Reinstitutionalizing the Family: Marriage in the U.S. Military

• In Event: 091 - Section on the Sociology of the Family Paper Session. Families that Challenge and are Challenged by Our Times

Abstract

Research shows that the pathways taken to adulthood leave an indelible mark on the life course (Rindfuss 1991). Marriage is one pathway to adulthood that now occurs increasingly later in the American life course, a pattern identified by demographers as part of the second demographic transition (Lesthaeghe & Neidert 2006).In the midst of this societal shift, one well known American institution appears immune to these processes. The all-volunteer U.S. military was founded in 1973, precisely the period in which post-WWII marriage-delaying behaviors began to emerge in the United States. While the rest of U.S. society began to experience later transitions to adulthood, men and women in the military married and had children at very early ages (blinded; Drummet et al. 2003; Hogan & Seifert 2010; Teachman 2009). In so doing, we bring together literatures on the life course and military families to show how the military has reinstitutionalized the family.

To attract recruits and maintain “manpower readiness,” the military has by embedded the family into its core institutional structure through a number of welfare-like provisions that hasten the transition to adulthood. Although U.S. spending on defense is often painted in contrast to the government’s overall lack of welfare spending, military family support is a significant proportion of defense funding. The U.S. military apparatus has been largely overlooked as a major provider of universalistic welfare entitlements that stands in stark contrast to the rest of American society (Gifford 2006).

Author

• Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, University of Massachusetts-Amherst