On 29 July 1998, the Secretary of Defense determined that all services will, by policy, prohibit personal relationships such as dating, shared living accommodations, or engaging in intimate or sexual relations. Since 1998, this policy has been updated and guidance has been provided in the form of information, training, and education into Army Regulation 600-20. The development of personal relationships within organizations has proven time and again to be detrimental to the good order and discipline of an organization. Army Regulation 600-20 specifies the prohibition of relationships between officers and enlisted Soldiers as well as Noncommissioned officers and junior enlisted Soldiers. In this day and age of our current operational tempo and the dynamics of both the burden on our forces and little dwell time at home stations, the enforcement of such policies has proven challenging. Whether forward deployed, or while a unit is at home station conducting routine functions, Soldiers of any rank who develop these relationships have inevitably opened the flood gates for issues to come. When Soldiers develop relationships within their units, it has proven to effect unit moral, the ability for that unit to perform its wartime mission, and has even affected unit strength. From August of 2003 through April of 2004, 1,737 Soldiers were found to be pregnant while forward deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom (Buller, 2007). Seventy seven percent of those Soldiers tested became pregnant while deployed and ninety two percent of those Soldiers were administratively re-deployed.

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