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This is the first in a series about the choices today's officer spouses face. Future articles will focus on these topics to help you help yourself and other spouses along the way.

As military officer spouses in today's armed forces, we often find ourselves living in two distinctly different worlds. In one, we have id cards and know our spouses' last four digits better than we know our own Social Security numbers. They are the key that magically unlocks the doors to our medical, dental, commissary, and PX/BX shopping privileges. Without them, day-to-day life on any military installation would prove difficult to say the least.

The other world is one in which many of us attempt to carve out our own professional identities. We boldly build, sustain, and advance our own careers despite the traditional and emerging obstacles that can accompany being married to someone in uniform.

The many hurdles

It used to be said that if the military wanted you to have a wife, you would have been issued one. Fortunately, that saying has faded with time and has been replaced with the reality that spouses - wives and husbands - do matter, because they should. They also matter to DoD because they greatly influence the retention and recruitment of our armed forces, an issue of ever-growing importance.

"We know that servicemembers and family members who are satisfied are more likely to stay in the military," explains Dr. Margaret Harrell, a senior social scientist at the rand Corp. and the associate director of the Forces and Resources Policy Center at the rand National Defense Research Institute in Arlington, Va.

Harrell recently coauthored the book Working Around the Military: Challenges to Military Spouse Employment and Education (Rand National Defense Research Institute, 2004). Two-thirds of the military spouses interviewed for the book's study thought the military lifestyle had negatively affected their employment opportunities. Although this is a shocking majority, it surely comes as no surprise to military spouses, who have felt this way for a long time.

"My generation of spouses was willing to subjugate our careers to follow our husbands all over the world. I don't see [spouses today] as willing to give up their careers in return for the military lifestyle," says Sue Schwarz, DBA, a military spouse of 17 years and former deputy director of health affairs for MOAA's Government Relations Department. "I wonder what the future will hold in terms of recruitment and retention of servicemembers when spouses want and expect fulfilling careers," she says.

It's true. Many spouses today do expect more. For many, particularly in the case of officer spouses, it's not always about the money, either.

"There is often the assumption that military spouses work for financial reasons. As a result of this study, we found out that is not always the case. Spouses work for different reasons," explains Harrell.

"I love my career. It's what I do, and it makes me happy," says Keita Franklin, a licensed clinical social worker, an Air Force spouse, and the Family Advocacy Program manager at the Army Community Service in Stuttgart, Germany. Still, despite her love for her job, she has concerns about its future. "I'm always worried about getting stationed [in a place where] there isn't more than one base to choose from [for employment purposes] or with a big city nearby having social problems," she says.

And then there is the issue of career progression: "Think about it. As his career progresses, theoretically yours does too. Somewhere along the line you may have to face the possibility of a geographic separation to maintain your career momentum," she says.

So far, Franklin hasn't had to make that kind of decision in her career. She has, however, had to deal with the challenge of starting over at each of the five installations where the Franklins have been stationed. Employment opportunities and available assistance services are different at each location, depending on the branch of service that runs it.

One thing, however, remains constant: "It doesn't seem to matter if you've earned a Civilian of the Quarter Award in the past or bring exceptional performance ratings with you to the next place," Franklin says. "You always have to build your reputation up all over again and establish new networking contacts in the area. It can be very frustrating."

Frustrations aside, Franklin finds her job rewarding. "I get to stay involved in the latest and greatest in my field as a government employee, and that's important to me and my future career goals," she says. She also points to the built-in support system on any base or post as being helpful to her and her family.

There is also the added social benefit of work. "A lot of my good friends are people I've met on the job and work with every day," she says.

Another employment challenge closely related to relocation is the subject of longevity. You move somewhere, but how long are you going to remain in that area? Elizabeth Skinner, a former Army major turned Army spouse, found out the hard way that it matters a great deal to potential employers. This highly skilled medical doctor who has an extensive background in family practice has been unemployed for two years.

"The last two years I have not been able to get a job due to the lack of longevity in one location," she explains. "While we were stationed at Fort Leavenworth for Command and General Staff College, I had job offers, but because of [the] limited time of the assignment, the practice that wanted to hire me couldn't. By the time I [had] been accepted and [gone] through the process of getting on all the different insurances that the employer used for billing, I would have been gone from the area," Skinner says.

