Choices

I wrote the following after a chance meeting with another military wife at the Springfield Mall in VA. I was killing time, I was up in DC attending the Association of the US Army (AUSA) annual conference and struck up a conversation with a fellow wife. I was so inflamed, as soon as I got home-I typed up the following editorial and sent it in to the Augusta Chrnicle.




Following my Army Soldier husband from duty station to duty station, to my way of thinking, was not a hardship-it was a given. We had two children, a wonderful life together, and to break up the family so I could have a career was unthinkable.

Unfortunately, women and men who marry into the military often do give up all hope of establishing a career. My dreams came crashing down back in 1998 when I was hired full time to teach English in Richmond County, Georgia. I had been teaching for 17 years, earned my teaching certificate during a stint my husband had teaching ROTC at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. I was only given credit for having taught 1 year and my pay and retirement benefits reflected that of a brand new teacher.

This also happened to a fellow Army wife, Jeannice. She quit a lucrative job in Washington DC (she had been employed as a staff accountant since 1999) to follow her husband to his new duty station at Ft. Gordon, GA. She received no unemployment benefits and unfortunately this scenario is happening more and more. Should a spouse have to choose between a career and family?

Jeff Opdyke of the Wall Street Journal writes, Am I making the right decision -- for me, for my wife, for our son? And more broadly, how do you ever simultaneously value family and career when choosing the best for one means you must, by necessity, compromise on the other?

With so much upheaval in the military, should a spouse be made to suffer just to keep the family together? Employers are loosing out on a great resource; military dependents are great employees.