"Many young people CAN think through their decisions - my dh was 18 when he joined up, as was my db. Both have good salaries and a full, busy and intellectually challenging professional life. Both have got their Masters degrees whilst serving...and lastly, neither were poor with low aspirations; they weighed up what they wanted to do after A levels and went for it. Both were service kids and knew the downsides as well as the up of being in the Forces. I am immensely proud of them both."
Well said.
My husband made the decision to join up at the age of 15. He came from a sink estate with all the typical problems that carries - no encouragement to work hard at school from his parents, and expectation that his role in life was to get whatever job was available and contribute some money to the house. He say his elder brother and sisters trapped in low-paid jobs with few qualifications and decided that he wanted to get out of that place.
So, on paper at least, he was exactly the sort of "cannon fodder" of whom people have been so dismissive of on this thread. If the Forces were so keen on just recruiting anyone, he'd have been in a line regiment as soon as he'd completed basic training.
Instead, they talked to him, gave him aptitude tests and told him that they'd love to have him as a soldier, if that was what he wanted, but that he showed the potential to be an officer. They told him to go back to school, get A-levels, go to Uni and then come back and see them. Hardly a cynical recruitment drive - more of an example of how the Forces invests in talent and potential.
My husband went to Uni and left with a good degree and a postgradute masters and then went on to Sandhurst. He commissioned in 1999 and, ten years later, is now a senior major who'll get his first look at promotion to Lt Col in just over 18 mths.
That's pretty rapid promotion but, more than that, the Army has given him an opportunity he probably wouldn't have had otherwise and he's taken full advantage of it.
He's intelligent, capable, responsible and does a highly specialised job. He's physically fit, outgoing, well-rounded and confident - some of that is innate to him, some was undoubtedly bred into him by the Army.
He measures himself as man by the job he does and he takes great pride in doing that job efficiently and professionally.
So - how's that for a portrait of someone that a lot of people on this thread would have stereotyped as "...ignorant cannon fodder..." who ought to be protected from the big nasty old Armed Forces.
The Army was the making of him.
I, too, think that a lot of people have very strange ideas about how the Forces work and what type of people they attract. I don't think it's unreasonable at all to be worried by the thought of your child joining up - it's our nature to want to protect our children and keep them safe - but it is unreasonable to be so het up about a careers presentation.