returned to traditional standards of family life and morality.nWriting in 1954, Danish sociologist Kaare Svalastoga describednthe typical Swedish family as consisting of husband,nwife, and two children, with the husband as the onlynbreadwinner and a “patricentral” distribution of power.nOther evidence of triumphant Leave-It-To-Beaverism camenfrom a contemporary Gallup Poll which found that 90npercent of Swedes considered absolute marital fidelityn”indispensable” to happiness. The country’s 1956 Handbooknon Sex Instruction in Swedish Schools declared itn”extremely important that pupils should realize fully thatnhome and family are the ground rock of society, cementedntogether partly by love between man and woman andnparents and children, partly by law.” Even the number ofnlegal abortions in Sweden declined by nearly 40 percent.nHowever, this sweet domestic interlude papered overndeeper pressures building within the welfare structure. Allnnew state benefits, for example, were granted to bothnlegitimate and illegitimate children, and commonly paid outnthrough the mother. Both innovations helped underminenthe natural economic gains of marriage. New equal paynlaws, designed to protect working mothers, had the effect ofndismantling the semiformal “family wage” system thatnundergirded the patricentral family. Swedish family housingnprojects rejected the single-family home model and gavenpreference to multifamily, high-rise dwellings, which discouragednfamily autonomy and encouraged a turn bynindividuals from family to peers as the dominant force in thenshaping of values.nAs in Sweden, here the welfare state hasnbeen converted into an engine destructive ofntraditional family bonds and duties.nA similar, albeit little-noticed American experiment innsocialist family policy developed on our military posts in then1940’s and 1950’s, the consequence of a dramatic break innAmerican tradition. The nation’s founders had held a deepndistrust of a large standing army, seeing such a force as anthreat to political liberties and regional loyalties. Theirnalternative vision saw small, elite services supplemented by ancitizen reserve in periods of crisis or war. This modelnremained the American norm from 1775 to 1947, supplementednby the assumptions that officers would take care ofntheir own families, while enlisted men would remainnbachelors. Until 1942, for example. Army regulationsnforbade the peacetime enlistment or reenlistment of mennwith wives or children.nThe emergence of the Cold War in 1947-48 shatterednthis arrangement. The assumption of long-term internationalncommitments meant retention of a full-time military forcennumbering two million or more. Given such numbers, thenmaintenance of a bachelor force would no longer benrealistic, and attempts to reconcile family living with thendemands of martial discipline proceeded.n26/CHRONICLESnnnAt one level, these atternpts were cultural in nature. Fornofficers, marriage came to be considered vital for careernadvancement, and divorce detrimental. Their ladies enterednan elaborate world of social customs and unofficial dutiesncentered on the officers’ wives clubs found on every post.nAmong the enlisted ranks, the socialization of the military’snnew families proceeded more direcdy through thencrafting of a comprehensive welfare system, and the emergencenof a new category of persons: “military dependents.”nMilitary planners reasoned that special welfare benefitsnwould usefully insulate personnel from the civilian world,nprovide a sense of security, foster morale, and encouragensolidarity. Family measures created in the 1940’s includednexpanded dependent allotments, some medical benefitsnincluding obstetrical care, and subsidized food and consumerngoods in Post Exchanges. The 1950’s witnessed a rapidngrowth in on-base family housing construction, passage ofnthe Dependents Medical Care Act of 1956, and creation ofndaycare centers on both domestic and foreign posts, thenlatter action designed “to enhance the morale of servicemennand their families.” The services reached a milestone inn1960, as military dependents outnumbered active dutynuniformed personnel for the first time. This led to creationnof the Army Community Service Program and its naval andnair force equivalents, followed by the comprehensive CiviliannHealth and Medical Program of the Uniformed Servicesn(CHAMPUS) in 1966, which further expanded the availabilitynof government medical care.nWhile the details differed, this list of benefits bore anstriking similarity to the system found in Sweden.nOur nation’s strategy for battling scientific socialism abroadnessentially involved the socializing of our military families atnhome.nDid this, military version of the pro-family welfare statenwork, in the sense of encouraging traditional family life? Asnin Sweden: for a time, yes. Military officers in the 1960’s, fornexample, were much more likely to marry, and much lessnlikely to divorce, than their civilian counterparts. As onenresearcher put it, the officer’s “loyalty to the country, to thenAir Force, and the unit may carry over into loyalty to thenwife.” The wives of both officers and enlisted men were alsonmuch less likely to be employed than civilian wives. Somenevidence even suggested a pro-natal result, seen in annelevated fertility rate among military families.nBut again as in Sweden, surface success concealednweaknesses. The delicate balance in military gender roles,nfor example, was vulnerable to outside challenges, particularlynpressure from feminist and egalitarian interests aftern1970 to open the service academies and combat roles tonwomen. Similarly, bureaucratic control of “military dependents”ntempted planners to renege on their roles as defendersnof social tradition, and instead take the more interestingnrole of “vanguard of modernization.” As Harvard sociologistnM.D. Feld explained in 1978: “One consequence of thencontemporary fusion of the notions of national security andnnational welfare has been the sensible eradication of thenconceptual distinction between the nation-in-arms and thennation at peace. . . . It is being replaced by the model of thenpermanently mobilized state: a state mobilized not fornreasons of war, but in order to allocate its resources in then