MILITARY PSYCHOLOGY, 3(4), 215-231

Copyright © 1991, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Turning Points in Life: The Case of

Military Service and War

Glen H. Elder, Jr., Cynthia Gimbel, and

Rachel Ivie
Department of Sociology
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Military service creates discontinuity in men's lives by removing them from

age-graded careers and subjecting them to the dictates of a world in which
one's past or life history has no importance. How do men view their military
service during their later years? Is military service recalled as an experience
that subjectively influences different parts of their life course? Using four
long-term longitudinal samples of American men born between 1904 and
1930, this article examines the extent to which military service (from 1940 to
1955, including World War II) represented subjective turning points in their
lives. Military service specifically, rather than war generally, was recalled as
the life-changing experience. The probability of perceiving military service as
a life-course turning point was significantly influenced by entry at a relatively
young age, by membership in a family that suffered hardship during the
Depression, and by a successful military career. Men in this study were most
likely to define past events as turning points when those events had positive
effects and were perceived to cause substantial change in their lives, including
occupational change.

The SUbjective course of aging is marked by successive accounts of life

history that may include changes in direction. Each account necessarily
covers a different segment of the life course. Consequently, midlife
accounts differ from those made during retirement, although both typically
make reference to salient historical events and experiences (Hareven, 1982).
Dramatic changes in life history represent turning points that separate the
past from the future; people refer to themselves in terms of who they were

Requests for reprints should be sent to Glen H. Elder, Jr., Carolina Population Center, CB
#8120, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.
216 ELDER, GIMBEL, IVIE

before and after "the event." Remembered turning points also tell us much
about old age by suggesting that particular historical encounters have
something to do with the kind of person one is in later life.
In this respect, military mobilizations are especially relevant to men's lives
in the United States (Gade, 1991). They provide numerous examples of
dramatic change in life experience, from the collective experience of basic
training to overseas duty and exposure to life-threatening combat. As large
cohorts of American veterans enter their later years, they do so at a time
when little is known about the long-term implications of military service.
How do older men view their service experience? Did the experience change
the course of their lives in either negative or positive ways, or was the service
a relatively uneventful phase of their lives?
Military service may also generate drastic life changes for the wives,
children, and parents of those mobilized, especially when mobilization
occurs relatively late in life (e.g., the early 30s). As men are called to arms
and leave their homes, wives become single parents in their households, and
some may return to their parents' homes for the duration. Other implica-
tions include a substantial loss of income, a loss that is especially great when
men are mobilized in their 30s, frequently a time of career advancement.
We investigate the proposition that, as veterans age, many come to regard
their past military service as an impetus to life change - a turning point. We
hypothesized that perceiving military service as a turning point would be
directly related to four aspects of the service experience in the 1940s and
early 1950s:

1. Earlier entry into military service would most likely occur before
life-shaping events (e.g., marriage and full-time employment), making
greater the prospects for a subjective redirection or recasting of life's
trajectory (for other evidence, see Elder, 1987).
2. Life change would be most pronounced for young men from disad-
vantaged backgrounds, such as those whose families suffered hardship
during the Depression. Military service would represent an opportu-
nity for a more promising future.
3. A successful or upwardly mobile career in the military followed by
access to higher education through the GI Bill would jointly represent
another promising source of beneficial life change.
4. The novel and often incommunicable experience of combat would
expose men to sources of personal change that would not be available
to men who did not experience combat.

All of the data for this inquiry came from men in four long-term
longitudinal studies: the Stanford-Terman Longitudinal Study (Terman,
1925), the Oakland Growth Study, and the Berkeley Guidance and Growth
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 217

samples (Eichorn, J. A. Clausen, Haan, Honzik, & Mussen, 1981). Most of

the veterans served between 1940 and 1953, with a large percentage serving
in World War II and the Korean Conflict.

