Doctoral Dissertation Research: To Father or to Fight? Mass Conscription and the Politics of Masculine Citizenship, France, 1913-1939, and the United States, 1917-1944.

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The obligation to act as conscripted citizen-soldiers for the modern state is one of the most important duties required of male citizens, especially in France and the United States where a republican citizen-soldier tradition emerged. Yet from the first decades of the twentieth century, male citizens have also been supported by the French and American states as "breadwinning" heads of families. At times this has conflicted with the citizen-soldier tradition, since conscripting fathers has contradicted the duty to act as fathers supporting families. This conflict reached its apex in France and the US between the World Wars, and throughout WWII in the US, when legislation was enacted that still informs contemporary policy. Using a comparative-historical methodology, I ask why the French rejected exempting fathers from military service, whereas the US chose to defer fathers from the draft. I argue that gendered ideologies regarding fatherhood affected these outcomes. Consulting archives around Washington DC, and Paris, France, I will examine transcripts of debates and commissions in the US Congress and French Parliament, reports by military leaders and manpower commissions, executive branch reports such as that of the War Department, daily newspapers, journals of social movements, and national legislation enacted. By emphasizing how fatherhood has been supported such that it has even challenged the citizen-soldier ideal, this dissertation advances knowledge in the fields of gender, citizenship, and military sociology. BroaderImpacts: The integration of women into the military raises many questions regarding the conflict between caring for families and serving the state as soldiers. However, this project reveals that such a dilemma is not unique to women soldiers, but has an historical precedent regarding male soldiers that was both debated and adjudicated in the first half of the twentieth century. Additionally, the import of supporting fatherhood through state policy is being increasingly emphasized in the US. Since draft legislation is still largely based upon the conscription rules of the interwar era, it is informative to understand how past legislation regarding drafting fathers would inform a contemporary draft, and at the same time, how it was differently adjudicated in another country such as France.