Air University Review, January-February 1980

Living and Family Patterns in the Air Force

It is quite evident, even to the casual observer, that living patters in the Air Forces are changing. The number of families has increased to the point that the military, once the bastion of single males, is now faced with a growing number of women and a significant number of married personnel.¹ It has traditionally been expected that when a military member was married, his family would routinely adjust to the transitions related to the military’s place and type of assignment.² The pattern of adjustment was almost always assumed to resemble a one-way street with the member and family adapting to the needs of the military.

Recently, however, the pattern is approaching that of a two-way street, increasing adjustments being required and made by both the military system and the military family. This point has been made most forcefully by Dr. Charles C. Moskos in his analysis of changing occupational and support requirements in the military.³ The most obvious example of this departure from the traditional composition of the military community has been the shift, since World War II, from a predominantly single military forces to a predominantly married military force.⁴ As of 30 September 1976, 56 percent of all military personnel were married, with all types of dependents outnumbering military personnel by about 1.5 to 1.⁵

The intent of this article is to clarify the changes in living and family patterns occurring within the Air Force community. Historically, the tendency has been to look at the military family as fitting into a particular mold, most often the traditional model of working husband, dependent homemaker wife, and children. Yet, this stereotypical family pattern is becoming increasingly atypical. In this treatment, we will examine current data on living patterns in the Air Force as well as some of the factors involved in the diversity of family life-styles that are now appearing.

Dr. Hamilton McCubbin and his associates noted that "military and national leaders face an important and difficult challenge: to make the family a primary and integral component of military policy."⁶ Our article is intended to aid in that process, but it is not our purpose to offer recommendations for Air Force family policies. Rather, we will attempt to provide an accurate description of current living patterns in the Air Force in order to understand better the nature of the Air Force community. We feel that such an understanding is a necessary prerequisite to the development of family policies.

Dr. Edna J. Hunter, one of Dr. McCubbin’s coauthors, notes that ". . . before policy-makers can do those things (examine, modify, and evaluate the assumptions of military family policies], they must be aware of the characteristics of the sample with which they are dealing."⁷ She also observed that her office is frequently queried as to such things as the number of working wives or dual-career families but that such information has been readily available. This plea for more specific information on lifestyles and family patterns was consistently offered at the 1977 Military Family Research Conference.⁸ One personnel officer knew that many divorced persons were in his branch of the service, but he could not tell "how many of those family had custody of the children or whether those children were living with a former spouse."⁹ Without knowledge of the living patterns and household composition of military families, it is difficult to anticipate the need for or consequences of military family policies, regulations, or services.

Why are Air Force family patterns changing today? Changes throughout society are occurring because of the demand of persons for greater freedom in selection of personal and family life-styles.¹⁰ Increasing numbers of persons are intentionally delaying marriage, remaining childless after marriage, or choosing to remain unmarried.¹¹ Women are intentionally seeking jobs with career potential, and married women are increasingly preferring employment and career to full-time family and parenting responsibilities.¹² Marriages that are no longer considered satisfactory are being terminated, and a growing number of children are being reared in one-parent families.¹³

The Air Force has been attempting to understand and accept these changes in personal and family life-styles. It appears that for some of the changes taking place, the military has been a more conducive environment for change than the civilian sector. For example, it is probably easier to choose to remain single in an environment that has been traditionally single in orientation than in one that has been traditionally marriage-oriented.¹⁴

Why is it important that we understand the present patterns of Air Force personnel and families? For one reason, the all-volunteer status of the U.S. military has put all of its branches in direct competition with the private sector for its recruits.¹⁵ An obvious consequence is that life in the military must be considered by its members and potential members as desirable while the highest possible level of mission capability is maintained. Therefore, trends within society as a whole, but especially trends among military personnel must be taken into account if the system is to be responsive to the preferences of its members.

The problems related to retention and the growing cost of training new members are another important reason for allowing as much flexibility as possible in the personal and family preferences of military members. The recent DOD appropriations act particularly notes the importance of reducing personnel losses through attrition.¹⁶

A study relating retention in the Army to marital satisfaction and job satisfaction found job satisfaction and family life satisfaction to be extremely important factors in the member's decision to remain in or leave the military.¹⁷ With military personnel becoming sensitive to the increasingly comparable levels of income, current benefits, and retirement benefits between the military and civilian sectors, it is very probable that satisfaction with one's life-style, an already important factor, will increase in significance as a factor related to retention.