MILITARY SERVICE AS A TURNING POINT

Subjective changes in life direction, or turning points, are generally

perceptions of life transitions in which the individual takes on "new sets of
roles, enters into fresh relations with a new set of people, and acquires a
new self conception" (Mandelbaum, 1973, p. 181). The new social role is
typically on a different trajectory involving a break with the past. Military
service represents such a break in a number of respects. First, basic training
fosters equality and comradeship among recruits by separating them from
their pasts. It makes prior identities irrelevant, requires uniform dress and
appearance, minimizes privacy, and rewards performance on the basis of
group achievement.
A second type of break occurs in relation to the pressures and timetables
of an age-graded career. Entry into military service provides a moratorium
from such pressures. Apart from its costs for loved ones who remain at
home, military service represents a legitimate time-out from education,
work, and family; it releases the recruit from the conventional expectations
of an age-graded career. Service to country takes precedence over career
choices and progress. Stouffer, Suchman, DeVinney, Star, and Williams
(1949) noted that, for many soldiers in World War II, "perhaps for a
majority, the break caused by Army service [meant] a chance to evaluate
where they had gotten and to reconsider where they were going" (Vol. 2, p.
572).
A third type of break from the past involves a broadened range of
perspectives and social knowledge. Mobilization increases the scope of
awareness of oneself and others through an expanded range of interactional
experiences, including new people and places, which promote greater
acceptance of social diversity. Willard Waller (1940) once likened the
experience to the "stirring of soup ... regions, culture groups, religious
groups, and classes are all mixed as they are at no other period in life" (p.
14). A veteran interviewed just after World War II by Havighurst and
associates (see Havighurst, Baughman, Burgess, & Eaton, 1951) noted the
incredible diversity of acquaintances in the service and their influence on his
views. As he put it, the experience "sort of opens up your horizons ....
You start thinking in broader terms than you did before" (p. 188).
The potential for change offered by military service may depend as well
on (a) the life history men bring to their service, such as a background of
Depression hardship; (b) the life-course timing of the service (Le., whether
218 ELDER, GIMBEL, IVIE

shortly after high school graduation or later in one's 20s or even 30s); (c) the
service experience itself (i.e., whether it includes combat or a successful
military career); and (d) the immediate consequences of military service.
One of the more relevant consequences is access to the GI Bill and its
educational benefits.
Life transitions, such as military service, become turning points in part
through the personal histories and life trajectories men bring to new
situations. For example, the men in the Oakland Growth Study sample grew
up during the Depression and often brought life histories of troubled times
to their military service (Elder, 1974). For men who had encountered
prolonged hardship, the military provided a potential route to greater
opportunity, including educational benefits and skill training. We suspected
that Depression hardship would increase the probability that military
service altered men's life course. In some cases, however, military service
may have functioned as a negative turning point for Depression-reared men
who later viewed it as a postponement of their careers and economic
independence.
Early mobilization into the armed forces (shortly after high school
graduation) tends to maximize chances for a recasting of the life course
through developmental growth, a delayed entry into adult roles, and greater
opportunity to get ahead (Elder, 1987). Such timing comes at a formative
stage before the individual has made commitments to full-time adult roles
in work and family. By comparison, the later the entry age, the greater the
prospect of disrupted careers and family obligations. Delayed entry exacts
more from men's lives and offers less value in return. From the vantage
point of middle age, delayed entry may be distinguished by its negative
implications for the life course.
Early mobilization promotes emancipation from family ties and from the
dependency of living at home. It is a social rite of passage to manhood for
high school graduates who become a U.S. Marine or a Navy cadet. An
Oakland Growth Study veteran recalled such personal change as "instant
maturity" (unpublished interview). Another veteran remembered entering
this new world "sink or swim" (unpublished interview). Younger entrants
also had more opportunity and reason to use the educational benefits of the
GI Bill. They typically entered the service before college and returned to
civilian life with a stronger incentive to pursue higher education.
Few experiences of American veterans in the 1940s and 1950s caused
greater life discontinuity than exposure to combat. No member of the
Oakland Growth Study and Stanford-Terman samples was fully prepared
for heavy combat in World War II. As veterans, they encountered great
difficulty in sharing their combat experiences with wives, parents, or
children (Elder & Clipp, 1988). But the important issue from the standpoint
of life redirection is whether combat experiences changed the life-course
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 219

