Gender role reversal: Civilian husbands of U.S. military servicewomen as tied‐migrant workers

• Published date: 01 February 2024
• Author: L. Emily Dowling,Jeffrey B. Jackson,Ashley L. Landers
• Date: 01 February 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12936

RESEARCH

Gender role reversal: Civilian husbands of U.S.

military servicewomen as tied-migrant workers

L. Emily Dowling

1

|Jeffrey B. Jackson

2

|Ashley L. Landers

3

1

Department of Human Development and

Family Science, Virginia Tech, Falls

Church, VA

2

School of Family Life, Brigham Young

University, Provo, UT

3

Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio

State University, Columbus, OH

Correspondence

Ashley L. Landers, Department of Human

Sciences, The Ohio State University, 130 B

Campbell Hall, 1787 Neil Avenue, Columbus,

OH 43210, USA.

Email: landers.116@osu.edu

Abstract

Objective: This qualitative study examined the experiences

of male spouses of female service members in the

U.S. military (civilian husbands of servicewomen) in their

positions as tied-migrant workers.

Background: Employment of civilian husbands of service-

women is frequently affected when they geographically

relocate due to their wives’military service. Because socie-

tal norms for husbands as primary breadwinners in mar-

riages persist and the majority of military couples consist

of male service members married to female civilian

spouses, civilian husbands of servicewomen may experi-

ence a gender role reversal in their identities as a spouse

and as a provider within their relationships and military

culture.

Method: Semistructured interviews were conducted with

22 civilian husbands who experienced at least one geographic

relocation due to their wife’s military service. Descriptive

phenomenological analysis was used to discover the essence

of participants’experiences.

Results: Themes around defining masculinity, minority

experiences in the military, and nontraditional gender pro-

vider roles as tied-migrant workers emerged. Participants

experienced a gender role reversal as tied-migrant workers

and as military spouses, and they had some difficulties

integrating into military communities. Participants

expanded their masculine identities to include performing

traditionally feminine tasks and valuing egalitarianism in

their spousal relationships when they experienced barriers

to breadwinning.

Author note: The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants whose sharing of their experiences made this research possible, as well

as the input of Ellie Cunanan-Petty. The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Received: 18 February 2022Revised: 19 April 2023Accepted: 20 May 2023

DOI: 10.1111/fare.12936

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits

use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or

adaptations are made.

© 2023 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of National Council on Family Relations.

Family Relations. 2024;73:441–465. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/fare 441

Conclusion: Findings indicated the importance of emotional

support as civilian husbands navigate theirmasculine identi-

ties and relationships both with spouses and as gender

minorities in their communities.

Implications:Clinical recommendations for psychothera-

pists are provided with an emphasis on using emotionally

focused therapy with couples consisting of civilian hus-

bands and servicewomen.

KEYWORDS

breadwinning, gender roles, masculinity, military spouses, provider role,

stereotypes

U.S. military service members (i.e., enlisted or officers in the Air Force, Army, Coast Guard,

Marine Corps, or Navy) and their spouses face a unique set of potential problems in addition to

the various stressors that all couples may experience. Service members’jobs may include physi-

cally intense training, extended time apart from their families to potentially dangerous places,

and frequent geographic relocation (Pflanz & Sonnek, 2002). Because families are an important

source of support for service members, the military has policies that promote marriage

(Lundquist & Xu, 2014). Compared with civilian counterparts, service members may be more

likely both to marry and to divorce at a younger age (Hogan & Seifert, 2010).

Although the military divorce rate seems to be lower than the civilian rate (Bushatz, 2017;

National Center for Health Statistics, 2017), it is difficult to compare military to civilian divorce

rates because of the differences in data (e.g., records from the Department of Defense on service

members, demographically matched civilian records from surveys; Pollard et al., 2012). How-

ever, active-duty service members who are female (i.e., servicewomen) are more likely than both

civilian women and active-duty military personnel who are male (i.e., servicemen) to experience

divorce and have been shown to have about double the divorce rate of the latter (Adler-Baeder

et al., 2005; Bushatz, 2017). This higher divorce rate is despite a lower marriage rate: Only

approximately 44% of servicewomen compared with approximately 56% of servicemen are mar-

ried (Patten & Parker, 2011).

The most stable marriages in the militaryappear to be those between servicemen andcivilian

women (i.e., civilian wives) followed by dual-military marriages in which two service members

are married; marriages between servicewomen and civilian men (i.e., civilian husbands) are the

most susceptible todivorce (Karney & Crown, 2007). As the most vulnerable marriages appear to

be between servicewomen and civilian husbands, an increased understanding ofthe experiences of

civilian husbands may provide some insight intothe higher divorce rate among servicewomen.

Spouses of service members face unique stressors compared with spouses in dual civilian

marriages. Both male and female military spouses have been considered tied-migrant workers

(Mincer, 1978) because their employment opportunities are largely contingent on their partners’

work-related migration to another geographic location, referred to as a permanent change of

station (PCS) in the military (Cooke & Speirs, 2005). For civilian husbands, a tied-migrant

worker arrangement deviates from the typical patriarchal organization of families in which men

are the primary financial providers, which is especially salient within military culture

(Hale, 2012; Lundquist, 2004). Men may be especially concerned with their abilities to provide

for their families, and their perceived inability to do so may be related to relationship issues for

couples (Sherman, 2017). Men may even be more likely to leave marriages if they are not

employed even if they are happy in the marriage (Sayer et al., 2011).

The experiences of civilian husbands of servicewomen have not been studied in as great

detail as those of civilian wives of servicemen, which may be because there are significantly

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