UC Berkeley

Due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wives of U.S. Army soldiers experienced having their loved ones in harm's way for more than ten years. This dissertation presents more than 70 in-depth interviews with active duty (regular army) and national guard wives to examine how these women understand the hardships in a military marriage. The divorce revolution and the introduction of an all-volunteer force have loosened the control that these institutions once had over the individual. Consequently, today's army wives are mostly on their own in making sense of the difficulties they face.

This project presents a comprehensive analysis of how army wives make sense of having a loved one in harm's way at different periods of the military time cycle and in two social contexts: living on base or living among civilians (Chapter One). Army wives draw upon duty, commitment and obligation to answer the critical questions of how much they are willing to suffer and for whom (Chapter Two). These categories of thinking correspond to the institutional demands that both the military and marriage made on women in the past and are believed to make today (Chapter Three). For whom wives see themselves enduring hardships, however, depends on the social context in which they live (Chapter Four). Regular army wives living in a military community focus on their commitment to the partnership at the core of their marriage and family. National guard wives living among civilian neighbors see their efforts as the fulfillment of a duty to the country and even to the people of other countries. The difference is counter-intuitive but reflects how the shapes of their social communities influence the meanings wives make of their situations.

During deployment (Chapter Five), regular army wives come to see the beneficiaries of their sacrifice to include other army wives. In the military base's context of mutual scrutiny and accountability, they see this extension of their commitment as a way to keep their own husbands safe while fighting overseas. National guard wives, living in isolation from other army wives and separated from their civilian neighbors by the demands of deployment, find deployment to be a special period that reaffirms their thinking in terms of duty and sacrifice toward a greater good.

As their husbands return from war (Chapter Six), wives face the unexpected difficulties of family reintegration and shift their thinking once again. With redeployment (Chapter Seven), thinking across both military and civilian contexts converges. By the second, third, and even fourth overseas combat tour, both regular army and national guard wives are making sense of what they still have to endure in similar terms.

Over the cycles of military deployment, reunion, and redeployment, army wives come to share an understanding of risks in terms of individual obligations and reciprocities (Conclusion). Initially, social context divides their thinking into open-ended terms of duty and commitment. As they move through these cycles, both the amount of hardships and for whom they see themselves suffering become more specified and narrow in terms of obligation. This shift is not catastrophic for military marriages, but constitutes the adaptive process by which army families become resilient. The convergence in their thinking toward more individualistic terms does not reflect a broad historic trend toward individualism or the unavailability of patriotic sacrifice as a justification, but it is a reflection of the different contexts of place and time in which they live their lives.