Mothers of the Military examines the distinctive kinds of support
required during an increasingly privatized war, specifically
material, moral and healthcare support. Mothers are a particularly
key part of the current support system for service members, and
Wendy Christensen follows the mothers of U.S. service members in
the War on Terrorism through the stages of recruitment, deployment,
and post-deployment. Bringing to light the experiences and stories
of women who are largely invisible during war-the mothers of
service members. Over 2.5 million members of the U.S. military have
deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan during the now 16 year-long war.
Each service member has loved ones-spouses, parents and
children-who provide necessary emotional and physical support
during deployment. This book has three goals. The first is to make
mothers experiences during wartime visible. The second is to
interrogate what support means during war. Finally, it examines the
impact of war support on mothers' political participation. Ideally,
civilians provide moral approval of war, patriotism, and extend
understanding and appreciation of the sacrifice enlistees and their
families are making. But, in these long wars, public and political
approval has plummeted. It is not surprising this narrow slice of
Americans dealing with the daily realities of war feels
increasingly separate from civilians. Military families are
isolated from those Americans who are able to ignore the war or
offer superficial expressions of patriotic gratitude. Mothers
occupy a complex gendered location during wartime. Even though
women are now serving in combat positions, women have historically
held down the home front, where family labor is still assigned
disproportionately to women. However, the military does not treat
mothers and fathers equally. The military assumes fathers will be
supportive of service, and calls on them to be proud of the
courageous decision their child has made. They consider mothers, on
the other hand, potential impediments to service, not wanting their
child in harm's way. Through each stage of service, mothers take on
different kinds of support for their child, for the military, and
for war policy. At each stage of war, mothers are prescribed a
gendered support position. In recruitment material, the military
assumes mothers will be emotional and worried about enlistment, so
they appeal to mother's love and need for their child to be safe.
During deployment, mothers provide supplies and moral support.
Declining enlistment numbers and a long war have led to multiple
deployments and unprecedented burdens on military families. These
mothers step in to help with childcare and finances. Furthermore,
mothers are overwhelmingly, according to military studies, the ones
providing mental and physical healthcare when veterans need it. As
providers of critical systems of war support, mothers bear much of
the burden of the current wars. War provides mothers a way to
participate in the national project, but the uneven burden of being
a constant "supporter" further marginalizes their citizenship. The
gendered support role the military designs for mothers is not
designed to facilitate active democratic citizenship but rather to
make it seem natural that they, too, fall in line with the chain of
command. Mothers of the Military, as a whole, asks how the acts of
supplying material, moral, and medical support end up so often
marginalizing mothers as citizens from the political process and
under what conditions do mothers resist?
General
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