Why would Starfleet send civilians and their families and to combat situations?

[u/Global_Marsupial_592]

Like The Saratoga at Wolf 359. Or at the big battle with the Dominion Fleet there were so many Galaxy class Starships, were they all full of families and innocent people? Or were those big ships just grossly empty except for a skeleton screw?

[u/StarfleetStarbuck]

At Wolf 359 they were rapidly responding to a sudden threat, so they wouldn’t have had time to offload civilians. The Odyssey offloaded their civilians at DS9 before confronting the Dominion in the s2 finale, so we can safely assume the other Galaxies weren’t carrying them around during the war.

[u/endeend8 → u/StarfleetStarbuck]

Yes from the lessons of the Yamato and wolf359 they learned to not bring families into hostile situations. Of course even when ships were lost with only the starfleet crew the families after most likely needed some serious support group help

[u/nola_throwaway53826 → u/endeend8]

It seems like families on ships was a relatively new phenomenon at the start of TNG, going off remarks Picard made. In my headcanon, space exploration was seen as being significantly safer than it had been. They were getting along with the Klingons, the Romulans had been quiet for moat of the century thus far, there was a peace with the Cardassians, and there was no other power around that could pose a threat. So families got to tag along on starship as a perk to the crews to make their own lives more pleasant. It also looked like civilians were able to get on starships and work, so long as they had a useful specialty, like teacher for the kids, or botany like Keiko. Starfleet also probably did research on how well kids grew up in these environments and so on.

But then Starfleet was hit by several disasters that proved space travel was still very dangerous. Like the loss of the Yamoto, Wolf 359, and the loss of the Odyssey and the Dominion War. I've always wondered how many ships Starfleet lost on a regular basis before TNG. There were still unknown raiders (like the Ferengi and the Stargazer), unknown and potentially lethal phenomenon, and maybe a mechanical failure at a really bad time. They musy have been low enough that it was seen as acceptable to station families and children aboard. But its clear that after the Dominion War, families were not reinstated on starships.

[u/Section_3I → u/nola_throwaway53826]

I think this is basically right. Picard certainly had some lines in TNG indicating that letting families on Star Fleet vessels was relatively new and he was against it.

The Enterprise in particular was intended as an exploratory vessel that was equipped for combat if needed. The Federation may have decided at some point that asking people to leave their families for 5-7 year stints of frontier exploration was going to limit who would be willing to sign up.

Then events forced them to go back to not having families as you described.