Are there any wives like me? The meanings of family in British military communities during the 1990s

Writing in the letters pages of the British Army Wives Journal in 1994, one writer asked: ‘[D]oes the Army merely attract females who have no ambition in life but to reproduce at an alarming rate?’ In tracing the outcry that followed this letter through the journal’s pages, this article calls for the ‘military family’ to be placed in a clear historical context. We make two arguments: first, that the military family is a historically contingent and therefore changing concept; throughout its history, it has been created and legitimized by social dynamics and bureaucratic systems from inside and outside military communities. Second, we argue that the 1990s is a particularly critical moment to analyse in the history of military families, coinciding with significant military and social changes but also important continuities in attitudes too. This article finishes by exploring some of the wider emotional connections and alternative structures operating in military communities. Though this paper is historical in its methodology, it ends by noting how this history continues to shape present-day attitudes towards both women’s associations and family in militarized settings.