trajectory for these men. From the available evidence, heavy combat
produced a legacy of stress symptoms that persisted well after military
service, but this outcome applies only to a minority of the veterans who
have been surveyed in later life (Elder & Clipp, 1988; Hastings, 1991). There
is, then, some reason to question the pervasive life-changing impact of
heavy combat, although it seems likely to have negative meaning in later life
for the few veterans who experienced it.
Along with access to the GI Bill, the immediate consequences of military
service frequently included new vocations made possible by skills learned in
the service. Examples include men who were assigned to radar school and
programs on intelligence work. Overseas assignments and language training
also opened up new occupational directions. The careers of many specialists
on Asian cultures were shaped by their overseas work during World War II
in Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. Rapid movement across ranks in the
military also is a potential source of life-course alterations.
Clearly, military and wartime experiences are conducive to personal
change. But do they actually make a difference in how men view their lives?
What kind of difference do these experiences make, whether positive or
negative?

THE STUDIES AND DATA

The data for this research come from American men born before the
Depression. The Stanford-Terman Longitudinal Study was launched in
1922 (see Terman, 1925) to follow approximately 1,500 gifted children from
California who were born between 1903 and 1920, and it has continued into
the 1990s across 13 follow-ups. The study participants were selected from
California schools according to the criterion of IQ scores of 135 or higher.
We focused on 328 men who participated in the 1977 follow-up and who
answered this question: "As you look back over the course of your life,
certain events may stand out as highly significant or turning points. List
below five such events." The average man in the study was in his late 60s at
the time of the 1977 follow-up and had experienced the Depression and
wartime mobilization during the early 1940s; 750/0 had completed at least 4
years of college. Although a majority of the Stanford-Terman men were
involved in careers at the time of World War II, more than 40% eventually
served in the armed forces. At retirement, four out of five men were
positioned in the upper middle class.
Data on the Berkeley/Oakland men are drawn from the archives of the
Institute on Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley
(Eichorn et aI., 1981). Men from the Oakland Growth Study were born in
1920 and 1921; men from the Berkeley Growth and Guidance Studies were
220 ELDER, GIMBEL, lYlE

born in 1928 and 1929. Information on study members was collected

annually through the 1930s and at four points during their adulthood: 1960,
1970, 1982, and 1985. The last follow-up explored the military experience of
all male subjects and the husbands of female subjects.
Born in the 1920s, the Berkeley/Oakland men grew up in the San
Francisco Bay area. More than 60070 came from'middle-class homes, and an
even larger proportion eventually completed college and pursued manage-
rial or professional careers up to retirement. Eighty-one percent of the men
served in the military. More than one third were drafted, but several of the
enlistees noted that they joined to avoid the draft. Most served in the Army,
and the Pacific was the most common theater. The veterans were equally
likely to come from the middle and working classes. Our study included 149
of these veterans.
By using reports from the 1985 data, we lost information on men who left
the sample through death or other circumstances. But apart from two
Oakland women who lost husbands in war and a Berkeley man who died in
the Vietnam War, we found no other evidence of wartime deaths in the
sample. Previous analyses (Elder, 1974) have shown that, with respect to
family background, the Oakland men who remained in the study at midlife
closely resembled all members of the adolescent sample of males.
We were also limited by the absence of some information on conse-
quences among the Stanford-Terman men, such as their later-life problems,
their use of military benefits, or any changes in their relationships with their
parents. More important, the very nature of the question asked of the
Stanford-Terman men limited our analysis. We know that military service
during World War II played a role in mate selection, in entry to college on
the GI Bill, in the timing and nature of full-time employment, and in
residential location (Modell & Steffey, 1988). However, these multiple
implications are easily lost in recollections that are based on an open-ended
approach, as in the Stanford-Terman study. For example, veterans may
identify marriage and their first job as turning points without associating
them with wartime mobilization, even though some met their wives on
military bases and others made connections leading to lifetime careers.
Because of these considerations, we expected the Stanford-Terman analysis
to be useful in identifying the full range of subjective turning points,
although not as insightful as the Berkeley/Oakland data on the social
processes involved.
Compared to the 1977 Stanford-Terman follow-up, which asked only for
a list of important turning points, the 1985 Berkeley/Oakland survey made
a more focused inquiry about military service as a turning point: "Life
events can change the direction and quality of lives. We call such events
'turning points'. Do you think of your military experience as a turning point
in your life?" Because this approach forced the men to make a connection
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 221

between personal history and the event of military mobilization, we could

determine more confidently which factors made a difference in the signif-
icance of military service.
The men in these studies were surveyed in similar life stages. The
Stanford-Terman men were between 57 and 73 years of age in 1977, and the
Berkeley/Oakland men were between 56 and 65 years of age in 1985. Both
groups reported on military experience that occurred between the late 1930s
and the late 1950s and on the enduring consequences of military service.

