Putting the Family Into the Military Mission

Garland-Jackson

2019

Armed Forces & Society

Within the institution and military community, civilian wives of service members occupy complicated roles. On the one hand, wives are undisputedly crucial to the functioning of their service member husbands. However, wives are simultaneously considered subordinate to their husbands within the military and extended community. Indicative of this attitude are the divisive stereotypes of military wives that range from lazy and irresponsible, to overly rank-conscious and entitled. Based on combined in-depth interviews from two samples of military wives, this article investigates how the women navigate the military spouse role within the institutional, community-oriented context of the military. Specifically, we ask, how do these women construct gender and exercise agency when drawing on the stereotypes of wives within the community? By utilizing such mechanisms as symbolic boundary work, gender policing, and stereotyping, women both reify stereotypes of the military spouse and exert agency in creating the military spouse identity for themselves.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Military As a Gendered Institutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“I’m Not Your ‘Typical’ Military Wife”: The Construction of Gender and Agency Through Stereotypes

Garland-Jackson

2019

Armed Forces & Society

“…In addition to being greedy, the military is a highly gendered institution (Acker 1992;Christensen 2014;Enloe 2000;Gray 2016;Weber 2012), instituting a militarysexual division of labor (Hyde 2015) that is predicated on normalizing hypermasculine ideals and traditional heterosexual gender divisions. This hypermasculinity pervades all areas of military life, even the private family realm, where those actions and roles most geared toward achieving the mission are valorized, privileged, and masculinized, and those activities deemed secondary are less valued and feminized (Hautzinger and Scandlyn 2013;Weinstein 1997).…”

Section: The Military Spouse Experiencementioning

confidence: 99%

“The Mommy Deployment”: Military Spouses and Surrogacy in the United States

2017

Sociological Forum

This article examines narratives of women who are surrogates and are married to members of the military in the United States. I show how this group of women invoke and transpose their structured military experiences and institutional understandings of sacrifice, duty, and responsibility when constructing their surrogate experience. Using semistructured interviews with 33 military spouses who have been surrogates, I trace the parallels they narrate between their role as military spouse and their role as surrogate—with metaphors of deployment, relocation, and the “hurry up and wait” game, in addition to strict daily regimentation. Through this work, I highlight the often‐surprising transposition between militarized and surrogacy narratives invoked by surrogates and show how the practice of surrogacy allows them to tap into the narratives they have crafted through their experiences as a spouse to make a difference in the lives of others, contribute financially to their own families, and to gain a sense of importance outside of their everyday roles. The narratives provide for a better understanding of the commercially arranged surrogate experience in the United States and the state‐structured military spouse experience by exposing the skills, language, and habits utilized by this group of women.

“Honey, I Want to Be a Surrogate”: How Military Spouses Negotiate and Navigate Surrogacy With Their Service Member Husbands

Journal of Family Issues

2019

This article examines how military spouses negotiate the decision to become a surrogate with their service member husband and how the two navigate surrogacy together. It is speculated that military spouses are ideal candidates for surrogacy due to their particular status as a military spouse; however, military spouses face structural constraints in their everyday lives which in turn would prove challenging to their desire to become a surrogate. Based on in-depth interviews with 33 military spouses who had been surrogates, this article examines how military spouses discuss, negotiate, and experience surrogacy with their spouses all the while navigating the structural demands of the military and the contractual demands of surrogacy. Findings highlight egalitarian decision making between the spouses, and a mostly collaborative approach to the surrogacy process. Ultimately, this work illuminates how surrogacy is experienced by the women who participate in the practice and provides insight as to how military marriages function.