Military and Relationships

In practical terms, the military family must be divided into at least two major groups, according to the military's institutionalized pattern of stratification. There are officers; an educated, managerial class; and enlisted personnel, a class of workers whose normal duties include the performance of manual labor, or, in the case of higher-ranking enlisted soldiers, the immediate supervision of lower-ranked enlistees. By design, there is little mobility between officer and enlisted classes, but there are gradations within each. There are then at least four main categories of military family, according to the rank of the serving soldier: junior [Page 1104]enlisted (new recruits), senior enlisted (soldiers promoted out of the ranks to administrative and ceremonial positions), junior officers (recent college graduates now tasked with small group leadership), and senior officers (the highest ranked service members). Within each category are subdivisions by the usual demographic markers such as race, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic origin, marital status, and number of children (if any). This portrait is further complicated by changes to the military institution itself across time. In the 20th century alone, the U.S. military experienced periods of build-up as well as periods of personnel drawdowns, both popular and unpopular wars, segregation and subsequent desegregation (1948), periods of conscription (World War I, World War II, and 1948 to 1973), and several anomalous events, including a military participation rate of 12 percent during World War II, unmatched in U.S. history, before or since. Thus, there is no single “military family,” just as there is no monolithic “civilian family.”

Service members serve the needs of a demanding and unusual institution. On the one hand, the families of service members pass through phases familiar to any sociologist of the family: mate selection, marriage, parenting, competing career demands, divorce, internal conflict and perhaps even violence within the family, and retirement planning. On the other hand, these phases are shaped by the unique features of the military institution, among the most intrusive of which are the following: (a) Members of the military are subject to an additional set of laws known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). These laws are stringent and socially conservative. For example, adultery and homosexuality are both criminal acts according to UCMJ. In practice, the laws of UCMJ pertaining to family dynamics are selectively enforced. For example, the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy is an attempt to regularize selective enforcement of the legal prohibition on homosexuality. Although only the service member is subject to UCMJ, his or her entire family is often forced to conform to its mandates by extension. (b) Service members are required to be available to the military at all times, and for whatever duty, however inconvenient, unpleasant, or hazardous. The family must adapt to this reality, which often translates into prolonged separations, frequent relocations, disruptions to the career of the spouse not serving in the military, school system irregularity for the children, the risk of death or disability to the main provider of the family, and general uncertainty about the future. On a more positive note, the military provides its members and their families with a social welfare net unparalleled in the civilian sector, except perhaps in some religious orders. This safety net consists of such substantial benefits as job security, housing and food subsidies, free medical care, educational benefits, low-cost life insurance, and subsidized retirement plans. Given these distinctive features of military life, it is not surprising that the demographics and trends of military families sometimes differ dramatically from those that characterize their civilian counterparts. This entry describes military families, their benefits, and the challenges they face in contemporary U.S. society.

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