MEASUREMENT AND RESULTS

What Are Your Turning Points?

When the Stanford-Terman men were asked in the 1977 follow-up to list
five turning points, they settled on education, marriage, a new job,
retirement, and World War II (see Table 1). The only historical event-the
war - was especially common in the memories of veterans but had very little
significance for nonveterans (48"70 vs. 5%, respectively): x2(1, N = 328) =
80.7, P < .01. The war entailed manpower mobilization, shortages, and the
overseas service of family members on the home front, but we found no
evidence of these influences among the turning points of nonveterans.
Focusing on the Stanford-Terman veterans alone, we assumed that age at
entry and combat experience would influence whether some veterans
perceived their wartime experience as a notable change in life course.
However, neither variable increased the prominence of World War II as a
subjective turning point. In lieu of exploring other facets of wartime
experience that were not recorded in the data file, we concluded that
military mobilization was sufficient for World War II to be viewed as a
turning point by these men.
Were men who viewed the war as a turning point more likely to recall
certain personal events as turning points? One of the Stanford-Terman
veterans noted the coincidence of two such events: "the outbreak of war
for the U.S.A. and my first marriage which was somewhat hastened
by it" (unpublished interview). World War II hastened marriages; changed
the course of careers (Modell & Steffey, 1988); and, among the
Stanford-Terman men, increased childlessness. However, only one empir-
ical link in our study connected historical and personal events as turning
points-that of the birth of a first child and World War II (tau B = - .12;
see Table 1). Consistent with this outcome, the Stanford-Terman veterans
were more likely than nonveterans to remain childless (15% vs. 7%,
respectively).
The very frequency of the citation of World War II validated our inquiry
222 ELDER, GIMBEL, IVlE

TABLE 1
Turning Points in Life and Their Correlation With World War II as a Turning
Point (Stanford-Terman Sample, 1977)

Correlation With World War II

Most Frequently Turning Point
Cited Turning Point n % (Tau B)
History
World War II 81 25
Loss and trauma
Death of father 18 6 -.08
Death of spouse or other 18 6 - .05
Accidents and illness 50 15 - .03
Separation and divorce 24 7 - .03
Occupation and achievement
New job 214 65 -.04
Work and achievement 43 13 - .05
Promotion 39 12 .05
Fired 12 4 -.07
Retirement 77 24 - .05
Education 28 39 -.08
Mentor 22 7 -.07
Family formation
Marriage 211 64 .04
Children 74 23 -.12
Other family events 23 7 -.05
Miscellaneous
Moves 39 12 -.06
Travel 19 6 .10
Note. Total number of cases is 328. More than one turning point could be listed by each
person. Items with fewer than 12 nominations were excluded from the table.
into war and military service as life turning points. The importance of this
issue to later life was not imposed by the research instrument itself but
originated from the men's own accounts (see also Schuman & Scott, 1989).
With World War II more likely to be cited by veterans than by nonveterans,
we concluded that military service was the turning point experience rather
than the mobilized home front, its dislocations, or the war in some more
general form. This outcome provided a rationale for our exploration of
military service as a life change among the Berkeley/Oakland men. In view
of the Stanford-Terman data limitations on intervening experiences, we
also looked to the Berkeley/Oakland veterans for insights regarding the
process through which mobilization into the military generated a change in
life course.
Is Military Service a Turning Point?
Nearly three out of five of the Berkeley/Oakland veterans claimed that
military service redirected their lives to some extent. The remainder
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 223

reported no such change. Those who noted a life change cited several
reasons, including rapid maturation, more education, and travel and
adventure (see Figure 1). As one veteran of the South Pacific theater
observed,

