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INFORMATION AND SOCIAL SUPPORT NETWORKS OF UNITED STATES
ARMY RESERVE SPOUSES DURING DEPLOYMENT
Angela Prince
B.A., California State University Sacramento, 2005
THESIS
Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
in
SOCIOLOGY
at
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO
SPRING 2010
ii
INFORMATION AND SOCIAL SUPPORT NETWORKS OF UNITED STATES ARMY RESERVE SPOUSES DURING DEPLOYMENT
A Thesis
by
Angela Prince Approved by: __________________________________, Committee Chair Dr. Ellen Berg __________________________________, Second Reader Dr. Kathryn Hadley ____________________________ Date
iii
Student: Angela Prince
I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University
format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to
be awarded for the thesis.
__________________________, Graduate Coordinator ___________________ Dr. Amy Liu Date Department of Sociology
iv
Abstract
of
INFORMATION AND SOCIAL SUPPORT NETWORKS OF UNITED STATES ARMY RESERVE SPOUSES DURING DEPLOYMENT
by
Angela Prince
The most recent conflict in Iraq (after September 11, 2001) has brought renewed
interest in understanding the phenomena of war. Generally, when one thinks about war,
soldiers are what come to mind, but what about the spouses of soldiers? What happens
with them during war and deployment? While there has been limited research on the
effects of war and deployment on soldiers, there has been virtually none on the spouses of
soldiers. Existing research on the military family focuses almost entirely on active duty
spouses. There is no research that addresses what the deployment experience is like for
spouses of United States Army Reservists. This study addresses the void in literature
from a perspective that seeks to understand war and deployment from the perspective of
Army Reserve spouses who have had their husbands deployed in support of military
operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or Kuwait after September 11, 2001. Special attention is
paid to how these Army Reserve spouses gather information and form support networks
during deployment. This study uses in depth interviews to understand the logic and
v
processes used by Army Reserve spouses to overcome challenges and cope with the war
and deployment experience.
_______________________, Committee Chair Dr. Ellen Berg _______________________ Date
vi
PREFACE
This research came about as a result of my own personal experience: I am a
veteran who served nine years in the United States Army. I am also married to a soldier
who is currently serving in the Army Reserves, has been deployed to Iraq, and at the time
of this thesis completion is currently mobilized again in support of Operation Enduring
Freedom. Please note that in this paper, references to my own deployment experience
took place after I got out of the military and while my husband was deployed to Iraq. As
I was trying to process my own experiences several years after the deployment, I began to
share my thoughts with other military spouses. I then realized that my observations,
experiences, feelings, thoughts, and fears were not unique to me. However, because
many of them were not being addressed by the military community there was nowhere to
go to get help or answers. I began to seek answers to my questions by doing research on
my own and discovered that there was virtually no research that addressed the war
experience for spouses in general and for Army Reserve spouses, specifically. What did
exist mostly seemed to me, to be outdated, gender biased, or written by academics who
had no life experience in military culture themselves. Thus began my passion for
conducting research that could better explain war from the spouses’ perspective.
vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am sincerely grateful to the military for allowing me access to one of its units
during a deployment. While I can’t disclose names, I would like to thank the Battalion
Commander of the unit who was concerned about the effects of deployment on families
and who offered his full support of this research from the first time we met. Additionally,
this research would not have been possible without the support of the volunteers from the
Family Readiness Group who invited me to unit functions and coordinated the logistics
of mailing packets to spouses on my behalf. I cherish your camaraderie, your friendship,
and your genuine concern for the Army Reserve families who serve this country
alongside their soldiers.
To Dr. Ellen Berg: Thank you for supporting me throughout my graduate
experience. You have been there from the application process to graduation. You
believed in my idea even when it seemed larger than life. You were there for all the
panic attacks and personal challenges, tearfully and sometimes hilariously spoken over
glasses of cider. I consider you a friend.
To Dr. Katy Hadley: What would I have done without you? You were excited
with me even over the most mundane things and you were a constant source of
inspiration for me. I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone as encouraging as you. You
walked me through this new adventure of qualitative research and taught me how to
unlock the treasures within it. Thank you for that. I’ve discovered a new piece of myself
during this process.
viii
To my husband, Lee Prince: It hasn’t been easy, but we finally made it! Thank
you for your support and your military insights. You are my common sense meter when
it comes to the military and I appreciate every time you say something so profoundly
simple.
To the Institute for Social Research - Dr. Ernest Cowles and Patty Crosby: Thank
you for taking a chance on me and allowing me the opportunity to grow as a researcher.
Your professional support has been invaluable. Also, thank you for supporting me
personally. This research is personal and has hit close to home this year. Short of being
in the military again, I don’t think I could have been surrounded by a more supportive
and flexible group of people. You chose to weather this deployment and this research
with me and I am grateful for that.
To My Family: Thank you for your support and patience during this long process.
You always make me feel like I can do anything. You are the wind in my sails.
To Auntie Jackie: I couldn’t have completed this project without your help. I
know you worked your fingers to the nubs. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
To my Nani and Lola: You are the most loyal dogs a girl could have. You
patiently sat by my side for hours on end offering moral support and companionship
when half of the world was sleeping. Then you woke up the next day and did it again. I
love you, girls!
To Kristie Harris, Jessica Hayes and Katie Campbell: you have been my comic relief
through this entire graduate experience. Thanks for your friendship and encouragement.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Preface ......................................................................................................................... vi
Acknowledgments...................................................................................................... vii
List of Figures ............................................................................................................ xii
Frequently Used Military Terms ............................................................................... xiii
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................1
Demographics of Army Reserve Soldiers and Their Families ..........................3
Qualitative Approach to the Research ...............................................................4
Theoretical Perspectives Used in the Research .................................................5
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................8
The Spouses’ Role within the Military Institution .............................................8
How Social Support Networks Shape the War Experience .............................11
How Telecommunications Shape the War Experience ....................................13
3. METHODS ............................................................................................................16
Participants .......................................................................................................16
Notifying Spouses about the Study ..................................................................16
Confidentiality .................................................................................................17
Initial Contact with Spouses ............................................................................18
Sampling ..........................................................................................................18
Interviews .........................................................................................................19
Theoretical Approach to the Research Using Standpoint Theory ...................19
Data Analysis and Theory Development Using a Grounded Theory Approach ..........................................................................................................22
4. ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................24
Lack of Information .........................................................................................26
Unanswered Questions.........................................................................31
x
Acquiring Information .........................................................................35
Day-to-day Activities ...............................................................36
Confirmation That Husbands Were Alive ...............................38
Unanticipated Information .......................................................39
Isolation from Military Support Networks ......................................................43
Establishing Civilian Support Networks ..........................................................49
Civilian Networks as a Means for Logistical Help ..............................49
Civilian Networks as a Means for Moral/Emotional Support .............51
Challenges with Civilian Support Networks........................................53
Managing Mothers In-law ........................................................53
Negative Social Interactions ....................................................56
Establishing Military Support Networks .........................................................62
Military Networks as a Means for Information Gathering ..................63
Civilians with Military Affiliations .........................................63
Husbands ..................................................................................64
Newsletters ...............................................................................66
Outside Agencies Who Serve the Military ..............................68
Military Networks as a Means for Moral/Emotional Support .............69
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ...................................................................73
Discussion .............................................................................................................73
Limitations ............................................................................................................75
Future Research ....................................................................................................76
Conclusion ............................................................................................................78
Appendix A. Advertisement Narrative Published in the Unit’s Family Readiness Group Newsletter ........................................................................................................ 80
Appendix B. Introduction Letter .............................................................................. 81
Appendix C. Consent to Participate in Research: “Deployment Experiences of Army Reserve Spouses and Significant Others” ................................................................... 83
Appendix D. Military Resource List ........................................................................ 85
xi
Appendix E. Interview Questions ............................................................................ 87
References ................................................................................................................... 93
xii
LIST OF FIGURES
Page 1. Figure 1. Theoretical Map of Processes Used by Army Reserve Spouses to Overcome Lack of Information and Isolation from Military Support Networks... 25
xiii
FREQUENTLY USED MILITARY TERMS
Chinook: Military helicopter used to transport military personnel and supplies. Civilian: Members of the general populace not enlisted in the military. Commissary: Grocery store on a military post. Deployment: The movement of armed forces and their equipment and support. In this research, deployment refers specifically to Iraq. FRG: Family Readiness Groups provide activities, practical support, and often referrals for support to soldiers and their families. FRGs are often the means through which information flows from the unit to the families. A family readiness group can consist of family members, volunteers, soldiers and civilian employees associated with a particular unit. FRGs are command-sponsored and fall under the responsibility of the unit's commanding officer. Green Zone: A secure area near central Baghdad in Iraq that houses the headquarters for coalition military forces and represents an international presence in the country. Individual Ready Reserve (IRR): Military members who typically have served as Active Duty or Selected Reserve members in the past, and are still under contractual agreements with the military but do not currently participate in organized training (DOD 2008 demographics report p.67). Often these soldiers are pulled from the IRR and assigned as individual augmentees to fill slots for a unit that is preparing to deploy. Military OneSource: A Department of Defense sponsored program that offers support to military families. Services are offered 24/7 by telephone or online all over the world at no charge to military families. United Services Automobile Association (USAA): A financial organization that provides banking, insurance and credit card services to current members of the military and most veterans.
