A friend posted this USA Today opinion piece on my Facebook page today: Help Military Families by Limiting Moves.
Talk about a subject of heated debate. The author, Kathleen Chretien, asks:
But instead of accepting that frequent moves are an unfortunate but immutable fact of life for military families, could we have the audacity to reform the decades-old, often arbitrary assignment practices and lengthening the time between major moves?
We obviously see the military world through very different sets of eyes.
First of all, I think it's important to point out some major differences between myself and the author of the article in USA Today. She is an associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University, so I am assuming she has a full time job and that she spent many years working towards her position. I am a stay at home mom. I had one job early in my husband's career and kissed my own opportunity at a career goodbye a long time ago. It's a decision that sometimes haunts me but I knew this military wife couldn't have it both ways. Some might accuse me of being bitter as younger wives fight for rights that just didn't exist 20 years ago. They might be right.
For Chretien, moving is an obstacle to both her career and her family. For me, moving is the reason I married a military man. I grew up moving with my military dad. I still hadn't seen enough of the world. Since I've married my husband, I've lived in Alaska, Germany (twice), Utah, California, Nevada, Alabama, Texas, and, currently, Argentina.
For many modern day military husbands and wives, moving is a royal pain in the ass, especially if they have jobs. It is next to impossible to be a dual career couple, yet that's what many couples want to have. Instead of making moves with their military spouse, more and more families are setting up shop in one central location and the military members becomes a Geo-Bachelor(ette), visiting home on weekends or a couple of times a month. It's like deployment except with a different level of stress. But I want to point something out... These families make the choice to separate.
Chretian would prefer not to make that choice. She wants the military to move her husband less so that her family faces less stress. It's a worthy goal. But I find it very unrealistic.
How can a spouse sustain a meaningful career when forced to relocate and find a new job every few years? Studies have shown that military wives make less than their civilian counterparts per year, in part due to the disruption of moves. The recent pledge for increased education and job placement assistance might help spouses find jobs. But satisfying, identity-forming careers? Not likely.
One of the reasons I chose not to pursue a career 20 years ago was because I was not only marrying my husband, I was marrying the military. Outdated concept, I think. It's not fair to expect all spouses to do without careers. The real problem isn't the moving - it's the civilian mindset about hiring military spouses.
First - not all licenses and certificates transfer from state to state.
Second - employers don't want to hire people who might move with little to know notice.
Third - military spouses have spotty employment records because of the two reasons listed above which makes employees less like to hire them. Vicious circle.
Solutions - we need more states to accept degrees and certifications from other states so that military spouses can transfer their law or nursing degree, or their teaching certificate, to the new state. In a recent diary of Danang65, I learned that Arizona is doing exactly that. Other states have already done so. If your state isn't one of those, maybe you could help get legislation written to make it happen.
Changing employer mindset about hiring military spouses is a little harder. In today's work environment, it might actually be considered a benefit to hire someone who is willing leave in three to four years time. We need more military spouses to join civilian organizations, like the Chamber of Commerce, in their local areas and start lobbying for change. Military spouses, in general, are loathe to jump into the local civilian community and lobby for any change - we tend to go with the flow and we tend to seek out people like ourselves... more military folks. Lobbying for change in only a year or two is hard work but it doesn't mean we shouldn't do more of it. Better yet, get some civilians on board that can start lobbying with us!
It's clear that moving less would make it easier for a military spouse to keep a job and to build a career. But we can't build a system around that. Let's try to lengthen the times of those assignments, but lets not expect 5 year assignments to become the norm, especially for officers.
Chretian also makes some statements that I would like substantiated:
Frequent moves also place undue stress on children. Ask any adult who grew up as a military "brat" about the anxiety that consumed the family when moving orders arrived. Children who experienced frequent moves report lower life satisfaction and psychological well-being as adults. Such teenagers have higher suicide rates.
