ARMY COLONEL FINDS FAMILY COMES FIRST

By DANIELLE CRITTENDEN

ARMY Colonel Lois Beard just made the bravest decision of her life. A woman who fought Saddam Hussein's forces in the Persian Gulf war, who took part in the invasion of Panama, and who commanded a peace-keeping battalion in Bosnia, finally met a force she couldn't defeat: her three children. So Beard, one of the highest-ranking women in the military, decided to retire. Her resignation last week made the front page of The New York Times.

The fallout from Beard's retirement has been nearly as spectacular as that after Brenda Barnes, former CEO of Pepsi-Cola North America and one of the top female executives in the country, quit her job in 1997.

For Barnes, the "click" moment came when her 13-year-old son told her what he most wanted for his birthday was her promise to attend it. For Beard, it was when she noticed that her teenage daughters were becoming hostile and withdrawn.

Her 16-year-old daughter said, "It just made me angry when she [Beard] came home and asked me what I had been doing. I wouldn't answer. I'd only say to myself ‘You weren't there when I needed you, so why should I talk to you now?'" Beard painfully recognized that, "I would be a better commander if I wasn't a parent and a better parent if I wasn't a commander."

Like Barnes, Col. Beard will come under heavy fire from feminists for her decision. They will see it as a cop-out -- or maybe in Beard's case, a bug-out -- from her duty to uphold the fiction that working mothers are as unaffected (or should be as unaffected) as men by the demands of their children.

The Times coverage typically focused on the "brass ceiling" that women in the military face, and what a tragedy it is to lose such a good soldier to motherhood. Very few are willing to admit what a tragedy it is for children to lose a good mother to soldiering.

Indeed, when you read about Beard's career, you wonder why she had children to begin with. She was gone every weekday from 6:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., and was away most weekends as well. Her husband is an officer, too, so he could not play Mr. Mom. She disappeared from home for four months during Panama; both parents left for another nine months during the Gulf war.

During that time the children stayed in the care of an aunt, and faced the possibility of becoming orphans. (Since five members of the Sullivan family were lost in the famous sinking of the U.S.S. Juneau in World War II, the Navy has forbidden brothers to serve aboard the same ship. No such policy prevents mothers and fathers from serving together, with the result that so many Army children and infants were abandoned to sitters and relatives during the Gulf war.) The Beard children were also left behind in Germany with a nanny for three months while their parents served in Bosnia.

Beard eventually came to recognize that while many soldiers could fill her spit-polished shoes in the Army, there is no one who can fill her shoes in her own family. It was not sexism, or unfair policies, or the shortage of quality day-care that eventually drove her to resign. The military made every effort to accommodate her and advance her -- as did her own husband, who followed her from Bosnia when she received a promotion to take over a command post in Fort Lewis.

It was Beard's own understanding that her children needed her more than they needed anyone else -- and that she needed them, too.

Unfortunately, this simple understanding continues to elude policymakers in military and civilian worlds alike. By refusing to acknowledge that men and women are different -- and face different challenges and priorities when they become parents -- millions of mothers are now expected to struggle along in workplaces that are inflexible and indifferent to their lives and responsibilities outside the office.

And millions of children are condemned to full-time care at the hands of strangers who are equally inflexible and indifferent to their needs as growing individuals. In the military, unlike the corporate world, this issue can become literally a matter of life and death. Women have demanded the right to be treated identically to men, even in combat. The military brass has caved in to their demand (proving that the old saying of the last century is still true today: generals who would cheerfully charge a cannon will run away from a petticoat).

As bad as this policy is for women and children, it is even worse for the effectiveness of America's forces. Stars and Stripes reports that in 1995 and 1996, a woman had to be evacuated from Bosnia every three days because of pregnancy. Eight percent of women in the Navy are pregnant at any given time. Stephanie Gutmann, author of the forthcoming book, "The Kinder, Gentler Military: Can the New Female-Friendly Armed Services Still Fight?" notes that, "Of the 400 women on the first gender-integrated warship, the U.S.S. Eisenhower, 24 were ‘non-deployable' due to pregnancy at the start of the Persian Gulf tour and another 15 were evacuated once on the water."

On the U.S.S. Acadia -- dubbed "the Love Boat" by the press -- 36 out of a total of 360 female sailors had to be evacuated during a Gulf tour.

Sometimes the best way women can do their patriotic duty is by staying out of military positions that put other lives in jeopardy. And as Col. Barnes discovered, doesn't raising healthy, secure and happy children also count as serving one's country -- for generations to come?