Spouses and the Military Community

Abstract

The traditional military experience is one in which the military provides the soldier with all the good things in life, including a role for spouses. Increasingly, however, as militaries modernize, they become more occupational and less institutional, and these traditional patterns break down. In the immediate post-war period, the issue of spouses and families was one that was strictly institutionally controlled, at least in the lives of rank-and-file soldiers. Soldiers were forbidden to marry in the late 1940s and early 1950s, with the reason cited for this being the national effort to retake the mainland. Presumably, it was feared that the psychological effect of “settling down” in Taiwan would dampen the soldiers’ zeal to leave the island in order to recapture the Chinese homeland from the Communists. It was much easier in this era for officers to marry, and in fact, marriages followed the pattern described by Moskos et al. of an institutional arrangement, with spouses playing an integral role to the military life. Starting in the 1950s, the National Women’s League – an organization made up mostly of officers’ wives – contributed to the overall military effort and the upkeep of morale by running charity drives, sewing uniforms, caring for injured servicemen, and providing classes. The group’s centrality to the military experience declined in the mid-1970s, but it continues its work even today, albeit in a less influential form.

Citation

Karalekas, D. (2018), "Spouses and the Military Community", Civil-Military Relations in Taiwan, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 103-110. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78756-479-420181008