When I enlisted after high school I had no idea about my future or its
direction. Going into the service gave me a chance to "grow up" and
to mature. Afterwards, I realized that a college education was the best
course to further myself. (unpublished interview)

Each of the reasons cited for the life change described an outcome of
some aspect of military service. For example, rapid maturation might be
cited by men who were mobilized at a relatively young age. Travel and
adventure could result from overseas duty. We explored four aspects of the
men's life history and service experience that identified potential recasting
changes: family hardship during the Depression, the timing of entry with a
focus on early entry, the military career itself, and combat.
The 1985 survey asked the Berkeley/Oakland men whether they recalled
any hardship in the 1930s. The responses ranged from no hardship (1) to
extreme hardship (4). Although 38070 of these veterans said they remem-
bered little or no effect of the Depression, 62% reported a strong effect.
The second experience of relevance is early entry into the service. In our
study, early entry denoted entry at or before the age of 21 years, generally

Reasons
Maturity
Education
Travel, adventure
Independence
Altered view of life
Life disruption
Met spouse
Altered view of death
Career
Leadership

o 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
Percentage

FIGURE 1 Ten reasons military service was a turning point in life, in rank order of
nomination frequency (Oakland/Berkeley sample of men and husbands, n = 86),
224 ELDER, GIMBEL, lVIE

referring to the period shortly after high school (ages 21 years or younger
were scored 1; 22 years or older were scored 0). Of these veterans, 560/0 were
early entrants and the remainder were 22 years or older when they entered
the military. Other analyses (Elder, 1987) showed that early entry identified
men who were unlikely to have established careers or families before entry
into the service.
Potentially life-changing aspects of the military career itself include
promotion through the ranks, vocational training beyond basic training,
and overseas travel. Of the Berkeley/Oakland veterans, fewer than 10%
reported no change of rank during the service, more than 60% reported
little movement through the ranks, and one third reported a great deal of
movement. Three fourths of the men traveled overseas at some time during
their military service. When asked if they received beneficial vocational
training beyond basic training, two thirds said they received some training
beyond basic and slightly less than one fifth claimed they received quite a
lot of useful training. We summed these three interrelated items (average r
= .21) to form a military career index with a range of scores from 0 to 6:
(a) career mobility-no increase in rank (0), little increase in rank (1), and
much increase in rank (2); (b) training-no helpful training in the military
(0), little training received (1), and much helpful training received (2); (c)
overseas experience-no overseas experience (0), overseas experience (2).
We weighted our measure of overseas experience to stress its importance in
the growth process.
The fourth important aspect of military service is combat experience.
Heavy combat represented a traumatic period in the men's lives that might
be remembered as a time when they reconsidered the direction and meaning
of their lives. We tested this possibility using a multifaceted measure of
combat involving exposure to death and dying, the experience of incoming
and outgoing fire, and duration of combat experience. The range of
possible scores was 0 to 7, ranging from no combat experience (0), to light
combat (1-3), to heavy combat experience (4-7; see Elder & Clipp, 1988).
According to this measure, 58% of the men were noncombatants, 18%
experienced light combat, and 24% were exposed to heavy combat.
We used a set of logistic models to estimate the effects of these four
variables (Depression hardship, early entry, military career experience, and
combat). The effects shown in column 1 of Table 2 are expressed in terms
of the log-odds of perceiving military service as a turning point, with
adjustments for level of education. Three of the four life experiences
markedly increased a veteran's tendency to view the service as a turning
point: Depression hardship, early entry into the service, and higher scores
on the military career index. These findings suggest that a family back-
ground of hardship may cast the military as a new opportunity system;
mobilization at an early age placed recruits into a new, demanding situation
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 225

TABLE 2
Military Experience as a Turning Point by Life Experiences: Logistic
Regression Coefficients and Standard Errors (Berkeley/Oakland Sample, 1985)

Variables and Modell Model 2

Score Ranges N= 132 N = 132

Constant - 3.02 (1.17) -3.55 (1.26)