The present trends of decreased personnel manning and requirements for high levels of operational readiness mean that job performance of every member must be maintained at a high level. With family life satisfaction and job satisfaction known to be related,¹⁸ it is essential that the military system better understand the family pattern preferences of its members.

Family Patterns in the Air Force

In order to describe current family patterns in the Air Force more accurately, data on all members, their marital status, and the dependents in their households were examined from records at the Military Personnel Center. These data were derived from the computerized file records of 30 September 1978, the end of the fiscal year. The total force on that date included 469,838 enlisted persons and 95,456 officers. Information on children was recorded by age in order to determine preschool and school-age dependents. Data relating to parents of dependent children were separated from those concerning nonparents in order to facilitate further analysis of household arrangements.

singles

While accurate trend data on the living patterns of personnel are not readily available, it is clear that there has been an overall decline in the proportion of single persons in the military services, particularly in the Air Force. At present, persons who are not currently married or who are legally independent account for only 33. 7 percent of the total force in the Air Force. Of the 190,596 persons represented here, 91.3 percent have never been married, 8.4 percent are divorced, and a small fraction are separated or widowed.

It is quite apparent that female Air Force personnel are much more likely than male to be single. In the female officer force, 62.3 percent are single, compared to only 14.8 percent of the male officers. Among the enlisted, 50.5 percent of the females are single, compared to 35.7 percent of males. These differences probably reflect the greater feeling among women that their occupational flexibility and mobility will be hindered by marriage, especially for officers. Men often marry and assume that their wives will follow them, an assumption that has some legal backing as well.¹⁹ But a woman with career intentions must be more selective in marriage, otherwise her own career will be jeopardized. Undoubtedly, this results in the subject of marriage being considerably more sensitive for women in the Air Force, with the likelihood of a continued higher proportion of them remaining single during their military careers.

The conventional marriage pattern in the military has been for the husband to be the only family member in uniform. Husbands with civilian wives now represent 58.9 percent of the total force in the Air Force. Among male enlisted personnel, 60.2 percent are married to civilians while among male officers, 83 percent are married to civilians.

A rather high proportion of these traditional military marriages are childless, probably due to the number of young married couples in the lower officer and enlisted ranks. But for many male personnel, fatherhood is an important role as well. Some 70 percent of the marriages of men married to civilians include children in the household. Forty percent of these children are in the formative period under six years of age, and 60 percent are of school age. The average number of children for families with children is two, a figure which is similar to national norms. The enlisted men in this marriage pattern have an average of 1.9 children per family while officers have an average of 2.2 children per family.One complicating but necessary factor in some of these military marriages is separation due to assignment. However, separation is not a common practice at this time In the Air Force since only 4.8 percent of the men with civilian wives live apart from them. This affects 6 percent of the enlisted and 2 percent of the officers in this category. The figure would be higher if temporary duty assignments were included. Separation can be difficult for the families involved; however, extended separation is not the norm in these military marriages, and perhaps no more separation occurs than is normal in civilian marriages. Particularly significant is the finding that men with dependent children are not very likely to be separated from them. While 11 percent of the men with civilian wives but no children are living separated due to assignment, less than 1 percent of those who are fathers are separated from their families. These data suggest that separation may cause strain and result in a higher divorce rate in childless marriages; for families with children, there is usually a more stable two-parent home environment. This is especially important given the growing recognition of the father's contribution to healthy child development. With the recent authorization of Junior Enlisted Travel (JET) entitlements, separations may be decreased in the future.

married, civilian husband

As the Air Force becomes a more attractive career alternative for women, a new family pattern emerging includes an Air Force wife and civilian husband. These married women account for slightly less than 1 percent of the total force in the Air Force and 34.6 percent of the married women officers and 22.9 percent of the married enlisted women.

The proportion of these marriages that are childless is very high, reflecting the potential strain that parenthood may imply to many of these women juggling their occupational and marital responsibilities. Some 80.8 percent of the women officers married to civilians are childless as are 73.4 percent of those enlisted women, more than one would expect from most other occupational groups in the U.S. One factor that may explain the high childlessness and foster its continuance is the frequent separation of military wives from their civilian husbands. Over 36 percent of the enlisted women and 10 percent of the women officers in this category are stationed apart from their husbands. But the high childlessness rate among the women officers, even though 90 percent of them are living with their civilian spouses, no doubt reflects a concerted preference for career independence that parenthood might threaten. This certainly counters the general idea that marriage of a military woman to a civilian man, who may not understand her responsibilities, necessarily results in parenthood and a potential conflict with her career priorities.

