The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) Military is now 50 years old. The advent of the AVF after more than 30 years of the draft created profound changes in the way the US military worked. For example, African Americans, the Hispanic community, and the immigrant population found the AVF military provided a path to equal pay for equal rank and a path to citizenship that might otherwise not have been available to them. While this path had advantages, there could be some significant disadvantages, as well. As drafted soldiers left the military, and senior military officials feared male citizens might not find the AVF as appealing, they increased recruitment of women to fill the gap, and began to integrate these women into more positions and career fields. There is an old saying in the military: If they wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued one to you. In many ways, the history of the All-Volunteer Force is the story of how that saying stopped making sense. Today, women serve in numbers and ways that were once unthinkable, and families are more than just welcome; they are essential components of how the AVF functions. The military community found they had to appeal as much to the families as to the soldiers if they wanted the soldiers to stay for more than one enlistment. An AVF military was expensive, due to the benefits the military had to provide, so the number of Active military members decreased, and the use of the reserve components increased. This roundtable will provide reflections on the history and legacy of the AVF policy from a variety of perspectives to examine its impact on race and gender, as well as how it changed the role of families and the three military components—Active, Reserve, and National Guard.