1
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
The most recent conflict in Iraq has brought renewed interest in understanding the
phenomena of war. Generally, when one thinks about war, soldiers are what come to
mind, but what about the spouses of soldiers? What happens with them during war and
deployment? While there has been limited research on the effects of war and deployment
on soldiers, there has been virtually none on the spouses of soldiers. Existing research on
the military family focuses on the support role of the active duty spouse (Harrell 2001;
Jans 1989; Mederer and Weinstein 1992; Shehan 1987) and social support networks that
help active duty spouses through deployment (Figley 1993; Klein, Tatone and Lindsay
1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1990). There is no research
that specifically addresses what the deployment experience is like for spouses of Army
Reservists (Ford, Shaw, Sennhouser, Greaves, Thacker, Chandler, Schwartz, and
McClain 1993). This study will address the void in literature from a perspective that
seeks to understand war and deployment from the perspective of Army Reserve spouses
after September 11, 2001. Additionally, this research takes a qualitative approach to
understanding the processes and reasoning used by Army Reserve spouses to construct
the deployment experience for themselves.
The focus will be on Army Reserve spouses for two primary reasons: First, there
has been virtually no research on this specific group (Ford et al. 1993). Secondly, Army
Reserve families endure a separate set of stressors than do active duty families (Ford et
al. 1993). These stressors include geographic isolation from other military families who
2
can offer support, geographic isolation from military posts and the resources that posts
can offer, and multiple deployments that are often more frequent and of longer duration
than those of active duty personnel (Huebner, Mancini, Bowen, and Orthner 2009; Olson
2007). Reserve families also typically juggle deployments with civilian jobs resulting in
financial and professional hardship for soldiers and their families (Johnson, Sherman,
Hoffman, James, Johnson, Lochman, Magee and Riggs 2007).
Currently, little is known about how Army Reserve spouses weather logistic
stressors (Ford et al. 1993) as well as the traumatic and emotional aspects of war (Dekel
and Solomon 2006; Dirkzwager, Bramsen, Ader, and van der Ploeg 2005; Galovski and
Lyons 2004; Milgram and Bar 1993; Nelson and Wright 1996; Solomon, Waysman,
Levy, Fried, Mikulincer, Benbenishty, Florian, and Bleich 1992). This research will
examine the deployment experiences of Army Reserve spouses and significant others
paying special attention to strategies for information gathering and social networking,
logistical challenges, media consumption of the war, and the use of technology.
Despite the military’s attempts to provide resources and outreach to military
families, Army Reserve spouses continue to be a population whose experiences have
been unexplored. Their unique circumstances and needs are seldom addressed in
research, nor in the policies and programs that govern and deliver support to military
families (Ford et al. 1993; Johnson et al. 2007). It is my hope that this research will raise
awareness of the needs of Army Reserve spouses, make resources and relief available to
them, and result in enhanced services and programs geared toward helping Army Reserve
families through the experience of war and deployment.
3
Demographics of Army Reserve Soldiers and Their Families
According to the Office of the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (ODUSD
2008) there are a total of 263,864 Army Reservists including Individual Ready Reserve
(IRR) soldiers. Of these, 197,024 Army Reservists are assigned to a reserve unit and
actively participate in training, and 66,840 are in the IRR. IRR soldiers are not assigned
to a drilling Reserve unit, but may be pulled from the IRR as individual augmentees and
assigned to units who need to fill slots for deployment. Of Department of Defense’s
(DoD) total military personnel, which includes all other branches of service, both active
duty and reserve, Army reservists make up 10.5%. According to ODUSD the average
Army Reservist is 32 years old and male (2008). The large majority (50th -80th
percentiles) of Army Reserve officers, warrant officers and senior enlisted personnel are
married, while a smaller percentage of junior enlisted personnel are married (22%). Over
half (52%) of Army Reservists reported having family responsibilities of either a spouse,
a child, or another dependent. When looking at the distribution of family members across
the Army Reserve, 35% are spouses, 64% are children, and less than one percent are
other categories of dependent. The majority of Army Reserve spouses (85%) are female
(ODUSD 2008).
While official Department of Defense statistics regarding deployment are nearly
impossible to come by without an inside source, unofficial numbers indicate that a total
of 1.5 million service members have served in Iraq; about 500,000 have served two tours
of combat, 70,000 have served three, and 20,000 have been deployed five or more times
4
(Johnson et al. 2007; Olson 2007). Unofficial numbers1 also indicate that between 48–
50% of the troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait are in the Army Reserves or the
National Guard (Darwin and Reich 2006:481; Huebner et al. 2009:217). Considering that
the Army Reserve force, even when combined with the National Guard, does not
comprise half of our total military force (ODUSD 2008), it becomes clear that our reserve
force is being utilized at a rate disproportionate to its size. This means that the Army
Reserves (and National Guard) must serve multiple rotations in order to fulfill the quota
required by the needs on the ground in the Middle East. Additionally, considering that
deployment tours can last up to 15 months (Olson 2007), many military personnel have
been spending more time overseas than at home (Huebner et al. 2009:217; Olson 2007).
As these numbers suggest, the impact of the global War on Terror has significantly
affected soldiers and families. “Specifically, the current War on Terrorism marks the
first time in our Nation ’s history of volunteer military service that the United States has
attempted to sustain such a large fighting force for such a prolonged period of time”
(Huebner et al. 2009:217).
Qualitative Approach to the Research
I used a qualitative approach for several reasons. First, and most importantly,
because there has been no research on Army Reserve spouses there is no existing pool of
knowledge to use as a foundation. I felt it important to contribute this research as a
building block toward a foundational understanding of the experiences of Army Reserve
spouses. Initially, I debated conducting quantitative research as an exploratory
1 One source for unofficial numbers was reported by a non-profit agency called SOFAR who works closely with military units offering counseling services to Army Reserve and National Guard families.
5
mechanism, but ultimately decided it would be futile to conduct quantitative research
among Army Reserve spouses without first having a fundamental understanding of what
their experiences were. Secondly, because Army Reserve Spouses are such a small
population and so difficult to access in terms of the military gatekeepers that protect them
it would not have been practical to conduct exploratory research quantitatively. There are
simply not enough spouses in one Army Reserve unit to provide the quantity of data
needed to generalize to the entire population, and I did not have the resources to access
multiple units without funding and additional support.
Theoretical Perspectives Used in the Research
Because no research has been conducted on Army Reserve spouses, there is no
existing theory that frames their experiences. In order to gain an accurate picture of what
war and deployment is like for spouses I felt it necessary to let the spouses speak for
themselves. Therefore, two theories were used for this research: Standpoint Theory and
Grounded Theory.
Standpoint Theory was used as a starting point and helped me formulate an
approach toward the research influencing how I interacted with both the military and
participants themselves, recruiting strategies, and strategies used for gathering
information. Standpoint Theory was important to use as a foundation for this research
because it recognizes that all knowledge and perspective is situated (Harding 2004; Pels
2004). This critical concept lent context to many experiences of the Army Reserve
spouses and is accounted for in the analysis and discussion of their experiences.
Standpoint theory also allowed me to account for my own place in this research
6
(Frankenberg 1993) as both a veteran and a military spouse who could empathize and
relate to others going through the experience of war and deployment. This was an
important journey for me as both a Sociologist and a researcher because I quickly
realized the notion of empirical objectivity (Harding 2004) was not possible or necessary
for me conducting this type of research. Once I was able to come to terms with that, I
was able to embrace the knowledge I brought to this research as a resource instead of a
limitation. Standpoint Theory provided a lens and a process upon which I could proceed
with my research in way that focused on participant experiences without denying my
own.
Standpoint theory challenges: 1) the notion of human beings having the ability to
be neutral given that we all have life experiences, and 2) the sources of knowledge which
get labeled as “truth” and subsequently used as social standards (Harding 2004; Pels
2004). (Consider that truth is defined by those with the power to create it and resources
to impose it as a standard.) Standpoint Theory posits that knowledge should begin with
situated experiences of those in marginal positions (Harding 2004; Pels 2004). Power
structures are best understood by those who have been affected by them (Harding 2004;
Pels 2004). Standpoint Theory also recognizes that every person has a situated
experience influenced by the unique circumstances of their lives (Harding 2004; Pels
2004). In this way, Standpoint Theory accounts for each person’s situation as holders
and creators of knowledge.
Using Standpoint Theory as a starting point for my research was also important
for appreciating the value of storytelling from the mouths of people who have lived the
7
experience. Often we can learn a great deal when we listen to people explain their own
realities instead of imposing upon them a pre-determined framework based on
assumptions about their realities. Listening to people tell their own stories makes it
possible to understand both the differing and shared experiences among people in a group
and how those variations affect their perceptions (Harding 2004). Finally, and most
importantly for this research, Standpoint theory allowed for a ground-up perspective
which facilitated new understanding about power structures from the people who were
directly affected by them (Harding 2004; Pels 2004).