Of the 20.4 percent of Air Force women/mothers married to civilians, 66 percent of the children are of preschool age and 34 percent of school age. The average number of children in these households is 1.6 per family. When families are separated by assignment, which is presently true of nearly one-third of both the officer and enlisted women married to civilians, the children usually go with their mothers. Essentially, these women then become single parents for the duration of the separation, having to balance sole responsibility for childrearing with the career demands of their duty station.

With the employment of married women increasing rapidly in our society, it is not surprising to find that dual-career marriages are becoming almost commonplace. The Air Force has been immune to these influences, as we have noted among its women members married to civilian men. However, it is more common for Air Force women to marry men in the military. Of those who marry, 76 percent wed military husbands. Yet only 4.5 percent of Air Force married men are married to military wives. By far the most common in-service marital arrangement is the marriage of an enlisted man and enlisted woman (13,755), both male and female officers (968 marriages), a female officer and an enlisted male (363 marriages), and, least common, marriages between male officers and enlisted females (295). In addition to these marriages between Air Force members, 299 women and 213 men in the Air Force are married to members of the other military services.

The tendency toward childlessness remains high in military couple marriages, as it does with Air Force wives of civilian husbands. About 80 percent of officer-officer marriages are childless. In enlisted-enlisted marriages, 69 percent have no children; in marriages between Air Force and other military service personnel, 65 percent are childless; and in those marriages between Air Force officers and enlisted personnel, 35 percent are childless. While the latter percentage is lower than the rest, all of these marriages have significantly fewer children than we might normally expect. Again, this probably reflects the voluntary desires of these couples to give their work careers higher priority than parenthood. Thus, even though the military-benefit system might ease the financial costs of children, it is not sufficient for many career couples to offset the costs of occupational independence.

Contrary to the notion that the military rather coldly determines duty stations for its members, most military couples are located in the same vicinity. However, one of eight of these marriages, 12.4 percent, are split by different assignments. This is a rather high percentage of marital separation, compared with marriages in which members are married to civilians. Certainly, Air Force personnel decisions are often strained to the limit by military couple considerations, but the frequency of these separations, if continued, may be a factor that will influence higher martial dissolutions.

When separations by assignments do occur in military couple marriages, the children, if any, are as likely to stay with their father as with their mother. This is quite unlike the situation in military-civilian marriages in which the wife, whether the military or civilian member, is much more likely to have the children with her during the separation. Apparently, these couples feel that the Air Force community provides support adequate to allow either the father or mother to be the temporary, primary parent of their children.

One-parent families are not new to the military community. There are now more than 5400 single-parent members in the Air Force, approximately 1 percent of the total force. These are parents with custody of all the children living in their household. There are many times this number who have partial custody or for whom their children are listed as dependents but are not living with them. Nearly 2 percent of the children living with their parents in the Air Force are now living with a single parent.

There are a variety of circumstances that have resulted in these single-parent families. In 69.6 percent of the households, divorce is the precipitating factor. One of every five divorced members has live-in children. Legally separated persons account for 2.4 percent of the single parents, the widowed account for 5.4 percent, and single persons account for 22.6 percent of the single parents. Those listed as "single" could be misclassified in part, but it is just as likely that they represent unmarried parents and adoptive parents, situations that may have occurred prior to enlistment but not uncommon in the military today. Almost 40 percent of the children being reared in these single-parent families are preschoolers.

In the U.S. , nine out of every ten single parents are women, but in the Air Force three out of four single parents are men. This is not surprising, given the high proportion of men in the service, but it does point out that Air Force men are taking a greater responsibility for fathering and that this is being recognized by the courts. The assumption that in divorce the military men will simply allow the children's mother to have custody should also be relaxed since 76 percent of the single-parent fathers became single parents after divorce or legal separation. These fathers are not being restricted to older children either; 30 percent of them are rearing preschoolers in their households. The single-parent mothers in the Air Force are also most likely to be divorced, but quite a high percentage are listed as single (39 percent), probably reflecting the growing number of unmarried women who get pregnant and decide to keep and rear their babies themselves.