Skinner has, like most military spouses, dealt with the situation as best as possible for herself, her family, and her career. "I ended up having to volunteer at Fort Leavenworth through the American Red Cross as [a] physician in the family practice clinic to keep my clinical skills up and avoid a large gap in my résumé," she says. "Volunteering was a great experience, and I loved working at the clinic on post."

Even though she has opted to be a stay-at-home mom for now, Skinner still chooses to keep her professional memberships, medical certifications, and licenses current for the future. This means attending conferences, continuing education courses, and recertification boards whenever and wherever they are offered. Those expensive fees, tuitions, and travel costs must be paid directly out of their one-income family fund. If she had a job, her employer most likely would have paid those bills. Still, she feels lucky that they are able to financially manage it. Not all families are able to do so.

Other spouses share in the licensing and certification dilemmas. Teachers, for example, often face the problem of receiving certification to work in one state, only to be transferred to another state and find their credentials are not recognized. Unfortunately, reciprocity between states is the exception rather than the rule. This forces qualified teachers to either risk a race against time to seek a state's requirements before being transferred somewhere else or settle for a job other than the one they are trained and qualified to perform.

Despite this, education remains a popular option. "Teaching is the most common profession of all senior officers' spouses and of spouses with a graduate degree," says Harrell.

Sylvia Moss, a DoDDS first-grade teacher who recently transferred from Germany to Atlanta, admits the licensing issue can be tricky. "While that part was disappointing, the experience also allowed me to consider alternatives that I hadn't considered before," she says. Moss ended up working for a private parochial school, where state documents were not required. "Working with kids and watching them grow academically, emotionally, and [socially] is what it's all about," she says.

Another challenge that many spouses face is the availability and affordability of quality child care on or off the military installation. When comparing the cost of child care with the amount of actual income, some spouses wonder if it's financially worth it to work in the first place. Child care costs off post are high regardless of one's rank in the military. Availability on or off post is a continual issue of concern for everyone.

Another challenge that can't be ignored is the unpredictability of life in today's wartime environment. Nothing is a given, and therefore, nothing can be scheduled with any permanency. Even in peacetime, unpredictability is business as usual for military families.

Many military spouses these days face their servicemembers' frequent deployments, which often translate into lonely periods of separation and worry. Although this might be an excellent time for spouses to busy themselves by working, many find themselves assuming the role of single parent and choosing instead to focus on their families, if they are able to do so financially.

In the future

To combat those and other issues, corporate partnerships have been established to link military spouses with employment opportunities in those businesses. Some participating companies include BellSouth, Computer Sciences Corp., Dell Inc., The Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, Manpower Inc., Sears, and others.

It's a definite step in the right direction, but there is clearly more to be done.

"Private employers need to be educated about the military community so that they can begin to see the value of hiring military spouses despite the chance that they might only be there for a short time," says Franklin.
Harrell agrees: "The more corporate partnerships that are established, the better for military spouses."

Local departments of labor, military family service centers, and Army Community Services are constantly evolving and striving to assist spouses within their respective communities. With funding being stretched so thinly, it is often a creative process but one that continues to progress nevertheless.

In addition to state and federal programs, nonprofit organizations offer help as well. For example, MOAA now provides career assistance services to its members' spouses. Résumé critiques, individual counseling, access to the job center, and use of the tops library at MOAA headquarters are available by sending an e-mail to tops@moaa.org.

Finally, spouses must continue to rely on themselves and the lessons learned by other spouses to succeed in their careers.

"Work is out there; you just have to know how to find it," stresses Viola Barnard, a GS7 secretary working for senior leadership in the 6th ASG, Stuttgart, Germany. She credits her success finding a job overseas within two months of her arrival to her persistence, qualifications, and outlook. "A positive attitude makes all the difference," she says, adding that networking and knowing how to apply for available jobs were instrumental in her search.

"Find any opportunity to keep active and keep your skills up. This not [only] helps you professionally keep abreast, but also avoids too large of a gap in your résumé or CV," says Skinner.

"The bottom line is that you make a choice whether to work or not," Franklin says. "If you decide to work, then go for it. It's not easy, but it's not impossible."

Janet Farley is the author of Jobs and the Military Spouse (Impact Publications, 2004) and The Military-to-Civilian Career Transition Guide (Jist Inc., 2004). She also writes a career advice column for the Stars and Stripes newspapers.