Back in the Navy female sailors did not have the option of maternity uniforms until the late 1980s. Women officers had to go to work in civilian clothing, which made saluting problematic. And things were complicated for the first women on ships, since SecNav policy was to send any pregnant sailor home ASAP. This created resentment, both from women who felt they could still work, thank you very much, and male sailors who thought some of their shipmates were getting pregnant to get out of deployments. Some probably were. This changed on some ships when female chiefs were assigned to ships; the chiefs had this odd idea that it takes two to get pregnant, so they put maximum pressure on pregnant sailors to name the father, and the pregnancies suddenly dropped.

And it was worse in the Marine Corps. One of my Naval Academy classmates went Marines, got married, got pregnant, got told her presence in the USMC was no longer required — excellent use of a four-year government-paid college education. 🙄

Probably Slk.🎈has even better horror stories from that era — she worked for a living. 😉