This article discusses risk and resilience factors that may affect military families, with a focus on frequent relocation, deployment, exposure to combat and PTSD, and postdeployment reunion as possible risk factors influencing child psychosocial and academic outcome. Research findings are presented as supporting a theoretical pathway that suggests that the effects of military life on child outcome may follow an indirect pathway involving parental stress and psychopathology, rather than military life directly affecting children of military parents. The proposed pathway also serves to highlight the need for further research on understudied resilience factors and provides suggestions for interventions that may benefit military families.Military families are relatively unique with regard to the constellation of factors that influence them. The confluence of specific risk and resilience factors raises interesting questions within the mental health field concerning issues of development, yet it appears to remain a relatively understudied population. For example, the concept of the "military family syndrome," which characterizes military families as consisting of authoritarian fathers, depressed mothers, and out-of-control children was introduced by LaGrone (1978; Jensen, Xenakis, Wolf, & Bain, 1991) decades ago. However, researchers continue to debate the evidence supporting this military stereotype, with some suggesting that thus far "we have no reliable data to modify or refute the military stereotype" (Terr, 1992) or to judge whether military life is hazardous to children and families. This article aims to review risk and resilience research about military families, in part to suggest potential avenues of research that could clarify such questions about family life in the military system. In addition, this article aims to use these research findings to provide support for a

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