Army wives’ consumer vulnerability and communities of coping

Purpose The spouses or partners of serving members of the UK Armed Forces are often subject to similar constraints to those of enlisted personnel. This paper aims to examine the experiences and wellbeing of a group of army wives. In particular, it focuses on their shared experiences of consumer vulnerability and related challenges, exploring the extent to which membership of military wives’ communities can help them to cope. Design/methodology/approach Using an interpretivist approach, data were collected through four focus group discussions involving 30 army wives, and seven individual in-depth interviews. Findings The paper highlights shared experiences of consumer vulnerability and demonstrates how army wives’ approaches to coping incorporate both individual and community-based approaches. It proposes that communities of coping develop within the army wives community, providing women with both practical and emotional support. Research limitations/implications The paper acknowledges that there is a range of factors that will impact military spouses’ experiences of consumer vulnerability and strategies for coping. This heterogeneity was difficult to capture within a small exploratory study. Practical implications The UK Government should consider their duties towards military spouses and children. This would entail a significant cultural shift and recognition of military personnel’s caring responsibilities. Originality/value This research contributes to understandings regarding the potentially shared nature of both consumer vulnerability and coping strategies. The study introduces the relevance of communities of coping to consumer contexts, highlighting how members can benefit from both practical and emotional support.

‘Woman Seems to Be Given Her Proper Place’: Western Women’s Encounter with Sikh Women 1809–2012

Over a period of two centuries, western women—travellers, army wives, administrators’ wives, missionaries, teachers, artists and novelists—have been portraying their Sikh counterparts. Commentary by over eighty European and north American ‘lay’ women on Sikh religion and society complements—and in most cases predates—publications on Sikhs by twentieth and twenty-first century academics, but this literature has not been discussed in the field of Sikh studies. This article looks at the women’s ‘wide spectrum of gazes’ encompassing Sikh women’s appearance, their status and, in a few cases, their character, and including their reactions to the ‘social evils’ of suttee and female infanticide. Key questions are, firstly, whether race outweighs gender in the western women’s account of their Sikh counterparts and, secondly, whether 1947 is a pivotal date in their changing attitudes. The women’s words illustrate their curious gaze as well as their varying judgements on the status of Sikh women and some women’s exercise of sympathetic imagination. They characterise Sikh women as, variously, helpless, deferential, courageous, resourceful and adaptive, as well as (in one case) ‘ambitious’ and ‘unprincipled’. Their commentary entails both implicit and explicit comparisons. In their range of social relationships with Sikh women, it appears that social class, Christian commitment, political stance and national origin tend to outweigh gender. At the same time, however, it is women’s gender that allows access to Sikh women and makes befriending—and ultimately friendship—possible.

Maternal Martyrdom Unmasked: British Fatherhood and the Masculinization of War in Napoleonic Veterans’ Tales of Infant Suffering

Despite the growing masculinization of Europe’s armies, domestic ideals such as maternal breastfeeding and nurturing fatherhood appeared with surprising frequency in British accounts of the Napoleonic Wars. Veterans’ memoirs of the British Army’s retreat to Corunna recalled heartrending scenes of dead mothers with infants struggling to nurse at frozen breasts. Pacifist poets had eagerly seized similar stories to demonstrate the horrors of war, but this article shows the way in which mother and infant suffering could become a pro-war tool used by the Army. Officer memoirists subtly condemned Army wives for following the drum while highlighting their own fatherly compassion.

Introduction

Opening with a brief exploration of the television series “Army Wives,” the introduction relates the theme of surrogacy presented in the drama to the foundational topics of this book; namely, it illustrates the changing perception of surrogacy in American culture. Our understanding of reproduction has always been informed by social rules and expectations, and these norms influence how individuals go about imagining the possibilities for family formation. The contemporary technologies that separate conception, pregnancy, and parenthood seem to offer new ways to think about reproduction, and thus much more agency to the individual to create families that may flaunt cultural norms. Considering terms such as “cross-racial gestational surrogacy,” “traditional surrogacy,” “reproductive technologies” and more, the introduction establishes the core themes of the text, relating these terms and technologies to the traditional, nuclear family within the United States.