Grounded theory was a process used to allow a framework to be built around the
spouses’ experience as information unfolded from their situated experiences. Grounded
theory provided a process for data collection and analysis, which ultimately led to
development of a theoretical perspective (Charmaz 2006) about the experiences of Army
Reserve spouses. Because the existing framework for military spouses explained only
the experiences of active duty wives, I used grounded theory to actively engage findings
from previous research on active duty wives with findings from the Army Reserve wives
who participated in my research. In this way, I identified commonalities and differences
between active duty and reserve wives’ experiences. I was also able to account for
phenomena unique to the current war. Finally, I was able to identify areas that need
further exploration among the population of military wives in general and Army Reserve
Wives, specifically.
8
Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
The experience of war and deployment affects every aspect of a military spouse’s
life. This chapter outlines the basic factors that should be considered in understanding
how war and deployment affect Army Reserve spouses. First, it is important to
understand where spouses are situated in relation to the military institution: this includes
the culture of the military, power dynamics, information flow, roles and expectations
assigned to spouses by the military. Second, the ways in which outside structures affect
spouses, and the impact they have in shaping the deployment experience should not be
underestimated. These structures may include the institution of war itself, the media and
technology, and institutional support structures. Finally, it is important to understand the
day-to-day lived experiences of the spouses as explained by the spouses themselves.
These experiences may include coping mechanisms, social relationships, networking, and
spouses’ use of their own agency to create structures for themselves.
The Spouses’ Role within the Military Institution
Traditionally, spouses have occupied a support role within the military. Not only
are they support for soldiers, but they are also support for the military as well. Previous
research on military couples describes the military as a “two person career” (Harrell
2001; Mederer and Weinstein 1992) suggesting that it takes more than just soldiers to
accomplish military objectives. Expectations for military spouses fall in line with
traditional gender roles assigned to women, which is not surprising since most military
spouses are women (ODUSD 2008). On a day-to-day level, during deployment spouses
9
are responsible for managing finances, paying bills, taking care of children, maintaining
the home, and sending care packages. In a more general sense, common expectations of
military spouses involve institutional volunteer work, morale building, public relations,
ceremonial duties, mentoring, and entertaining (Harrell 2001). Essentially, military
spouses are the administrative support that keeps the military running smoothly. In this
aspect, the military spouse is an unpaid extension of their soldier (Harrell 2001). It is
estimated that the military saves multiple millions of dollars by not having to outsource
services and labor that the military spouse provides (Harrell 2001).
Military spouses fulfill a support role post-deployment as well, and are vital for
holding the family unit together while their soldier re-acclimates to life at home. One
study which researched how wives of Vietnam veterans helped them through Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) recovery mapped out a treatment plan based on
spousal support (Shehan 1987). As part of a therapeutic spousal role, spouses were
taught to facilitate their husbands’ disclosure of painful memories. This involved the
spouse educating themselves about PTSD, desensitizing themselves to the horrifying
details of the Vietnam combat experience, providing empathetic responses, joining
support groups, being flexible in the role expectations they required from their husbands,
and being tolerant and understanding if their husbands needed time alone, were irritable,
or declined to interact with them (Shehan 1987). Recent pamphlets and educational
material designed for military spouses continue to focus heavily on how spouses can be
supportive of their soldiers and their children before, during and after deployment (Center
for the Study of Traumatic Stress 2010; Channing L. Bete Company, Inc. 1990; Lanham
10
2007; Surles and Akers 2003; United States Army Center for Health Promotion and
Preventive Medicine 2007). While this trend in literature presents models for how
spouses can lend support to others, there seems to be a void in literature addressing
models of support designed to meet the needs of spouses.
One reason for the void in support models for spouses may have to do with the
structure of the military itself and a long standing ideology/culture based on: 1) an active
duty model, and 2) a traditional family make-up where the flow of support goes from the
wife toward the husband, family, and military institution at large, yet rarely in the
opposite direction (Mederer and Weinstein 1992). Military ideology assumes that
spouses, the vast majority of whom are wives (ODUSD 2008), will occupy a support role
that fits within the definition of traditional gender roles, and that compliance should be
unquestioned and all encompassing. Harrell’s 2001 research on Army officer’s spouses
found there was extensive pressure for wives to support their husbands’ careers so much
so that there were punishments for the soldier if his wife didn’t perform up to military
standards (Harrell 2001)2. Furthermore, in order to foster the application of the support
ideology, the military provides housing and incidental expenses in addition to a living
wage so there is not a financial need for the spouse to work outside of the home. “The
military expends many resources to define and sustain the division of labor that
maximizes the efficiency of family support…because the military relies on the vital role
2 A personal example of this is the discussion I raised with my husband before starting my research. How I approached my research was a very big concern because of how it would be interpreted by the military and how that would affect his career.
11
of families in allowing [service members] to perform the duties of their role” (Mederer
and Weinstein 1992:338).
Jans’ (1989) research on military wives uses the term “wife of” to explain how
wives define their own identities in relation to that of their husbands. Jans cites Finch
when stating that identification with the role as a “wife of” involves more than just active
and moral support, but her perception of herself as having quasi-membership in the
occupational group to which her husband belongs. It makes sense, then, that spouses
may have perceptions of themselves as quasi-members of the military considering that
the occupation of soldiering, especially during deployment, truly is a combined effort on
the part of soldier and spouse (Harrell 2001; Jans 1989; Mederer and Weinstein 1992).
Not only is the soldier/spouse partnership functional for the family unit, but for the
military as well, because as long as spouses intertwine themselves closely with the
occupational identities of their soldiers, the military has access to the invaluable resource
of spousal support.
How Social Support Networks Shape the War Experience
The military makes unique demands on service members and their families. Often
those demands involve danger, family separation, and frequent moves (Segal 1986). For
the Army Reserve family there are additional factors such as geographic isolation from
post and frequent absences from their civilian jobs, which make military service even
more challenging. In order to weather deployments and the general instability of military
life, spouses draw upon many people for support including other military wives (Rosen
and Moghadam 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1990), family (Klein et al. 1989; Rosen and
12
Moghadam 1990) and friends (Klein et al. 1989). A 1990 study by Rosen and
Moghadam revealed that perceived support from other wives within the unit was a buffer
against the stressors of their husbands’ absence. Furthermore, women who perceived
greater support from friends and family showed less fear and distress than those who had
fewer social contacts (Klein et al. 1989). Women who perceived greater support from
friends also reported a greater ability to adjust and adapt to change (Klein et al. 1989).
With regard to cohesion of military spouses within their communities, Rosen and
Moghadam found that active duty military wives associate themselves with their
husbands’ ranks (1989). As a result, spouses split off into three support networks: junior
enlisted, senior enlisted, and officer. Officers’ wives have stronger friendship and social
networks than do enlisted wives and crossover support between officer and enlisted
spouses is uncommon. While this phenomenon was found to occur among active duty
wives, it is unclear whether this same phenomenon exists among Army Reserve wives,
especially considering their geographic isolation from military communities.
While existing literature (Klein et al. 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1989; Rosen
and Moghadam 1990) gives an idea of whom active duty spouses turn to for support and
whether that support is useful to them, Burrell, Durand, and Furtado (2003) examined
community integration and spouses’ outlook on certain aspects of support. This research
is of special interest because it compared the Active Duty Army, National Guard, and
Army Reserve components. While previous research indicates that active duty wives
depend on other wives in the unit for support (Rosen and Moghadam 1989; Rosen and
Moghadam 1990) more recent research has shown that, in fact, Army Reserve spouses
13
have low levels of integration in the military community (Burrell et al. 2003).
Shockingly, nearly 70% of Army Reserve wives have no friends within their husband’s
unit (Burrell et al. 2003). Furthermore, Army Reserve spouses were unlikely to “seek
support from either the unit or Army formal support programs” (Burrell et al. 2003:14).
Clearly, isolation from the military community is a challenge for Army Reserve spouses
and one of the newest topics of discussion for those trying to morph institutional support
programs designed for the active duty component into programs that might be functional
for the Reserves (Huebner et al. 2009).
How Telecommunications Shape the War Experience
While common perceptions of support include individuals or groups of people,
telecommunications are quickly becoming a resource in the area of support for military
spouses during war and deployment. The mid 1980s was a changing point for the
American military with regard to telecommunications available to soldiers during
deployment. For the first time, access to telephones was provided for soldiers to
communicate with loved ones at home. While letters and care packages remained the
most popular way to communicate, it was apparent that access to telephones was the
beginning of a new era of communication during war (Ender 1995). Telecommunication
among deployed soldiers is a relatively new area of study, and research is finding that,
increasingly, soldiers are using telecommunications not only to keep plugged in with
family life (Bell, Schumm, Knott, and Ender 1999; Applewhite and Segal 1990), but to
keep themselves updated on military hotspots overseas (Ender 1995). In fact, Ender
discovered that before and during the invasion of Panama, soldiers relied on CNN to get
14
information about military involvement in the region, deducing their own deployments
from updates provided by CNN (1995).