Single parenthood is frequently a temporary status. Many of these persons will marry or remarry, while other military members will undoubtedly enter this status due to divorce, widowhood, marital separation, or pregnancy. Since single parenthood is often temporary, it would be appropriate to point out that the Air Force has other "temporary" single-parent members due to separations by duty assignment in which the children remain with a member parent. This includes 2854 Air Force mothers and fathers and 5574 children, a total of 8315 separated single parents rearing 13,158 dependent children. Of course, these figures, as large as they are, do not reflect the tens of thousands of civilian single-parent mothers who are rearing children due to separation by assignment of their Air Force husbands.

implications for
Air Force leadership

This information about the "state" of the Air Force family should be particularly relevant for planning and implementing programs and policies that affect the Air Force community. For commanders and supervisors, knowledge of personal and family lifestyles can help in personnel planning, recruitment, and motivation, factors that are vital to maintaining an efficient and effective Air Force. For chaplains, awareness of personal and family needs is crucial to their ministry to the total Air Force community. A good minister knows the community and is sensitive to the diversity of needs within it. For the Air Force at large, it is important to have leaders who are aware of their constituency, who are aware of the variety of life-styles being experienced by the persons for whom they provide direction and to whom they minister.

Perhaps the major finding of this study of Air Force personnel is that it identifies the nature and extent of diversity in family living patters among Air Force personnel. The data indicate that we cannot assume a fairly consistent, predictable family arrangement in the Air Force today. Rather, we find there are single men, single women, married persons, single fathers, single mothers, childless couples, military couples, and other probable arrangements, such as unmarried cohabitation, about which data are not presently available. Since each of these groups has different needs, we need to be very careful when making uniform assumptions regarding outcomes to personnel and dependents from broad policies and decisions.

Of course, the question might be asked: Why should the Air Force be sensitive to the variety of living arrangements of its members? Should not our concern lie principally in the job that the member performs for the Air Force? The answer lies in the special relationship between the job and community in the military. A person does not "take a job" in the Air Force; he or she "joins" the Air Force. They have a job to do, but they enlist in a community, in a life-style that is mutually supportive. Not only the members but their dependents also become part of this community, and there remains an intimate link between the satisfaction received from their overall life-style and the satisfaction derived from the job.

As the number of Air Force members with dependents has increased to over two-thirds of the total force today, the ability of the Air Force to meet the personal and spiritual needs of dependents is becoming an even more important part of our demands for enhanced productivity from members. The shift to an all-volunteer force, the necessity of reenlistments to lower training costs, and continuing requirements for maximum personnel efficiency and mission effectiveness mean that making the Air Force community an attractive environment is more important now than ever before. Nothing can be more effective for encouraging work satisfaction than the knowledge that personal and family needs are being addressed; nothing can be more damaging to the spirit and the job than feeling that these needs are being neglected.

Given the data we have examined and the important role the family plays in the life of Air Force personnel, some traditional assumptions regarding family behavior may need to be relaxed. For one thing, most single persons today are assumed to be temporarily single, one step away from marriage. However, many of the single persons in the Air Force appear to be preferentially single, with little intention of marriage. This is true of women in this branch of the service, but, among the sexes, there are a large number of upper-grade personnel who have not married and will probably never marry. It would be wrong, therefore, to assume that single persons eventually "settle down " in marriage and relax some of their military career aspirations. It would also be unfortunate if we neglect the needs of these preferential singles since they contribute greatly to the flexibility of Air Force missions. A reexamination of current policies and programs may need to be established to enhance their self-respect, reinforce their single identity, and provide them with the privacy--for example, in housing--that offers greater flexibility in their personal lives.

A second assumption we need to reevaluate is that marriage inevitably leads to children. Among married Air Force women, the majority clearly reconcile their marital and career demands by remaining childless. Military couple marriages are most often childfree today, allowing both members to maximize their career obligations. Many women may feel frustrated and handicapped by the assumption that they will one day trade in their uniforms for an apron and the nursery. Many of their husbands may feel frustrated and handicapped by a lack of medical, chaplain, or personnel support for their decision to be childless. To date, it appears that the Air Force is doing a great deal to keep its military couples together in their assignments, but in these marriages, as well as childless marriages with a civilian spouse, the separation by assignment rate is rather high. If this practice continues, it could have detrimental consequences for these marriages and individuals.A third assumption we need to reconsider is that children will remain with the civilian spouse when marital separations occur. In contrast to this, there are a large and growing number of parents in the Air Force who are keeping their children after divorce or when they are separated by assignment. Since 75 percent of these single parents are fathers, it is important to note that the number of single fathers has tripled nationally in the past decade and that the legal and social opportunities for fathers to retain custody of their children are just beginning to have an effect on the statistics. Perhaps we should reexamine the degree to which these single mothers and fathers need parent support groups, childrearing classes, and personal and legal services that are sensitive and more responsive to their needs. Most of these single parents are rearing at least one preschool child, and, without a spouse to fall back on, it may be important to assure these parents of quality child care while they work and at other times as well.