Linkages
Educational benefits (0-3) -.08 (.20)
Relationship with parents (0-3) - .49 (.30)
Exit problems (0-2) .05 (.30)
Loss of friends (0-2) .24 (.24)
Antecedent variables
Military career index (0-6) .26* (.15) .25 (.16)
Combat experience (0-7) -.01 (.09) -.04 (.09)
Age at entry (late = 0, early = 1) 1.10** (.39) 1.08** (.43)
Depression hardship (1-4) .39* (.22) .39* (.23)
College education (nongraduate = 0,
graduate = 1) .46 (.44) .61 (.50)
Chi-square 161.45* 157.46*

*p < .05. **p < .OJ.

at a formative stage in life; and military opportunities exposed men to new

experiences and life chances. However, these findings do not tell us about
the explanatory process. By what process, for example, does early entry into
the service produce experiences that involve a change in life direction and
experience? The findings also provide no clue as to why combat experience
is not linked to this sense of life change.
What about the exploratory linkages? We know from other research
(Elder & Clipp, 1988) that combat veterans are more likely than other men
to attribute substantial costs to their time in the service, including the loss
of close friends, traumatic memories of battle scenes, and enduring
symptoms of posttraumatic stress. From a psychosocial standpoint, the
experience of war is thought to represent a line of demarcation between the
civilian self and the warrior. Laufer (1985) observed that "entry into the
world of war separates the survivors from their peers who have no direct
contact with that world" (p. 124).
In view of these interpretations, why do we not find any evidence of the
significance of combat in later life views of military servicemen? One
explanation is that combat effects are expressed through specific experi-
ences, such as the loss of a close friend, stress symptoms during reentry to
civilian life, failure to use education benefits, and change in relations with
parents. We added measures of these experiences to the second logistic
equation presented in Table 2 (second column). Loss of friends is the sum
of two dichotomous variables: a friend hurt or taken as a prisoner of war
226 ELDER, GIMBEL, IVIE

was scored 1 for yes, 0 for no; a friend who died or was missing in action
was scored 1 for yes, 0 for no (scores range from 0 to 2). Problems after
military service were indexed by the summation of scores on two measures:
(a) emotional problems-anyone of the following reported symptoms was
given a score of 1 (difficulty concentrating, problems sleeping, irritability,
depression, anger-resentment); other responses scored 0; (b) behavioral
problems - anyone of the following reported problems was given a score of
1 (employment problems, marital difficulties, drinking problems, feelings
of being lost, health problems); other responses scored O. Scores ranged
from 0 to 2.
Educational benefits and change in relations with parents might also
provide a connection between combat experience and subjective life change.
Combat experience and its sequelae could diminish a veteran's ability to take
advantage of educational benefits and increase a man's stature with his
parents, particularly his father. The men received 1 point if they used the GI
benefits for their education, an additional point if they earned a college
degree using the GI benefits, and a third point if they used such benefits to
attain a graduate degree (scores ranged from 0 to 3). Regarding family
relations, each veteran was asked whether his relationship with his father and
mother had changed between the times of entry and exit from the service.
Perceived changes were measured in terms of three dimensions - esteem,
closeness, and understanding. Improvements were scored 1 and other re-
sponses 0, thereby yielding an index with scores ranging from 0 to 3.
Both the loss of a friend and stress symptoms after the service are
common in the lives of combat veterans (Elder & Clipp, 1989), and yet
neither reliably predicts a life-change view of the service (see Model 2, Table
2). The same conclusion applies for educational benefits and relations with
parents. As such they cannot serve as an indirect link or pathway from
combat to a turning point account of the service. Combat may produce
greater maturity that offsets its destabilizing life-course effect (see Call &
Teachman, 1991) and, thus, may be unlikely to be perceived as a turning
point. We should at least question what type of change is implied by the
concept of a turning point. In terms of a postservice legacy, combat has less
to do with the beginning of a new social trajectory than with a change in
personality, self, and behavior.
Another interpretation of the combat outcomes centers on the meanings
of the terms combat and turning point. Combat veterans commonly
remember their occasions of combat in terms of fear, loss of life, and
dreadful waste, along with memories of camaraderie (Elder & Clipp, 1989).
In the Oakland and Berkeley cohorts, heavy-combat veterans were more
likely than noncombatants to claim that they learned to value life while in
the service, but they also recalled their wartime experiences in terms of
combat anxieties, miserable living conditions, negative memories, and the
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 227