To date, research on telecommunications has focused on soldiers’ use of
telecommunications (Applewhite and Segal 1990; Bell et al. 1999; Ender 1995),
however, there is no research that examines the ways in which military spouses use
telecommunication to shape their own experiences of war and deployment. Ender’s 1995
study does forecast, however, that with the increasing advancement of technology and
access to telecommunications during war, situations involving family members
witnessing deaths of loved ones on live television are not unrealistic. Since the research
published in the 1990s, technological innovations have continued to advance
telecommunications. Spouses are now able to communicate with deployed soldiers who
have access to regular landline telephones, satellite phones, cell phones, e-mail, voice-
mail, instant messaging, and video conferencing. In addition to communication with
their soldiers, spouses also have access to television, news, and printed media to collect
information about war. Technology has changed our conception of spatial separation
transforming distances into the time it takes to contact someone via a push of a button
(Applewhite and Segal 1990). With the variety of global telecommunications available
to both soldiers and spouses, the experience of war is no longer isolated to the battlefield.
Spouses can literally experience war over the phone, on television, or on a laptop screen
in real time.
Ender found that when soldiers couldn’t get information through institutional
channels of communication, they sought auxiliary ones (1995). Currently, there is no
15
research that documents if Army Reserve spouses receive information and through what
channels. So what exactly happens to the military spouse as they hear and experience the
images of war for themselves? What kinds if information are they receiving, and how do
they react to and process that information? The present study examines these questions.
16
Chapter 3
METHODS
Participants
While this study initially aimed to recruit both spouses and unmarried
significant others, only spouses responded to requests for participation. Participants of
both sexes were recruited; however, only female spouses responded. Criteria for
inclusion were that spouses/significant others must be in relationships with an Army
Reserve soldier who had previously deployed or was currently deployed to the most
recent conflict in Iraq or Afghanistan. Ultimately, participants in this study consisted of
seven female spouses of Army Reserve soldiers who were assigned to an Army Reserve
unit in California. Although the unit is located in California, some soldiers (and their
respective spouses) assigned to the unit may live out of state.
Notifying Spouses about the Study
Because the military keeps family information confidential, I did not have access
to spouses’ contact information. The unit mailed initial correspondence to spouses on my
behalf. Interested potential participants were asked to make direct contact with me if
they were interested in participating. To notify spouses of the study the following
process took place:
1) I made a short presentation introducing myself and my research at the unit
family day, which is a series of pre-deployment briefs that introduces families
to available resources.
17
2) Notices were published by the unit in the monthly family readiness group
letter to make families aware of the study (see Appendix A).
3) The unit mailed information packets to each potential participant. I provided
these packets and they included the following:
A letter from me introducing myself and explaining the study (see
Appendix B)
An informed consent letter (see Appendix C)
A pre-addressed and pre-paid return envelope, which could be returned to
me at the University.
My contact information should participants want to call or email me
directly to ask questions or schedule an interview.
A list of military resources (see Appendix D) in case the
spouse/significant other needed assistance with anything.
Confidentiality
In order to protect family contact information, the military labeled and mailed
information packets prepared by me. Informed Consent Letters (see Appendix C) were
included in the information packet. Participants had the option of returning the informed
consent to me by mail (for telephone interviews) or giving the informed consent to me in
person at the time of the interview. Potential participants were asked to make direct
contact with me if they had questions about the research or were interested in
participating. Once participants made direct contact with me the research process
became confidential, meaning the unit would not know who decided to participate.
18
Additionally, participants’ identities were not linked to their responses in any way, and
no identifying information was used in the reports, including contextual identifiers that
may have been implied in their responses. With participant’s permission, interviews
were audio taped. All data was stored in a secure and locked location. The unit was
briefed and understood that participant identities were held in strict confidence by the
researcher and that reports would not divulge participant identities. Additionally, in order
to protect the identity and operational security of the unit, the unit’s name and address
were not used in any of the reports.
Initial Contact with Spouses
When potential participants made contact with me, I talked with them, answered
questions and gave general introductions and information about the study. Since the
focus of this study involved intimate and private details of personal and family life,
spouses were assured of confidentiality to make them feel more comfortable about
participating. Since spouses may have feared backlash from the military for negative
responses, spouses were assured that all communication would be confidential and
personal identifiers wouldn’t be shared with the unit command or its soldiers.
Sampling
Because it is so difficult to locate Army Reserve spouses and significant others
from the general population it was necessary to get my sample from within an Army
Reserve unit. Convenience sampling was used. Because this sampling procedure is not
based on probability, the results cannot be generalized to the entire population of Army
Reserve spouses across the Army Reserves. The purpose of this study was exploratory
19
and the results represent only the perspectives of those being interviewed, however, this
study provided a foundation of new insights and ideas upon which future research can be
conducted. At the time of this study in summer of 2008, the family support group
consisted of approximately 70 soldiers who were either married or cohabitating with
significant others. Seven of those spouses contacted me and volunteered to participate in
the study yielding a response rate of approximately 10%.
Interviews
In-person or telephone interviews were used to collect information from spouses
about their demographics, their soldier’s demographics, family information and their
personal experiences during deployment (see Appendix E for interview questions).
Participants had the option of a telephone or in-person interview. During initial contact
with spouses, I asked if they would be willing to participate in more than one interview.
All respondents agreed to participate in more than one interview, but multiple interviews
were only needed for one of the spouses. Initial and subsequent interviews were
anticipated to last up to two hours. Ultimately, interviews ranged from 45 minutes to
nearly three hours, and follow-up interviews lasted approximately 20 minutes.
Interviews were audio recorded with participants’ verbal consent.
Theoretical Approach to the Research Using Standpoint Theory
Generally, sociologists and researchers are trained in the value of empirical
objectivity, essentially that being a neutral observer is the criteria which renders research
credible (Harding 2004). This too, was my persuasion at the onset of this research.
Because I am a veteran and a military spouse I felt an ethical obligation to account for my
20
relationship to this research. However, the more I debated how to approach my “ethical”
dilemma, the more shame and doubt I felt about my ability to conduct this research
objectively. Despite my internal debate, one thing was undeniable; because I was an
insider, it was easy for me to gain access to a unit to conduct my research. In addition to
being a military spouse, I knew how to navigate the institution and was familiar with
military culture especially the language barrier that often prevents civilians from
interacting with the military. Ultimately, I was able to reconcile my dilemma with the
insight and direction I found in Standpoint theory.
Because Standpoint Theory facilitates the birth of knowledge using a bottom-up
model instead of one that is top-down, and because it places credibility in experience
rather than objectivity, it was an ideal starting point for my research. Not only did
Standpoint theory allow a new knowledge base to begin from the spouses themselves, but
also it allowed me to account for my own situated experiences in a way that encouraged
the research instead of undermining it. Instead of counting my experiences as a
limitation and a threat to objectivity, I embraced them, counted them as a resource, used
them to navigate the institution, and create safe spaces where spouses felt comfortable to
share their own experiences. Ruth Frankenberg used the same methodology in her
successful research on white women and race and explains that
Rather than maintaining the traditionally distant, apparently objective, and so-called blank-faced research persona, I positioned myself as explicitly involved in the questions, at times sharing with interviewees either information about my own life or elements of my own analysis… as it developed through the research process (1993:30).
21
Frankenberg goes on to say, “My ability to conduct interviews successfully involved a
complex set of adjustments in self-presentation, but never a presentation of myself as
neutral” (1993:32). In a further discussion of the neutral interviewer, Frankenberg cites
Ann Oakley and Sherna Gluck stating,
Oakley argues the adoption of the blank-faced persona requires a narrow definition of the interviewee as “data,” and thereby keeps in place an extreme power differential between interviewer and interviewee. Feminist oral historian Sherna Gluck suggests that it may be necessary to step outside the neutral persona and tell potential interviewees the philosophy behind the project in order to secure their interest and help (1993:31).
Ultimately, Standpoint Theory provided a lens and a process upon which I could
proceed with my research in way that focused on participant experiences without denying
my own.
Because the military is such a small population compared to the general public,
and so challenging to access in terms of the gate keepers that protect them, I felt that
being transparent about my veteran status as well as the fact that I am a military spouse
was vital not only to the military being open to my research, but also to spouses feeling
like they could trust and relate to me. Additionally, because deployment is such a private
experience, and because the military is very guarded about issues concerning information
flow and protection of soldiers and their families, I felt that my own experiences not only
allowed me to ask relevant questions, but ultimately lent legitimacy to my research in
ways that could never have been captured by a neutral observer.
While Standpoint theory was relevant for defining a starting point and a strong
foundation for a sense of voice within the research, grounded theory was an equally
relevant segue for propelling the research forward using a process that allowed freedom
22
for new discoveries, insights and ideas to unfold from the experiences of Army Reserve
spouses.
Data Analysis and Theory Development Using a Grounded Theory Approach
Interviews were audio taped then transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were coded
and analyzed using the qualitative software package “Atlas.” Common trends, themes
and processes were identified across the interviews and will be explained later in this
report. The names of respondents were changed for inclusion in this report. Individual
participant and unit identifiers were not included in the report, including contextual
identifiers that may have been implied in participant responses.
The process used to develop a grounded theory on Army Reserve wives was a
model outlined by Charmaz (2006) which involved a cumulative yet circular approach to
interviewing and data analysis. This means that insights that I gained from one Army
Reserve spouse were carried to the next interview with another spouse. In this way, I was
able to learn about phenomena that weren’t captured in my original interview questions.
