Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE August 2020 Making Military Wives: Militarizing Social Reproduction of Military Families William J. Oliver Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Oliver, William J., "Making Military Wives: Militarizing Social Reproduction of Military Families" (2020). Dissertations - ALL. 1253. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/1253 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT How do current day military institutional practices structure the daily lives of military wives? To answer this question, I use the theories of greedy institutions, militarization, and the life-course perspective to investigate the effects of deployments, temporary duty assignments, and training exercises, which coalesce to create long-term family separations, as well long work hours and frequent family geographic moves. In total, I conducted in-depth interviews with 38 women and 2 men, used as supplemental data, who were married to active duty U.S. military service members at the time of their interview. I find the military’s organization of work creates certain work-family constraints that produces a sense of disorder within military family life. This disorder is constituted and sustained through military wives’ experiences of chronic uncertainty, related to when service members will be away for training, a deployment, or when they will be released from work at the end of the day. Due to these constraints, military wives’ reproductive labor becomes structured through the ways that institutional practices impact military families. As a result, service members’ military work responsibilities become privileged, which reproduces the gendered division of labor. Furthermore, I find that these institutionally produced work-family constraints position military wives in a subordinate social location. To sustain themselves within this social positioning, participants draw upon particular forms of sense- making, that includes perceptions of military authority, comparing reproductive labor with military work, and the use of children as a form of motivation, all of which result in military wives’ accommodation and acquiescence of the military’s institutional practices. Finally, as a result of these institutional constraints, participants often struggle to maintain a sense of self outside of their family and institutional roles. Negotiating their liminal position, some participants activate institutional discourses related to two military wife stereotypes, the wife who wears her husband’s rank, and the dependapotamus, which are operationalized within a process of comparison and disassociation. These stereotypes are constructed within the military’s system of stratification, which results in the reproduction of social class within military family communities. Overall, this study demonstrates how the gendered division of labor is enduring within the U.S. military, as well as how military wives’ reproductive labor and forms of sense- making sustain the military institution. These findings also document how the work that is required by military wives to sustain themselves within the work-family constraints created by the military, results in the reproduction of the very social conditions they confront on a daily basis. MAKING MILITARY WIVES: MILITARIZING SOCIAL REPRODUCTION OF MILITARY FAMILIES By William James Oliver M.A. Syracuse University, 2011 M.S. Dowling College, 2008 B.S. State University of New York, College at Brockport, 2004 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Syracuse University August 2020 Copyright © William James Oliver 2020 All Rights Reserved Acknowledgements I want to thank my mentor, Andrew London. You have always supported me as a researcher, teacher, graduate student, and friend. In the long process that led to the completion of my dissertation, you patiently read through early chapter drafts that were nearly the length of this entire dissertation. However, you stayed positive and helped me work through my ideas, guiding me in a process that can often seem quite overwhelming. You have included me in research, we’ve talked about teaching, and you provided me with every opportunity I could think of to develop as a research and teacher. I would also like to thank Gretchen Purser who, when I found myself without an advisor or committee, helped keep me on track at a time when I had little focus. You are the only remaining original committee member as everyone else has retired or taken jobs elsewhere. I appreciate that you stuck with me. Further, I would like to thank the other members of my dissertation committee: Madonna Harrington-Meyer, Jackie Orr, and Janet Wilmoth. Your helpful and encouraging feedback carried me to the finish at a time when the world was being upended by a global pandemic. Finally, I would not have completed this dissertation without the love and support of my wife, Jess. You took on so much at home so that I could find time to write. I can never truly explain how grateful I am for that. You keep this family together; you are our foundation. Finally, you have also been my sounding board for even my more outlandish ideas and I always feel so much better after talking things through with you. You certainly have a way of helping me through my most neurotic moments. I would never have completed this dissertation, or this degree without you. And to our son Bram, the “good luck” card you gave me before my iv dissertation defense helped calm all my nerves and kept me focused. I kept it with me the entire defense. This dissertation is dedicated to the participants of this study. Thank you for taking some of your very precious time thoughtfully taking me on a journey through your feelings, emotions, and experiences. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1 HISTORICAL CONTEXT ............................................................................................................................................... 2 THE CURRENT STUDY ................................................................................................................................................ 8 KEY CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS ................................................................................................. 13 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LITERATURE ...................................................................................................................... 43 ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION .................................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER II. DATA AND RESEARCH METHODS ........................................................... 48 ACCESSING MILITARY FAMILY COMMUNITIES THROUGH INTERVIEWING ............................................................... 48 SAMPLING FRAME .................................................................................................................................................... 49 RECRUITMENT OF PARTICIPANTS ............................................................................................................................. 52 DATA COLLECTION .................................................................................................................................................. 56 DATA ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................................................................... 70 CHAPTER III. WRITTEN IN PENCIL: INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF INSTITUTED DISORDER ............................................................... 76 LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMING .............................................................................................................. 78 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LITERATURE ...................................................................................................................... 82 INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES ...................................................................................................................................... 83 THE EXPERIENCE OF CHRONIC UNCERTAINTY ......................................................................................................... 97 PRIVILEGING INSTITUTIONAL PRACTICES .............................................................................................................. 106 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................................................... 114 CHAPTER IV. “YOU MAKE THE BEST OF YOUR ENVIRONMENT:” INVESTIGATING MILITARY WIVES’ FORMS OF EMOTION MANAGEMENT .... 117 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND THEORETICAL FRAMING .................................................................................. 119 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LITERATURE .................................................................................................................... 124 DON’T OVERANALYZE IT: PERCEPTIONS OF MILITARY AUTHORITY ..................................................................... 126 LABORING