What does the future hold for family patterns in the Air Force? If present trends continue, we can expect even more shifts toward diversity in personal and family life-styles,

• With the current decline in the national marriage rate, the Air Force should receive a greater influx of single persons, particularly women, who prefer to remain single. This may be considered good for mission flexibility, but more of these women and men are going to expect personal flexibility as well.
• As career opportunities attract more women into the service, military couple marriages should increase, and the shortage of male nonmarried officers will increase the number of women officers who marry civilians. These trends are going to place more and more strain on personnel officers who have to decide on duty assignments for Air Force members.
• The high divorce rate and shifts in child custody laws should also increase the number of single parents in the Air Force.
• The family type that will more than likely decline proportionately, but still remain the predominant pattern overall, will contain an Air Force husband and civilian wife. But even here policies may need to shift since the prospect of the dutiful wife following her husband wherever he may go is beginning to change nationally. Fewer women are willing to sacrifice their own career or family goals because of the occupational demands of their husbands.

How Air Force leaders react to these trends will have a great deal to do with the continuing ability of the service to attract and motivate qualified personnel. Personal and family conflicts will no doubt rise and subsequently affect morale unless we carefully anticipate the psychological, social, career, and spiritual needs of Air Force members and their dependents. This means greater cooperation among the various components of Air Force leadership in order to sensitize themselves to potential problems and solutions. Better programs for married persons and their families will be necessary in order to facilitate personal adjustments and ease the strains that sometimes accompany military life.

More research is also needed in order to determine accurately the needs of families in the Air Force and the services that can maximize the effectiveness of Air Force members. The present study is but an intermediate step in the process of developing sound personnel and family policies that augment rather than hold back Air Force mission requirements. Descriptive position papers that suggest some of the directions future policies might take have previously been offered.²⁰ Here, we have examined and described in the most complete and accurate detail to date the types of living and family patterns that must be considered in the development of these personnel and family policies. Now, we need to move toward hard research that will determine the potential effects of policy and program changes on the recruitment, morale, and retention of Air Force members and their dependents.

There is no reason to suspect that the efficiency of the Air Force and its mission will be handicapped by the diversity of living patterns now represented in the service. The careful acceptance and integration of current, conventional life-styles should not result in the deterioration of personnel quality; rather, it should enhance the ability of the Air Force to attract and retain persons with a variety of talents and skills.

But mission readiness and effectiveness require a consistency in allegiance from members that can be fostered only by equally consistent reinforcement of all members' needs and the needs of their dependents. This means that readiness and mission effectiveness, the heart of the Air Force imperative, depend as much on our commitment to the respective life patterns of personnel and families as on their commitment to the Air Force and to their country. Since this is a two-way street, to maintain the mutual commitments that are necessary for our national security, we must begin immediately to consider what is needed to accommodate the living and family patterns now operative in Air Force communities.

Greensboro, North Carolina
and
Bolling AFB, D.C.