Using this method also allowed me to explore new insights and determine if they
represented a trend within the group of wives. Additionally, after revisiting my interview
data I made additional contacts with one of the spouses to clarify a concept that hadn’t
been fully fleshed out in the first interview. The process of building grounded theory
(Charmaz 2006) involved revisiting not only the spouses themselves for more
information and clarity, but going back and forth between coding and analysis to explore
layers of depth within the data. While this process was circular, with each new round of
coding, analysis, and talking with spouses an additional layer of depth was uncovered.
23
These layers of depth allowed a complex a story to emerge based solely on the
experiences of the spouses themselves. Charmaz explains that “research participants’
implicit meanings, experiential views-and researchers’ finished grounded theories-are
constructions of reality” (2006:10). Ultimately, it was the detailed layers that allowed a
theory to emerge about what the wives were experiencing and the coping mechanisms
they used to get through war and deployment. By allowing for beginnings of knowledge
to be grounded in the experiences of Army Reserve spouses themselves (Charmaz 2006;
Harding 2004; Pels 2004), we can be confident that the reality used to construct the
theory was their own instead of a pre-determined construct imposed upon them.
24
Chapter 4
ANALYSIS
Two central themes emerged from the spouses’ lived experience: 1) Lack of
Information, and 2) Isolation from Military Support Networks. These phenomena were
highly influenced by Army Reserve spouses’ geographical isolation from the deployed
unit and from a military community/base. For each of those two central themes, spouses
created unique processes that helped them cope. Each process will be discussed in detail.
It should be noted that while the wives used different processes to cope with lack of
information and lack of military social networks, the two phenomena were related and
subsequently, there were overlaps between the processes. Figure 1 is a theoretical
diagram that maps the processes that the wives used to manage lack of information and
lack of military social networks. The theoretical diagram was based solely on the shared
experiences of spouses and the processes they used to create structure for themselves
during the deployment. The following analysis and discussion are based on the
theoretical diagram.
25
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Lack of Information
Lack of information resulted from three main factors: 1) spouses’ geographical
separation from the deploying unit, 2) spouses’ isolation from military social networks
including the Family Readiness Group (FRG), and 3) structural factors that affected how
the military disseminated information. One or all of these factors created challenges that
made it difficult for spouses to ask questions, attend meetings, or informally share
knowledge through casual networking. Sarah, a military spouse who lived several hours
from the unit of her deployed husband explained why she hesitated travelling long
distances to attend unit functions:
Sarah: I know I’m far away, and I know that there’ve been things in the [FRG] newsletter that have invited people, and it’s just, I don’t know anybody, so. I’ve, I’ve never been a party person. I don’t, I’m very comfortable with one person or a small group. I’m not comfortable in huge groups of people. You know, I get to know people and then I’m a little more comfortable. But, I probably wouldn’t go to some big thing like that. I just, I’m not comfortable with it, so, why push? And then it’s a [several] hour drive so, you know, why push-it? Sarah’s explanation was typical of a spouse who lived a long distance from the unit. Her
discomfort with attending unit functions, however, meant that she most likely missed
informational briefings given at FRG social functions. Because each FRG is responsible
for supporting families assigned to its unit, geographically-separated spouses as well as
spouses who are uncomfortable attending military social functions have few alternatives
for gathering unit specific information about the deployment.
While FRG’s attempted to reach out to geographically-dispersed spouses through
phone calls, these efforts were often unsuccessful because spouses were either not at
home or too busy to talk. This is especially true for spouses who worked odd hours or
27
lived in a different time zone than the FRG callers. Cindy explains how phone calls from
the FRG always came at a bad time:
Cindy: They always seem to call at the most inappropriate times and so I just say, “Yah, everything’s fine,” you know? …But I keep thinking I’ll call when I need help. But they always seem to call right at dinnertime or bedtime. I don’t know, some weird calling times. Interestingly Cindy anticipates reaching out to the FRG when she needs help; however,
she never does it. Instead, as will be seen in a later section, she establishes a different
social network to meet her needs. In the meantime, however, if Cindy did have questions
or needed information, she was unable to get it during her quick conversation with the
FRG caller, because the interactions were inconvenient for her.
Sarah explained that she didn’t have time to return phone calls from the FRG
because she was too busy:
Sarah: I’ve only gotten a couple of calls, and the first time, I didn’t call back. That was my bad. It was, there was so much happening at once that I just, just, things dropped… Sometimes all I can focus on is getting the bills paid, taking care of the dogs, taking care of myself, making sure the house is okay, and my job. And, that’s all I can do… because it is a lot to do by yourself.
Spouses often mentioned that managing the emotional and logistical elements of
deployment was exhausting. In Sarah’s case, it was all she could do to manage her daily
life. This meant that her ability to take advantage of information that could be relayed
during phone calls with a unit representative were limited. Living long distances from
the unit (sometimes even in a different time zone), discomfort about socializing with
strangers, busy schedules, and inconvenient interactions, were all factors that contributed
to spouses feeling isolated from the unit. These findings address the fundamental reasons
28
why spouses felt isolated, and answer the “why” aspect of previous quantitative research
that has explored the topic of isolation among military spouses (Burrell et al. 2003).
In addition to the geographical obstacles that make it difficult for spouses to get
information about the deployment, there can be structural obstacles as well. Often the
military may choose not to divulge information about a classified mission resulting in a
barrier in the information flow to families. Andrea is a geographically-isolated spouse
who explained her frustration about not knowing the basic details regarding her
husband’s deployment. When asked what would be helpful for her, here’s how she
responded:
Andrea: Actually, I guess just more, um, more [long pause] I don’t know, more definites. And I know they probably don’t have ‘em, but man, just more, like, you know? Or letting us know, “Hey, you will not know the date you’re going to leave. But, know that we’ll tell you as soon as we find out.” Or, you know, things like that. I just, you know I felt, really kind of in the dark. And you ask the Family Readiness Group when they call you for their monthly check-in, and they don’t know. They’re just there to find-out if you need anything. So, “No, but I’d like to know is my husband deploying today?” Or, “Where’s he going?” Or, “What’s going on?”
While Andrea acknowledged that she might not get all the answers she hoped for,
she did seem to want basic information for planning and peace of mind. An interesting
element to her frustration was with the FRG. Andrea had the expectation that since the
FRG was affiliated with the unit they could give her the logistical information she
needed. Because Andrea was unfamiliar with military culture, a concept that will be
discussed later, she was not aware that the FRG did not have access to classified mission
information and if they did, could not divulge that information (Family Readiness Group
Leader 2010). This often created unmet expectations, disappointment and frustration
29
among the spouses, especially when they were unable to acquire information about
deployment timelines.
Another structural cause of a lack of information was due to the military’s
constantly changing plans based on the global pulse. This is an aspect of military culture
that can often be frustrating and confusing for individuals who are not used to a lifestyle
involving constant change and uncertainty. Often what feels like the withholding of
information by the military may not be due to a classified mission at all, but a more
bureaucratic process involving planning. For the military spouse who was responsible
for managing logistics at home, lack of information for any reason was a very difficult
situation to weather. Furthermore, lack of information undermined the concept of a
quasi-membership in the military occupation, an idea explored by Jans in 1989.
Essentially, lack of information symbolized exclusion to the Army Reserve wives.
Despite their perceptions of being an equal member within the institution, in fact, they
were powerless to it. This demonstrated that the military made the rules about the
division of labor and enforced them in a way that benefitted the institution (Mederer and
Weinstein 1992).
Spouses were positioned in such a way in relation to the military institution that
they were excluded from informational aspects of deployment, yet simultaneously
required to offer full support in order for their soldiers and the military in general to
successfully accomplish the mission. Dorothy Smith explains that “at almost every point
women mediate for men the relation between the conceptual mode of action… and the
actual material condition upon which it depends” (2004:26). Essentially, the work of the
30
military spouse makes it possible for their husbands and the military to be successful at
war. At the ground level, from the wives’ perspectives, there was a consensus that
having information about the deployment would allow them to be more successful at
managing things while their husbands were gone; however, because they didn’t have
information they were in a difficult position of navigating the deployment blindfolded.
This created feelings of alienation among spouses and feelings of distrust and resentment
toward the military. It also created internal conflict within spouses because no matter
how alienated they felt there was no denying that they were still intimately invested in the
deployment experience and had no choice but to move forward in support of it even
without direction from the institution itself. Sarah articulated how frustrating it was to
deal with the uncertainty of the military’s plans:
Sarah: I think what’s [pause] what’s frustrating, what’s difficult is the constant change, you know? It’s just you have to adjust and you have to adapt. And, I’ve learned to adjust and adapt a lot you know? And I don’t mind doing that, but … I like having the facts… so it’s frustrating when it keeps changing!
Andrea and Sarah’s concerns were echoed by all of the spouses in one form or
another. Despite the reasons for a spouse not receiving information about a deployment,
one thing seemed evident: the military required spouses to be flexible and to execute full
support of the mission with little or no information grounded in the larger context of the
deployment itself. This resulted in spouses feeling frustrated, angry and powerless about
the amount of control the military exerted on them despite the fact they were not formal
members of the institution.