I don't believe I have lower life satisfaction nor lower psychological well-being. But that is not a valid argument - who am I to say, "I survived!" and then ignore all those others who are so obviously suffering? Except I don't believe it. I believe some people have a hard time moving but I don't believe a majority do. But I also don't have the facts at hand. I also would like to see the study that claims military teenagers who move have higher suicide rates. I do know military kids are struggling in today's climate but I think it has to do more with frequent and long deployments added on to an already stressful life. Parents who prepare their kids for moves can do a lot to alleviate much of the stress - some will always be there. I will offer this study:
...children who succeeded in the face of adversity had more internal and external resources, particularly in the form of good thinking skills and effective parenting. Adversity did not seem to derail development unless key adaptive resources were weak, or impaired by the adversity itself. Resilient children had a great deal in common with other competent children who had no more than the normative level of stress in their lives. They were good problem solvers, able to learn and pay attention. They were close to adults in their lives who provided warmth, age-appropriate structure, and high expectations for them. They learned to follow the rules and, later, the laws of society. They were involved in activities at home, school, and in their communities. They developed close friendships and when the time came, positive romantic relationships. Not surprisingly, they had good self-esteem and felt effective.
In short, this paragraph describes my life and, I hope, the lives of my two sons. Military life provides enough adversity to make us successful, confident, happy people.
Chretian goes on to discuss arbitrary assignments and the need to revamp the assignments system. Talk about an excellent goal!
Job assignments are currently handled by centralized personnel systems for the different services. This leads to assignment scenarios that sometimes make little sense, focusing on filling vacant positions over preferences and merit.
The military assignment system is to be more complex than looking only at preferences and merit. Let me explain.
Merit is already built into the system. That's where promotions come in. Once you are promoted, you often promote yourself out of a job. Furthermore, you can't stay at the base where you are currently assigned because a job does not exist. In a system where people don't move often, this becomes even harder because the higher you move up the chain, the fewer jobs exist at your base. In our current system, this has been made even more difficult as more and more positions are given to civilian employees or to private contractors, who don't move.
As to preferences, the Air Force does try to work with individual families with specific concerns and take into account personal preferences. There is also the magic "Dream Sheet." We know from experience it doesn't often work, but it doesn't mean that the attempts aren't made. In all honesty, we need a system that is looking for the best for our nation, not the best for individual families. If we can manage to do both at the same time, then go for it. But families cannot and should not take preference.
The military assignment system is built primarily around need... the needs of the military. Often those needs can also be matched with an individual's or family's preferences. My husband saw this happen often at the Air Force Personel Center. However, it isn't always possible and the needs of the military almost always trump the needs of families. Families with special needs, kids or spouses that have medical concerns or kids with developmental disabilities, are put in a program that allows them the first match in the system except in special circumstances like Command Assignments.
What we do need to weed from the system is favoritism and cronyism. Many assignment comes around because so and so knows so and so and hires them by working around the system or pulling strings within it. In some respects, that's also how 'preferences' get taken into account. Chretien would like to see a system where commanders do the hiring - commander's know what is best in their neck of the woods but the military operates on a much larger scale and the officer or NCO in question may be needed more in Afghanistan than in Washington DC. A central hiring command can see where the needs are and, in an Air Force that is currently lacking enough officers in some career fields, it is absolutely essential that people with an understanding of the big picture do the hiring. They know which jobs need to be filled first and foremost and which jobs will just have to manage without for another year.
It comes down to this:
Personal preferences should not drive the system; the needs of the military should drive the system.
Chretien's final argument is actually her best but she spends the least time on it.
And then, of course, there is the issue of military spending. At a time when the Pentagon is looking for billions of dollars in cuts, imagine the cost savings that could be realized by not shuffling the military deck every few years. The benefits of such a shift likely would lead to greater job satisfaction and better retention.
The cost savings from making fewer moves could be huge. That was the main consideration behind the Air Force's decision to make assignments longer a few years ago. Basically, Chretien and I agree that longer assignments and fewer moves could benefit the system. But we should be careful what we ask for.
Overall, the military benefits from moving people around. Our nation benefits from it as well. Imagine if people from Texas were only assigned to bases in Texas. Or that people from the North were never assigned to bases in the South or the East or the West. Our military serves as a cultural exchange within our own nation. As life in the United States becomes more politically polarized, we need to know one another like we never have before. And the military provides that opportunity by moving us often and my moving us away from home.
In short, Chretian is asking for the wrong thing. We need a military that moves and we need the opportunity for spouses to work and have careers. I just don't think keeping families in one place is the answer.