t have the duty would arrive at the sports field for flag (in name only) football, softball, basketball or even volleyball straight through until after 5 PM.

This continued until after the war and I was assigned to subs. Well for my first three plus years we had a schedule similiar to what we did in the Special Warfare Group.

In the later 70’s I was assigned to a Fast Attack Submarine, about one hundred guys in a sardine can and a new line of thought by the officers. You had to arrive onboard by 7 AM and were not allowed to leave until 4:30 PM. If you were done and up to date, over 80% of the enlisted crew you got to sit along. No longer could you sign out with the leading petty officer or chief. Your division officer wasn’t allowed to release you except with permission of the senior officer on board. Acceptable places to go included medical, dental or eye doctors, the message center at the base, repair shop on the tender and maybe if you had a good officer the rifle or pistol range! Going anyplace to work out was prohibited.

Then the Commanding Officers were told that the physical condition of their enlisted crew was decreasing. Yet physical conditioning continued to decrease as steps to prevent it were denied.

I can share that we had field grade officers playing when we did sports. Four and threen stripers, Navy Captains and Commanders played with the newest members of the crew and the Navy was provided with a solid base.

This was lost for a long time but the Navy has made strides to provide work out equipment on vessels where it can be fit.

The military is saying that 75% of teenagers are unfit to serve. That figure could very well be correct but even during Vietnam the new recruits weren’t ready and had on the job training. If the military wants the number of teens increased they need to provide on the job training. The Navy after ignoring conditioning for decades has added it to bases, air stations and ships. They are seeing a slow but steady improvement in conditioning.

If the military wants more teens to be fit to serve then they need to build the teen they want through on the job training. We learned fast in Vietnam and these kids can learn fast now.

I was active duty in the United States Air Force (1986-1996)…while I’m not surprised at these numbers, I am terribly, terribly SADDENED…because MY GENERATION has completely FAILED the two generations that have come after us….

I was a Navy wife in 1986-1987 stationed at Pearl Harbor, and I was 20-21 years old. The only thing that went on in spare time was drinking, drugs, and lots of sex. It was one huge party every day. There used to be a product available at GNC stores that ABSOLUTELY cleared all traces of alcohol/drugs from the system, and it was a staple in most households.

So, even back then there were severe problems with the enlisted. It’s not a surprise to me that most of today’s youth are unfit–a simple hard look at all of today’s society shows how far we all have fallen.

I do believe the #’s are just for those who enlist in the military not representative of 100% of our youth. Since I do see it in the community in general: whoever finished high school without any goal for the future and already has experimented social issues (drugs, bullies, sex, baby papa, and just see it as a fast easy $$ career maker (questionable for others). And finally, I‘m w/Misty (#4)… as parents we have to accept that the majority has put down the guard of respect and morals of how we were though for whatever reason lets say 1-2 generations ago we have gone easy on how to bring up our youth without HAVING consequences for their actions. Like mentioned SOME were taken off the authority to “punish” kids when they misbehaved, talked back experimented with drugs, unsafe sex, anything that we know would take them out of a “correct” path of higher education, healthier life. PLUS we also have to accept our kids are the 1st generations w/24*7 TV’s & Computers as “babysitters”. OK too busy and tired with a #’s of jobs: we have left without any supervision control when content has been the worst (again no matter the reason) YES, WE PARENTS DID NOT PREP the big majority of this generation to be mentally strong youth-adults (we wanted them to have liberty be free). So now we have to pay the consequences of our “laziness” that the world is not going to a better place and we only have a handful of adult-youth being “correctly” guided and we just can hope and pray that they WILL want to lead our country to a better future “using” the “unfit” to accomplish it….

1. Medical/Physical problems could be anything…many of these stem from candidates being overweight.
2. Illegal drug use: this is people who admit using certain drugs or who have it on their criminal record. Actual illegal drug use is probably much higher, and there are many people in the military who have just lied about it.
3. Mental Category V…ok. It is what it is. Personnel with ADHD are allowed in certain services in certain jobs. Includes suicidal acts, bipolar disorder, massive depression.
4. Having even 1 dependent under 18 disqualifies you because you are unable to care for them while in boot camp and follow-on training that requires you to be there 24/7. If you are not the sole provider, then you are eligible.
5. Criminal record…again, not surprising. Surprisingly lenient.

Start raising your children properly, stop feeding them crap, and make them exercise and do their homework. More than 75% of parents don’t even do that. Garbage in equals garbage out, so it’s not surprising that we’re raising a generation of obese degenerates unworthy to wear the uniform.