31
Two things happened as a result of poor information flow. Spouses had
unanswered questions and sought other means of acquiring information. These factors are
examined below.
Unanswered Questions
Spouses’ unanswered questions were typically related to deployment logistics, the
Army Reserve Structure, or military culture in general. Spouses often seemed confused
or overwhelmed about navigating the military bureaucracy in order to obtain answers.
Sarah, who was experiencing deployment for the first time, had several questions about
the Army Reserve system and its expectations of soldiers and families. The following
conversation is one where she was trying to get clarification on whether the Army
expected her husband to attend training before his deployment:
Sarah: Could we have said “No” to the pre-deployment training? Interviewer: Mnnn Mmm [a negative affirmation]. Sarah: You can’t? Interviewer: I don’t think so. Sarah: You’re not allowed to? Interviewer: Yah, I don’t think you can get out of it. Sarah: See, and that’s not, you know, when they sign-up, that’s not clear. You know it’s one weekend a month and then if deployment it’s a year, but no one’s saying that you have to leave your family for, you know, a month here and a month there. That’s not right, but I just don’t think that’s right, you know? But then, that’s me. I need to have the facts. Once I have the facts and I can adjust to it, I’m okay. When you change things on me again I go through another, I need to adjust to it. So you can’t say “no” to it, even? Later in our interview, Sarah asked another question regarding what would happen when
her husband came home:
Sarah: So, he’s on four-hundred day orders which end around the end of August, so I’m not sure. I’m not sure how deployments work. I thought they gave them a month. A paid month when they got home for the integration into society? Is that true?
32
Sarah’s questions are a perfect illustration of the confusion and frustration that resulted
when a spouse was unfamiliar with how the military institution operated.
Patricia’s questions seemed to be more centered on how her husband’s civilian
occupation would be affected by his multiple deployments to Iraq. She remembered what
happened after his last deployment and seemed worried about his job security when he
returned:
Patricia: Last time he was gone they hired a temp to come in and do his job and the guy didn’t last very long. This time I don’t even think they replaced him so, I think, think that’s where they sort of get, and I don’t, not really sure what the legal ramifications are. He has to have a job, right? Isn’t that how that thing works? Patricia’s question brings up an interesting and a unique aspect of the Reserves. Because
the Army is only a “part time” job for Reservists, juggling the fast tempo of multiple
deployments and trying to maintain favor with a civilian employer is often challenging.
Spouses were often left worried about whether or not their husbands would have a
civilian job when they came home. What Patricia didn’t know is that there are federal
protections for her husband’s job (Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve 2010).
Because she was disconnected from the FRG and other military support networks, she
was unaware of that protection. These types of questions were typical of spouses
disconnected from military networks.
Another interesting aspect of spouses’ questions were centered around military
culture, something about which spouses were often unfamiliar. Spouses were typically
unfamiliar with the lingual element of military culture which is dense with acronyms
making it difficult to have meaningful conversations with others regarding institutional
33
processes. The following conversation unfolded when Faith asked for clarification on
how spouses were notified about my research. My explanation included references to her
husband’s possible affiliation with the deployed unit. She immediately became confused
by my explanation as can be seen by her question below:
Faith: Isn’t that a ready reservists unit? Interviewer: They might have been a ready reserve and then been assigned to the [deploying unit]. It depends on the [pause]. Was he in the active reserves or in the IRR, do you know? Faith: [Frustrated] Honey, I don’t know. I don’t even keep track of it, you know? Interviewer: That’s okay. Faith: You know, one of my daughters, once, one time broke her arm while he had gone to a duty station, and I called up the Red Cross to let [my husband] know about his daughter. And it wasn’t until the Red Cross got back with me that I found out he was in Korea! It was evident that Faith was unfamiliar with the concept of unit affiliations and the
differing ways in which soldiers can be assigned to units for deployment. In addition to
her unfamiliarity with unit affiliations and assignments, she was also unfamiliar with the
acronym “IRR” which immediately triggered the recollection of a story illustrating the
extent to which she felt in the dark about how the military operates.
Patricia was another spouse who was confused by Army jargon. She explained
how difficult it was to decipher correspondence from the military and indicated that she
let the paperwork pile up because she couldn’t make sense of it:
Patricia: He’s got piles of paper around here all the time. I don’t, I can’t even read half of the military stuff. Because I don’t know what the code means. I don’t even, I can’t, you know, I’m still dealing with the time and the date being wrong as far as I’m concerned. Dates backwards all the time! Lack of understanding about military culture was a significant barrier to Army Reserve
spouses and often lent to their frustration or misunderstanding about how the military
34
operated. As can be seen from Faith’s and Patricia’s comments, not understanding
certain aspects of military culture was frustrating and often mean that a spouse may not
have the means to understand contextual elements of the deployment.
Another noteworthy occurrence during the interviews was that the spouses
directed their questions to me in hopes I might have answers. This is most likely because
I was transparent with them regarding my affiliation with the military and my role as a
military spouse. Their questions to me served as an indication of the power of social
networks as a means for information gathering. Sarah, who does not feel comfortable
attending FRG functions and who doesn’t have a relationship with any of the FRG
liaisons explains that she never asked questions of the military itself:
Interviewer: If you’ve got questions about the deployment or about the military, anything military related, how do you get…where do you get answers from, or have you? Sarah: [Laugh] I’ve never asked. Interviewer: You’ve never asked? Okay. Sarah: I mean, I asked you. You know. That one question, but I’ve never really, well, no I take it back. When before deploying I had a lot of questions and I asked [my husband] and he would talk to them. But he was also living down on [the base]. You know, he would go back and forth. Another interesting interaction occurred with Jane after she asked me a question about
which I wasn’t sure. Notice how her initial statement was that she would look the
information up on the internet:
Jane: My only question is, though which I didn’t know. I need to look this up [on the internet]. He has four years [on his contract]. Interviewer: Umm, hmm. Jane: Will he still be [under contract] when he gets back, because it will only be three and a-half years? So it’s like he still has that six months. And, he’s trying to figure that out, too. We’re not sure.
35
Interviewer: Yah. I, I don’t. I’m not an expert, but I, I think he’s going to have to be assigned somewhere for the last six months. So, I don’t know how that will work. Yah, I don’t know how that works. Jane: Yah, he will. Interviewer: Because I don’t know, I know there’s a lot of post-deployment debriefings and medical stuff that goes on, and screenings, and I don’t know if, if they sort of keep you attached to the unit you deployed with to get all that stuff done, even though you’re home already. I’m not sure how that works, with so little time left on the contract. Jane: Right, yah, all the returning warrior stuff. Um, I don’t know. We’ll play it by ear.
Interestingly Jane decided to “play it by ear” and seemed fairly non-committal
about pursuing an answer. While several of the wives had unanswered questions, they
did not reach out to the military for answers. The FRG is the structural element designed
by the military to support the families and assist them with the logistics of deployment.
Despite this institutional support mechanism, the wives seemed uninterested in
maintaining a relationship with the institution. While explanations about why spouses
didn’t want to reach out to the FRG are explored later, this conscious hesitation to
interact with the military was a phenomenon that also emerged in previous research
(Burrell et al. 2003). The resulting situation was one in which spouses found either an
alternative way to get their questions answered (Ender 1995) or continued living without
the information.
Acquiring Information
When spouses wanted information about the deployment and couldn’t get it from
the military, they often depended on alternative ways of gathering it. While those
strategies will be addressed in a later section, this section will focus on the specific types
of information spouses were interested in gathering. Primarily, spouses were interested
in two types of information: 1) information about their husbands’ day-to-day activities,
36
and 2) confirmation that their husbands were alive and safe. Occasionally, while in the
process of acquiring information spouses were unexpectedly exposed to disturbing
information about the war or in some cases directly exposed to violent acts of war
themselves.
Day-to-day Activities
One of the things spouses were interested in knowing was information about their
husbands’ daily activities, such as eating and sleeping schedules. It seemed that even
mundane details painted a picture that helped spouses feel closer to their husbands, like
Faith, for example, who excitedly told me about the weather in Iraq:
Faith: Um, he tells me that it’s one-hundred twenty two degrees there in Kuwait. Interviewer: Wow! Faith: And one-hundred thirty and they’re running around in tanks. It’s like opening your oven door! Interviewer: Yah. Yah, it is. Faith: Yah. You wanna pre-heat your oven, then open-up the door? And we’re complaining because it’s 107 here!
Grassroots newsletters created by the soldiers themselves along with one of the
unit spouses were mentioned as a highlight of the deployment on multiple occasions
during interviews with the spouses. Patricia explained that she enjoyed these newsletters
because they included pictures, which allowed her and her kids to visualize what life was
like for the soldiers in Iraq:
Patricia: [The author/editor] does a really good job of making it personal… Because it’s, the, in, in one month’s newsletter it’s more information than I’ve ever had in any of the other deployments… You know, you get to really see what they’re accomplishing and where they are, you know? They always make sure they take some pictures of things that are out and while they’re about. They always take pictures in people’s, where they’re staying so you can see their living quar[ters]… So, so they actually, so I said, “You know even our own kids have no idea!” We listen to them
37
describe it but you don’t know what he’s talking about. So, um, that parts very, and I would imagine for most families it’s just a nice connection to, you know, what their daily life is like. You get to actually see it.