Notes

1. Nancy L. Goldman, "Trends in Family Patterns of U.S. Military Personnel during the 20^th Century," in The Social Psychology of Military Service, N. Goldman and D. Segal, editors (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976). 
2. See also David Segal, Mady Segal, and Robert Holz, "Trends in the Structure of Army Families," Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Spring 1975, pp. 135-39.Lynn R. Dobrofsky, "The Wife: Military Dependent or Feminist," in Changing Families in a Changing Military System, Edna J. Hunter, editor (San Diego: Naval Health Research Center, 1977).
3. Charles C. Moskos, Jr., "The Armed Forces: An Occupation or Calling," Supplement to the Air Force Policy Letter for Commanders, June 1977, pp. 25-30.
4. Edna J. Hunter, "Introduction," Changing Families in a Changing Military System (San Diego: Naval Health Research Center, 1977).U.S. Air Force Personnel Report, April 1977.
5. Hamilton I. McCubbin, Martha Marsden, Kathleen Durning, and Edna J. Hunter, "Family Policy in the Armed Forces: An Assessment," Air University Review, September-October 1978, p. 47.
6. Edna J. Hunter, Head, Family Studies Branch of the Naval Health Research Center in personal communication, 27 July 1978.
7. Edna J. Hunter and Lucile Cheng, A Report on the Military Family Research Conference: Current Trends and Directions (San Diego: Naval Health Research Center, 1977).
8. Vice Admiral James D. Watkin, "Comments in the Opening Plenary Session," Hunter and Cheng, pp. 7-8.
9. Mary Jo Bane, Here to Stay, American Families in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1976); Roger Libby and Robert Whitehurst, Marriage and Alternatives (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman, 1977).
10. Paul Glick and Arthur Norton, "Marrying, Divorcing and Living Together in U.S. Today," Population Bulletin, October 1977.
11. H. Hayghe, "Marital and Family Characteristics of the Labor Force, March 1978," Bureau of Labor Statistics News (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, 24 July 1978).
12. Dennis K. Orthner and Richard J. Brown III, "Single-Parent Fathers: Implications for the Military Family," in Military Families: Adaptation to Change, Edna J. Hunter and D. Stephen Nice (New York: Praeger, 1978), Chapter 7.
13. Peter Stein, Single (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1975).
14. M. Duncan Stanton, "The Military Family: It’s Future in an All-Volunteer Context," in The Social Psychology of Military Service, N. Goldman and D. Segal, editors (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1976), pp. 135-50.
15. Department of Defense Appropriations Authorization Act, 1979, Report No. 95-1118, 6 May 1978.
16. John C. Wooelfel and Joel M. Savell, "Marital and Job Satisfaction and Retention in the Army," in Changing Families in a Changing Military System, Edna J. Hunter, editor (San Diego: Naval Health Research Center, 1977), pp. 11-27.
17. R. Katzell, R, Barrett, and T. Parker, "Job Satisfaction, Job Performance, and Situational Characteristics," Journal of Applied Psychology, February 1961, pp. 65-72; A. Martin, "Morale and Productivity: A Review of the Literature," Public Personnel Review, Spring 1969, pp. 42-45; Woelfel and Savell, pp. 11-27; Daniel Uankelovich, "The New Psychological Contract at Work," Psychology Today, May 1978, pp. 46-50.
18. Lenore Weitzman, "To Love, Honor and Obey? Traditional Legal Marriage and Alternative Family Forum," The Family Coordinator, October 1975, pp. 531-48.McCubbin et al.

Acknowledgment

Grateful appreciation is expressed to the staffs at the Air Force Manpower and Personnel Center and the Human Relations Laboratory for their assistance in preparing the data for this report.

Chaplain, Major General, Richard Carr (B.A., Whitworth College; D.M., Fuller Theological Seminary) is Chief of Chaplains, Hq USAF, where he has also served as Chief, Personnel Actions and Manpower Programs, Personnel Division. He has served as Regional Chaplain, Pacific Security Region, Wheeler AFB, Hawaii, and as chaplain in Korea with the Ninth Air Force, as Command Chaplain at Hq Tactical Air Command, where he was also Chief, Budget and Logistics Division and of the Professional Division. As an ordained minister of the United Church of Christ, he served churches in Pasadena and Los Angeles, where he was a pioneer in California human relations activities. Chaplain Carr worked in the development of the Air Fore Human Relations Programs and has been active in community religious activities.

Dennis K. Orthner (B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Florida State University) is Associate Professor, Department of Child Development and Family Relations, at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He has been as assistant professor of sociology, editorial consultant for marriage and family texts, a member of the Executive Committee on the National Council of Family Relations, and Associate Editor, Journal of Marriage and the Family. Dr. Orthner is author of numerous articles on family sociology, which have appeared in Marriage and the Family, Family Coordinator, and Journal of Leisure Research, etc.

Chaplain, Major, Richard J. Brown III, USAFR, (B.A., Furman University; B.D., Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; M.A., Appalachian State University) is attached to the Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Hq USAF, and is Director of the Family Life Center, Lexington, North Carolina. He has published articles on aspects of marriage and family in the military. Chaplain Brown is a doctoral candidate in child development and family relations at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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