NEW YORK — Twenty years ago, when Qwynn Galloway-Salazar left the Army Reserves and stepped into a civilian job interview, the weight of misunderstanding hit her hard. As a Black woman veteran, she immediately recognized that she did not align with the narrow, outdated stereotypes the interview panel held of people who had served in the U.S. military. To them, a veteran was exclusively a white male who had fought in Vietnam. Sitting in that room, Galloway-Salazar understood the panel had no framework to engage with her experience. She left in tears, driving away wondering how she would ever bridge the gap between her military service and the civilian world she was trying to join. Today, decades later, she has built her entire career around advancing veteran advocacy and expanding public awareness of the gaps that still separate military and civilian life in America. Her story lays bare two under-examined, critical questions facing the nation as it marks 250 years of democratic experiment: How have military and civilian life drifted so far apart, and what can be done to close that persistent divide?
Military history has been inseparable from the story of the United States since its founding. From the 1776 Revolutionary War that birthed the nation, to the territorial expansion that shaped its borders, to its modern role as a global superpower shaping international political and economic order, military service is woven into the fabric of everyday American life. It appears in the history lessons taught in K-12 classrooms, in the public monuments that dot city squares and national parks, in the pre-game ceremonies at professional sporting events, and in the national holiday commemorations that bring communities together. Most pervasive of all is the common cultural refrain, automatically offered to anyone in uniform or any veteran: “Thank you for your service.” But despite this pervasive cultural acknowledgement, many threads of that interwoven fabric have begun to fray.
Even as the nation collectively celebrates the idea of military service, the vast majority of American adults have never served themselves, nor do they maintain close personal connections to service members or their families that would give them real insight into military life. Modern military service increasingly concentrates within interconnected networks: multigenerational military families, specific regional communities, and a handful of states that contribute a disproportionate share of recruits. This concentration means the burdens, risks, and sacrifices of military life fall disproportionately on a small subset of the population, while most civilians remain disconnected from those realities. Public attention typically only turns to military issues when high-profile crises emerge — such as the well-documented mental health crisis among sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, during an extended deployment tied to the U.S. campaign against Iran that has left 18 service members dead and more than 750 injured in just six months.
Just as fraying threads create holes in fabric, this lack of connection has created a tangible military-civilian divide: a gap in mutual understanding that carries real consequences for public policy, for the daily logistics of military family life, and for the persistent stereotypes that shape how each group sees the other.
Scholars note that tension over the relationship between the U.S. government and its military dates back to the nation’s founding. Peter Feaver, a political science professor at Duke University, explains that the Founding Fathers were deeply preoccupied with striking the right balance between national security and democratic governance. One of the core grievances that sparked the Revolutionary War was British forced quartering of soldiers in private colonial homes without homeowner consent. While the new nation recognized the need for a military force to defend its borders, the idea of a large standing professional army was deeply unpopular among early leaders. “From the very beginning, the country has wrestled with … the need to have a military to protect you from threats, but the need for that military not to become a threat to the republic itself,” Feaver explains. That tension led to the creation of a small, focused professional army tasked primarily with border protection, with state militias handling local defense needs.
Conscription was a core part of major U.S. military conflicts through the 20th century, used to fill troop ranks when volunteer numbers fell short during the Civil War and both World Wars. But the Vietnam War sparked widespread public opposition to the draft, leading to its elimination in 1973. Since that year, the U.S. armed forces have operated as an all-volunteer force. Today, roughly 2 million Americans serve on active duty, or in the National Guard and Reserves — a tiny fraction of the more than 230 million adult citizens and legal permanent residents living in the U.S. While the benefits of a professional, highly trained all-volunteer force are widely accepted, and there is no serious movement to reinstate active conscription (adult men are still required to register for the Selective Service in case a draft is ever reintroduced), the shift has also widened the gap between military and civilian life.
During World War II, nearly every American family had a member serving in uniform, Feaver notes. “If not themselves, if not their dad or mom, certainly they had an uncle or an aunt or somebody,” he says. “And the military was widely distributed geographically throughout society.” That widespread representation is no longer the case, says Kathy Roth-Douquet, co-founder and CEO of Blue Star Families, a nonprofit that advocates for military households. Her organization’s Do Your Part initiative calls on civilian industries and communities to develop policies that support military families without requiring civilian enlistment. “Military service kind of became a cul-de-sac, where it was people who served beget people who served, who married people who were from families who served,” she explains.
Data from the U.S. Army Recruiting Command bears this out: More than 75% of new Army recruits come from families with a history of military service. In fiscal year 2025, roughly half of all Army recruits came from just seven states. U.S. military leaders have repeatedly highlighted the need to broaden recruitment pools to draw from a more diverse cross-section of young Americans across all regions and backgrounds.
Jason Higgins, an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech who specializes in the Vietnam War, says this concentrated representation means the harms and sacrifices of military conflict are not shared equally across American society. He points to the Iraq War as a stark example: repeated deployments became routine for many service members, leading to higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), permanent physical injury, and intense strain on families forced to repeatedly adapt to long absences and difficult reintegrations that were cut short when service members were called to deploy again. “You have this small group of American families who are the only ones who directly experience the consequences of war,” he says.
This widespread public lack of familiarity with military life also reinforces harmful stereotypes about who serves and what their needs are when transitioning back to civilian life, Higgins argues. Pop culture depictions almost exclusively center grizzled, white male combat troops armed and in fatigues, erasing the huge range of roles that exist within the U.S. military. While combat troops are a critical part of the force, millions of service members work in administrative, logistics, mechanical, and technical roles that have no direct connection to combat. “There are millions of jobs in the military that are not related to killing people,” he notes. These narrow portrayals have even left many veterans uncomfortable with the ubiquitous “Thank you for your service” greeting. Higgins explains that many veterans feel reduced to symbolic “statues,” rather than recognized as full, complex human beings. While the gratitude is well-intentioned, the constant valorization makes many feel like outsiders in civilian society, he says: “not every veteran wants to be called a hero.”
The divide extends beyond wartime experiences, shaping public understanding of the mundane, daily challenges that military families navigate. Military children must repeatedly transfer to new school districts as their families move to follow service assignments, disrupting their education and social connections. Military spouses struggle to build consistent, fulfilling careers when they are forced to relocate every few years, often having to start over job searching in a new market.
Sheila Rupp, a military spouse of more than 20 years who has moved multiple times to follow her husband’s assignments, says closing the divide does not require all civilians to enlist. Instead, it requires ordinary Americans to build personal connections with military families and seek to understand the realities of their lives. “I think the average American really wants to support military families, but they often don’t know how,” said the 43-year-old Rupp. “If people were more connected and they actually knew their friends and neighbors that do serve or have served recently, I think it would impact a lot of things.”
Rupp added: “I just wish that there were more opportunities for people to get to know us … because obviously the civilian population brings support to our networks. And I think that there’s a lot that military families bring to the communities in which they live and serve too. So I think relationship is really important.”
This report is part of a series exploring American life as the nation marks its 250th anniversary.