Patricia was one of several wives who frequently consumed television news as a
way of gathering information about the deployment. She explained that her pursuit of
information via television news had become almost an obsession:
Interviewer: How do you keep yourself updated on the war just in general not, not [your husband] specifically, what he’s doing? Patricia: Um, I am very into watching the news when he’s gone. I’m not a, I could take it or leave it when he’s home… I actually probably get to the obsessive side of it where I spend hours watching the news… I’ll spend hours at night looking through the channels looking for information. Which I don’t really know that that does me any good, so. But it’s sort of, then I sort of have an idea. Patricia goes on to explain what type of information she is looking for when she watches
the news:
Patricia: I think for me I really, I key in on what the location is. You know when it’s a report and all they talk about is Iraq I just, it doesn’t really, I listen to it but I’m not interested in it. You know if they ever said the name of the city that he’s really in I would really then be keyed in to, but that’s sort of how it is. I look at uniforms. Um, I listen to whoever, whatever you know unit it’s from, that kind of stuff… So um, but that’s really sort of how I do it. I just sort of, I’m, listen for or look at whatever part of the map it is they’re showing. And then it’s who, what, what the uniform looks like, kind of thing is what I’m, I sort of look for. You know I’ve never really seen anybody that’s, never seen anybody he knows. That’s what I keep telling him, “You guys never make the news.” Because his particular unit doesn’t ever, that group doesn’t make it but, but that’s sort of how I just get through the news. And you know I don’t really actually pay attention much to what they say, just because I really feel like it has a, you know it’s what they want to depict, so. I’m more interested in the picture part of it, what they’re showing kind of thing. Patricia’s description of the types of information she looked for relates back to the
concept of visual imagery, an element that was valued by spouses in the pictorial
newsletters and in conversations with their husbands where the husband described daily
38
experiences that could help spouses visualize what it was like overseas. Ultimately,
spouses looked for a personal connection to their husbands with as much imagery as
possible to help paint a picture of their surroundings and their daily, lived experiences.
Spouses explained that this type of information made them feel closer to their husbands.
Confirmation That Husbands Were Alive
A second purpose of information gathering was of a more practical nature.
Simply put, communication with deployed soldiers was proof that the soldier was alive.
Faith articulated her relief about how her husband’s phone calls eased her fear and
anxiety about his well being:
Faith: So, I constantly know what time it is in Iraq. You know, it doesn’t matter. I know, whether, you know, if it’s beyond midnight in Iraq, I’m not going to get a call from him. So I actually know all the time, every time I pick up my phone, I know whether, actually, he called at church the other day… I dashed out of church to answer the phone. But, sometimes the reception is bad, um, you know, you know, I can tell that it’s him, but it’s a, it’s a relief to have him call me whether we get to speak or not, ‘cause I know at least at that moment, he’s alive. Cindy was another spouse who expressed relief over being able to communicate with her
husband over email because it allowed him to prepare her for periods when he would not
be available:
Cindy: Like if he goes out… maybe he won’t have his computer with him or won’t have a connection. So he tries to let me know “I’m going to be travelling this week so you probably won’t hear from me on Tuesday and Wednesday, but I’ll hear from you on Thursday.” So we communicate mostly through emails, which is amazing help. In addition to the mundane details of daily life, spouses were interested in any
communication that reassured them their husbands were alive and safe. Previous
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research shows that having this type of communication can reduce stress levels among
military spouses (Bell et al. 1999).
Unanticipated Information
An interesting aspect of information gathering occurred unexpectedly while
spouses were in the midst of acquiring or receiving deployment related information-
spouses either received disturbing information or were exposed first hand to traumatic
events of war. Most often these occurrences happened during communication with their
soldier, or while consuming media coverage of the war. These occurrences were
unintentional and unprovoked. Spouses most commonly reported that the unanticipated
information came in the form of war stories casually weaved into conversations3. As
spouses relayed their everyday experiences to one another, soldiers often spoke about
commonplace incidents that happened to or near them. While the wives had varying
comfort levels with receiving the information, details of war were commonplace in
communication and did end up being part of the information that spouses used to map
their own experience of deployment. Jane explained how her husband nonchalantly
mentioned being mortared:
Interviewer: Can you talk about your communication with your husband during the deployment? Jane: Email. Interviewer: Email? Okay. Jane: Um, what more do you want? Method I guess? Interviewer: Um, topics or do you feel like, I don’t know, does he talk to you about what happens during the day or does he kinda just keep it short like, “I’m okay and, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” or does he talk about the events of his day, or do you?
3 These are images and reactions to war similar to the ones I experienced during my husband’s deployment to Iraq.
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Jane: He does. He’s really good. Chronological… um, Chronologically, you know, “I had breakfast. I did this. I went and did this. I got this. Oh, by the way, they mortared us.” I’m like, “What!” He usually does that. It’s funny, um. Does he tell me how he feels about being mortared? I usually get the response, “Oh, its bullshit! They tried to mortar us.” I’m like, “Yah, that does suck!”
Patricia was another spouse who heard stories of war in casual communication
with her husband. She explained how her husband used humor to talk with her about
disturbing events that happened during the deployment. She found it interesting how he
framed the stories with the emphasis being on a punch line not necessarily the traumatic
event itself. She also believed this was his way of decompressing so she accepted the
stories, and his technique for telling them, as a normal part of their communication:
Patricia: So they were out and they had a suicide bomber who tried to get in [the humvee]. [He] couldn’t get in but he exploded the bomb so he basically blew himself up all over the side of the Humvee. Interviewer: Oh, God. Patricia: So [my husband] is telling the story, not because he was in danger… Because he wants to tell me the next part: So guess who had to clean the vehicle? Lowest rank! While Patricia was disturbed by the story, she also normalized it and recognized
herself as a facilitator in her husband’s process of decompression. This facilitation
process was a phenomenon researched by Shehan in 1987 among Vietnam War wives
who played a therapeutic role in helping their husbands recover from PTSD. While
Shehan (1987) observed this facilitation process after the Vietnam deployments were
over, in the current deployment to Iraq, at least in Patricia’s case, the process occurred
sooner due to advanced telecommunication (Ender 1995).
Faith’s experience was also unique to the most recent conflict. Faith, in a
previous deployment, heard her husband’s unit coming under attack during a phone
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conversation with him. She explained her relief about not having to re-live that
experience in the current deployment:
Faith: This time I have not heard any bombs and sirens going off. You know? Um, I mean, at least so far, I haven’t. So, that’s a relief. Um, actually, I’ve heard from others that have had that experience, too, and it’s really un-nerving. So, its unpredictable so it’s not like, gosh, I planned it that way.
The media, in various forms, was also a means by which spouses acquired
information about the deployment. While the internet, newspapers and radio were
mentioned as sources of information, television news was cited as the most popular.
Most spouses, especially the ones who had endured multiple deployments, were very
clear that while they acquired information from the media, their consumption of it was
guarded. They believed the news was not always an accurate source of information, nor
was it a reflection of what was happening in the region as a whole. Faith, who had
experienced multiple deployments, reminisced about her consumption of television news
on previous deployments and explained how a recent quest for information resulted in
unanticipated health consequences for her:
Faith: [My son] and I were just obsessed with watching every bit of news that came out. But, we both looked at each other at the same time and said, “You know what? We could, it might be feasible for us to actually see daddy in the news.” But we looked at each other and then we said, “You know what? This is sick! We cannot be doing this.” Our life is going by and we’re watching every tid bit of news coming out of the Middle East. We need to cut this out! [emphatically] So, basically, this go-round I’m not obsessed with the news. I do read a couple articles every now and then in the newspaper, but I’m not obsessed with it. But the other day, just this last week, I read a caption underneath the news, and most of the time I don’t read the captions, but this one caption was one: [Army] Division on tactical alert and my blood pressure shot-up to 179 over 97 that night. I almost went to the emergency room last week, because my blood pressure shot-up. You know, that’s the reason why, I just, I just can’t. It’s not good to do this.
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Recent research on the correlation between television watching and PTSD has
found that exposure to traumatic footage was associated with new-onset PTSD (Ahern,
Galea, Resnick, and Vlahov 2004; Bernstein, Ahern, Tracy, Boscarino, Vlahov, and
Galea 2007). In fact, television may merit consideration as a potential exposure to a
traumatic event (Ahern et al. 2004). Exposure to traumatic television footage has also
been found to cause trauma and stress reactions including nightmares (Davidson, Hart
and Haines 2005; Propper, Stickgold, Keely and Christman 2007) which is one of the
indicators for PTSD (American Psychiatric Association 1994). Incidentally, both Patricia
and Faith reported experiencing indicators that were listed by the American Psychiatric
Association in their criteria for anxiety disorders and PTSD (1994)4.
