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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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University of Massachusetts Amherst

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

Life course

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Reinstitutionalizing Families: Life Course Policy And Marriage In The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu Jan 2014

Reinstitutionalizing Families: Life Course Policy And Marriage In The Military, Jennifer H. Lundquist, Zhun Xu

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

The transition to adulthood has become an increasingly telescoped process for Americans with marital formation occurring increasingly later in the life course. It is therefore striking to find a context like the U.S. military where marriage rates bear an anachronistic resemblance to those of the 1950s era. Using narrative data from life history interviews with military affiliates collected as part of a larger study on the impact of institutions on families, we show that the military has reinstitutionalized military families at the same time that civilian families are becoming deinstitutionalized. Structural conditions of modern military service, such as war deployment …


"The Best Years Of Our Lives”: Military Service And Family Relationships – A Life Course Perspective, Daniel Burland, Jennifer H. Lundquist Jan 2012

"The Best Years Of Our Lives”: Military Service And Family Relationships – A Life Course Perspective, Daniel Burland, Jennifer H. Lundquist

Dr. Jennifer H. Lundquist

All lives of military personnel and veterans are linked to other lives, but as Burland and Lundquist’s Chapter 8 (in this volume) indicates, this social reality is shown primarily by studies of military families within the relatively short period of the soldiers’ military service. The active-duty service member’s enlistment, departure for basic training, and deployment overseas, when that occurs, are documented by military records, and perhaps by fi eld surveys. By contrast, longitudinal studies of veterans, frequently over many years, have tended to focus on the individual veteran to the exclusion of significant others, family members, and friends. This limitation …