loss of friends. By comparison, the concept of a turning point may have

positive connotations similar to the meaning of turnaround. Those who
claimed that military service was a turning point in life might be saying that
it gave them new possibilities that had real payoffs - that it helped to turn
their lives around in positive ways. Qualitative studies are needed to pursue
the meaning of the term turning point.
Early entry into the service (21 years or younger) represents the most
prominent determinant of a turning point concept of military service among
those considered in this study, and we have suggested a number of
experiences that favor such change in life, including rapid social indepen-
dence, improved relations with parents, and access to the educational
benefits of the OI Bill. Younger men at entry were more likely than late
entrants to report that relations with parents had improved during their
term of service (r = .21). Fathers, even more than mothers, were apt to hold
positive attitudes toward sons who entered the service at an early age. Early
entrants also had greater need for the OI Bill and its educational benefits,
and they were most likely to use them (r = .30). However, neither improved
relations with parents nor use of the 01 Bill accounted for even a small
proportion of the effect of early entry on a turning point concept of the
service. Early entry may set in motion a host of life changes that are only
partly assessed by these measures.
Is early entry into military service more likely to alter the course of lives
when it is linked to a deprived background in the 1930s? We know that a
background of hardship is predictive of a life-change view of the service.
Perhaps this is even more true when the loss of earnings is minimal, usually
during the early life course. Those seeking the appropriate answer should
test the statistical interaction of Depression hardship and early entry. To
explore this intervention, we cross-classified the early and later entrants in
terms of whether or not they remembered growing up in servere hardship
during the 1930s.
Veterans from homes of pronounced economic disadvantage who entered
the service early were most likely to regard the service as a turning point in
their life course (78070). This group was followed by early entrants who
experienced minimal hardship during the Depression (60%). A similar but
attenuated relationship between economic disadvantage and the tendency to
regard military service as a turning point was found for late entrants (51 %
and 45%, respectively, for those who experienced pronounced or minimal
hardship during the Depression). To test for an interaction effect, we added
a term for Depression Hardship x Entry Age into the second logistic
equation (see Table 2, column 2). This term did not prove to be statistically
significant.
Subjective turning points are only one way in which people characterize
their lives. How are men's definitions of turning points related to other life
228 ELDER, GIMBEL, lVIE

reviews? To answer this question, we correlated responses to the turning

point question with four retrospective questions on military experience. The
results show notable correlations between perceptions of military service as
a turning point and positive reviews of military service, such as seeing
military service as a primary influence in life (scale of 1 to to, r = .44), as
an advantage in life (scale of 1 to to, r = .31), as more beneficial than costly
(responses from 1 to 4, r = .26), and as a source of skills for the future
(responses from 1 to 3, r = .18). At least in the Berkeley/Oakland sample
of veterans, recollections of life change in the service were linked to
perceptions of greater opportunity and life enhancement. The life accounts
of veterans from more unpopular wars, such as the Vietnam War, might
show more negative associations.

DISCUSSION

Most Americans have had some exposure to major wars and the military
mobilizations of this century. Studies are beginning to trace these influences
across the life span into the later years, but what do they mean to the men
who have served in the military? To answer this question we must explore
life reviews and accounts. This study of American men born before the
1930s investigated only one facet of a life review, that of events that
changed the course of lives, with emphasis on military service and war. Any
definition of a past event as life changing provides a subjective account of
human development and aging. It represents a folk account of how the
person came to be the person he is in later life. To be sure, much is left out
of the story, but this study represents a step toward understanding how the
life course is subjectively construed and shows some implications of
particular constructions for aging.
Three generalizations on life review emerge from our findings. First, the
identification of a specific event as a turning point is related to the amount
of change it causes for the individual. Earlier research on stress suggested
that degree of psychological impairment is related to the degree of change
caused by a life event (see Pearlin, 1980). Among the Stanford-Terman
men, veteran status differentiated between those who viewed World War II
as a turning point and those who did not. This finding may be surprising in
view of the total mobilization of the population in World War II, although
perhaps not when we consider the amount of change in veterans' lives. One
veteran described this transition as an "abrupt termination of a 'normal
life' " (unpublished interview). By comparison, men who remained civilians
were mobilized within the secure context of familiar situations.
Second, turning points tend to have a more positive than negative
 TURNING POINTS IN LIFE 229

