Struggles in Personal Life

Marriage, Relationships, Friendships, and Parenting

Whether it is due to daily shift work, undercover investigations, patrol, or any area of the job, the officer’s family life, marriage, friendships, and morals are at risk of destruction. The officer’s family are the people who see firsthand what the job can do to a person. The biological cycle discussed earlier plays a role in family life. Disengagement from children and spouses can cause strained relationships, and create lack of security within the family. Being married to a law enforcement officer is practically a job in itself. With such a chaotic schedule, the spouse must be responsible and available. If marriage is not prioritized, it can very easily slip away and just become another random thing in a law enforcement officer’s life, when it should be a central point. A study performed by the University of Arkansas Criminal Justice Institute showed that the divorce rate of law enforcement officers is 60-65% (Boyce 2019). Before becoming ombudsman of the Secret Service, Bill Doyle spent his years as an agent in protection, heading the detail for the protection of Barbara Bush in New York City. His family lived in Maryland, and he did not want to disrupt his two boys in high school and his other two younger children, so he and his wife made the decision that the family would remain at home while Bill went to NYC. He only got to see his wife and kids about every two weeks. This was difficult for all of them; this is just one example of many sacrifices that law enforcement makes for our country and its citizens. 

Being a law enforcement officer with children never gets easier, no matter how many years you have been on the job. The children of law enforcement are exposed to topics and situations at a young age that most other children do not learn about or hear about until they are much older. Former undercover Agent Mark Aysta of the FBI talks about this, saying, “My kids heard me talking, negotiating murder for hires, drug trafficking deals, and bribe payments to federal officials. To them that was normal, and they just knew that they had to be quiet in the back seat while I was doing my job” (M. Aysta, personal communication, June 6, 2022). He also described how he constantly had to miss his children's games and school events due to the job, and how his children had to have undercover names in case they ever came into contact with someone who could not know his true identity. “My kids knew that anytime I called them by their undercover name, that meant that we were in the presence of a bad person. Our cover story was that I was their uncle who was visiting from out of town” (M. Aysta, personal communication, June 6, 2022).  Children who grow up with parents in law enforcement often deal with anxiety and sometimes fear for their parents’ safety. This can result in difficulty in the parent-child relationship, and makes it very important to prioritize communication, love, reassurance, and quality time in these relationships.. As stated earlier, a lot of the time, law enforcement officers let the job become who they are, rather than what they do. Secret Service Agent Sean Donnini says it best, in that “none of the titles that the job could give me matter anywhere near as much as ‘Dad' ” (S. Donnini, personal communication, June 9, 2022).