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​Mothers of the Military: Support and Politics During Wartime

Available now through Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

​Mothers of the Military follows the mothers of U.S. service members in the War on Terrorism through the stages of recruitment, deployment, and post-deployment. By drawing on the personal experiences of actual mothers of service members, this book examines the kinds of support needed during wartime, and the impact of providing that support on political participation.

​"Wendy Christensen doesn’t let us slide into simplistic assumptions about either militarization or women as mothers. Her careful listening over a decade reveals American racially diverse women dealing with their government’s pressures, their own expectations, their strategic choices about when to stay silent and when to speak out. This book has taught me a lot." — Cynthia Enloe, Clark University; author of The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy

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​Associate Professor, Department of Sociology
William Paterson University

My research focuses on how political discourse and participation is shaped by social inequalities. I am particularly interested in how institutions, like the media, the military, and the family, contribute to the shaping of political engagement. My book, Mothers of the Military: Support and Politics During Wartime, is forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield Press (2018). In it I examine how gender, race, and class ideologies organize political relationships for military families in ways that sometimes limit their participation in the political process. 

I am an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at William Paterson University in New Jersey. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2010. I teach courses in social movements, research methods, social inequality and stratification, sociological theory, sociology of gender, sociology of the family, war and military, sociology of culture, news media, and Internet communications technology.