connotation. Of the five most common turning points listed by the

Stanford-Terman men, three are usually seen as positive events - marriage,
new job, and education. Among the Berkeley/Oakland veterans, the men
who viewed military service as a turning point were also the men who were
most likely to have actually benefited by it. Specifically, younger entrants
were more likely to see military service as a turning point. In veterans'
personal reviews of their lives in the study, only positive orientations
(World War II as the best time of life, etc.) are significantly related to
viewing military service as a turning point. The positive aspects of subjec-
tive turning points may explain why we fail to find effects of negative
experiences such as combat, loss of friends, and emotional and physical
problems after demobilization.
A third, related generalization about subjective turning points is that they
often reflect occupational issues. Of the five most frequently cited turning
points by the Stanford-Terman men, two are related to occupational
transitions-new jobs and retirement. The Berkeley/Oakland men who
were more likely to benefit occupationally from military experiences
(younger veterans) were also more likely to view military service as a turning
point. Additionally, men who viewed the military as a source of life skills
were also more likely to view their service as a turning point. Perhaps men's
normative tendency to define the self in terms of occupational achievement
is reflected in the self-definition of life's turning points. It is also a reflection
of these men in their historical time.
Entry into military service during the 1940s and 1950s changed men's lives
and the lives of their loved ones. Wives were separated from their husbands,
and children were separated from their fathers. Long separations of this
kind during World War II placed marriages at risk (Pavalko & Elder, 1990)
and frequently made fathers strangers to their children at the war's end
(Stolz, 1954). This web of relationships, including relatives and friends,
deserves study in relation to the full scope of life's turning points that issue
from the mobilization of men and women for military duty.
The generalization boundaries of this study should be kept in mind.
World War II and the Korean Conflict differ in many respects from the
Vietnam War, from the composition of the armed forces to the nature of
combat and the homecoming experiences of public indifference, non-
support, and hostility. Another consideration is the relative size of the
veteran population in cohorts that experienced these wars. Most American
men of military age served during World War II, compared to the minority
of American men who served in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War.
This proportion could determine how men regard their service experience.
The burden of service might be greatest when the veteran population is
smallest and least representative of all men. In addition, the study samples
230 ELDER, GIMBEL, IVIE

represent neither the larger male population at the time nor the veteran
population. Replications are needed in more contemporary cohorts of
American men and women who have served in the armed forces.
Equally important, our findings and their implications call for more
probing studies of the conceptual and personal meanings of life's turning
points (see J. N. Clausen, 1990). How do people interpret the concept of
turning point? Does it convey mainly positive experiences or gains? If so,
how might the redirection of life trajectories be assessed to permit a broad
range of life-change experiences, positive and negative? In this study, we
speak of turning points within the life review of veterans. Does the idea of
turning point apply only to such accounts, or does it have a place within the
objective life course?
In theory, both objective and perceived turning points offer strategic
insights on the interplay between lives and a changing society. Objective
turning points tell us how historical and social forces shape individual lives
often without any conscious action or recognition on the individual's part.
The study of subjective or perceived turning points reveals personal
awareness of these forces. Especially when assessed through intensive
interviews, knowledge of this awareness should provide greater under-
standing of the life-course implications of past experience. Each man in the
present study lived through a time of great social change, but not every man
came to see it as a time that changed the direction and quality of his life. We
have just begun to understand this disparity and its complex issues.

ACKNOWLEDGM ENTS

This article is based on a program of research on social change in the life

course within the Carolina Consortium on Human Development and the
Carolina Population Center. We acknowledge financial support from the
National Institute of Mental Health through Grant MH-41327 (Glen H.
Elder, Jr., principal investigator), the Veterans Administrative Merit Re-
view Program (Elizabeth Clipp and Glen H. Elder, Jr., coprincipal
investigators), and a Research Scientist Award (No. MH-00567) to Glen H.
Elder, Jr. We are indebted to the Institute of Human Development
(University of California at Berkeley) for permission to use data from its
archives and to the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center at the
Durham Veterans Administration for its support of research on military
service in aging and health.

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