Married to the Military: Military-Family Relations in the Israel Defense Forces

Abstract

Twenty years after the last research was conducted on military families in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), this study explores gender arrangements in families of male and female career military personnel as viewed by their civilian spouses. The research objective was to analyze the differences in attitudes toward family life and examine the differences in work—family practices among the IDF’s career servicemen and women. The findings indicate that the IDF’s heavy demands on career personnel, regardless of gender lead to the construction of family and couple arrangements that deviate from the norm in civilian Israeli-Jewish families of similar characteristics. For the servicemen, this demand creates a ‘‘traditional’’ role division model that places the entire burden of family work on their wives; for the servicewomen the same demands create a relatively ‘‘egalitarian’’ role division model, by placing more of the burden of ‘‘family chores’’ on their husbands.