A fascinating aspect of the spouses’ communication with their deployed soldiers
is that while spouses valued information about the day-to-day experiences and safety of
their husbands, sometimes communication involved hearing stories about war from their
husbands’ perspectives. Other times, however, communication involved the wife
experiencing, first-hand, her own traumatic event as a result of war. These unanticipated
effects of telecommunication are a new phenomena occurring in the present war and one
predicted by Ender (1995).
4 It should be noted that interviews were not intended and were not used to assess or diagnose PTSD in spouses. I am not a qualified therapist and cannot diagnose psychological disorders. The interviews were not presented as, nor did they have the feel of a clinical diagnostic measure. The diagnostic criteria for PTSD as defined by the American Psychological Association (1994) was used only as a reference point from which to understand larger social patterns emerging from interviews where spouses reported anxiety or stress related factors. It was not my intention to focus on an individual’s symptoms, but to identify patterns among a group of spouses that may indicate or refute the presence of a greater issue. If in fact, this or future research uncovers group patterns similar to those of PTSD, it will be the responsibility of trained professionals to research, diagnose, and assess further action.
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Isolation from Military Support Networks
The second central theme that emerged from the spouses’ experiences was
isolation from military support networks. While the previous section addressed lack of
information and how that was sometimes related to the absence of support networks, this
section will explain the types of networks that spouses were lacking and what types of
relationships became useful for them during the deployment. This is truly an interesting
phenomenon and shows that where there is lack of structure created by the military,
spouses used agency to create structure for themselves.
Geographic isolation from the deployed unit itself, from military posts, and from
other military spouses were the main contributors to Army Reserve wives feeling
disconnected from the military community. In fact, some spouses felt so disconnected
they were unsure, literally, about who from the military was calling them to check up on
them. Andrea was a geographically-isolated spouse who wasn’t sure which unit was
reaching out to her:
Interviewer: Now, have, um, have you gotten calls from the unit in California, or are you getting calls from a different unit? Andrea: I think they’re from California. I think.
Faith was another geographically-isolated spouse who was so disconnected from the
military community that she had no reference point from which to give suggestions for
how the unit could help her:
Interviewer: What kinds of things do you think the unit can do to help you through the deployment experience? Faith: [Long pause] I live so far from them, honey, I don’t know.
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Later, Faith indicated that newsletters would make her feel more connected, but initially
she had a difficult time trying to picture how an entity so far away could be useful in
assisting her.
Patricia was an Army Reserve wife who articulated her disappointment about
feeling disconnected from other military families. She had an interesting frame of
reference because she grew up with an active duty military father and experienced the
active duty model of community and social networking:
Interviewer: What are some of the… unique challenges of the reserves? Patricia: Um, I think for me one of the hardest things about the reserves are, is the no, there’s no connection, you know? I know nobody… That sort of is odd to me… That part’s weird because I do remember growing up um, my parents always having parties and my mother hosted the women’s club or whatever the thing is, the tea. They all knew each other because they’re active duty. Where that, there’s no, that connection isn’t there. Even we went to the, and I made the kids go this year, we went to the, they had a family day for [the unit]. We all went down, we drove down for the barbecue and stuff, and it ended up being the kids and I together. [My husband] mingled with all these people that we didn’t know and it was sort of like, okay. Interviewer: Awkward. Patricia: I know. My kids are like, like, “How long did you say we had to stay, Mom?” …And so that part’s weird to me that you don’t have this connection… You know because I do remember we never lived on a military base when I was growing up, but we also knew other military families. Interviewer: Right. Patricia: Even my dad was stationed in Canada for two years, so there was only six military families. We knew those six military families from United States! Where there’s no connection to the reserves. Patricia’s experience is one that contrasts, very nicely, the differences in social networks
between the active duty Army and the Army Reserves. While Patricia had a unique
childhood upbringing that allowed her to compare the active versus reserve components,
her general disappointment about feeling disconnected from the Reserve military
community was shared among spouses. The idea of feeling isolated from the unit and not
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having any friends within the unit is consistent with previous research that found nearly
70% of Army Reserve wives have no friends within the unit (Burrell et al. 2003).
An interesting observation made by several of the spouses was that civilians, the
people with whom they have regular contact, have a difficult time understanding the
military lifestyle. This lack of understanding made it difficult for Army Reserve wives to
converse with others about what life was like during deployment. The inability to
communicate with members of the community about their experiences made spouses feel
isolated, and seemed to be a larger dilemma considering the majority of the wives lived in
communities predominantly inhabited by civilians. Patricia shared her feelings about not
having anyone who could relate to her about the deployment:
Patricia: There are times that you sort of feel isolated about the fact that he’s gone and that’s what it is. There isn’t anybody I work with who’s military. Um, and I just think there’s a part of it that you, only you understand. And if you just had those people, you know? …I truly believe people who have never lived the military whether you were raised by parents who are military or you’re married to somebody…You just don’t understand. You don’t understand that. Their behavior, their thought process.
Earlier in her marriage, Cindy’s husband was on active duty and their family lived
on post. Cindy recalled what it was like to be an active duty wife and how things have
changed for her now that her husband is in the Army Reserves:
Cindy: It was a lot different when you’re on a military post. Um, you know we… had the battalion coffee. We met all the other wives. We had functions. You ran into them at the commissary or any number of functions you might have gone to. You had your neighbors and you could talk the lingo. Da, da, da, da, da [imitating the lingo]. And civilians don’t understand it. Both women’s points are interesting. They observed that civilians not only didn’t
understand the emotional aspect that allowed them to empathize, but they didn’t
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understand the military culture. Even trying to have a conversation with a civilian was
challenging because they may not understand the jargon5.
The spouses’ frustration about the inability to share their experience with people
in the community seems to be a perspective that was unique to the Army Reserve wives.
Previous research shows that active duty wives network with each other for consolation
and support (Rosen and Moghadam 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1990) and despite
limited crossover between officer and enlisted spouses (Rosen and Moghadam 1989),
there is still a support network within the active duty community. Because most of the
Army Reserve spouses in this study were geographically disconnected from a military
community, few people could relate to them.
While it is clear in this research, and in previous research (Burrell et al. 2003),
that Army Reserve spouses experienced a lack of connection within their civilian
communities, what has been unclear is exactly what Army Reserve spouses seek in
friendships or in social networks during the deployment. What follows are spouses’
explanations about what they were looking for. Sarah, for example, was initially having
a difficult time dealing with the deployment and sought the comfort of a close friend.
Sarah explained her reaction when her friend suggested she join a support group:
Sarah: One of my friends when I was having a hard time with it [the deployment] and I was sharing with her, she said, “You should get involved with a support group.” And, I’ve just, I didn’t want to talk to a support group. I wanted to talk to my friend that loved me and cared for me. 5 Recall in the earlier discussion about information flow that military jargon was an obstacle I faced with Faith because she didn’t understand the acronym I used. Because Cindy has been immersed in military culture on active duty she is able to understand military jargon better than most other spouses I interviewed.
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Andrea shared similar thoughts. When faced with the prospect of talking with a stranger
from the FRG versus confiding in a friend, Andrea would rather talk to a friend:
Andrea: I’m sure this deployment would have been a whole hell of a lot different had he been going with his unit ‘cause there would have been other women and other families, and other, you know? As much as they have that family readiness group and all that stuff available to you, I felt like I’d be calling someone in Texas, you know? Like what good is it that I’m calling you people? I don’t even know you. I’d rather call a friend… you know?
Both wives indicated they would rather seek comfort from a friend. Existing
research shows that women who perceived greater support from friends also reported a
greater ability to adjust and adapt to change (Klein et al. 1989). Both Sarah and Andrea
expressed discomfort with the idea of seeking support from someone they didn’t know.
To them familiarity provided emotional safety and comfort. Perhaps this is a reason why
spouses didn’t reach out to the FRGs (Burrell et al. 2003). Without the rapport of an
existing relationship, spouses were very leery of confiding their feelings. Because most
spouses didn’t have an existing connection with the FRG before the deployment,
reaching out to them wasn’t something they felt comfortable doing during the
deployment.
While Andrea and Sarah were looking for emotional safety, support and comfort,
Cindy, on the other hand, looked for sincerity as a way to gauge whether an interaction
felt right for her. Cindy illustrated this point when she poked fun at one of the military
liaisons who called to check up on her:
Cindy: [The]… Army Reserve has a unit out of Mississippi that calls us once a month to find out how we’re doing… and you can tell they’re reading a card or something too [laughs]. She called this week and you can tell she must be reading a card cause it was, “Just across the liiines, liiike thaaat” [mimics a fake southern accent].
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The reason for caution started to become clear as these three women shared their
apprehensions about confiding intimate details of their personal experiences and needs
with people they didn’t know or trust. Cindy’s experience was also interesting in that it
reinforced a point made earlier by Andrea, spouses were receiving phone calls without a
clear distinction about who was calling them and where exactly that caller was located.
In Cindy’s case, she lived nowhere near Mississippi, yet she was receiving calls from a
unit there even though her husband deployed out of California. While the military’s
intentions for implementing FRG’s are to assist spouses through deployment, spouses
who have not developed relationships with the unit liaisons were skeptical about seeking
their help or confiding in them when they were experiencing issues (Burrell et al. 2003).
Additionally, while most wives were not opposed to phone calls from FRG liaisons,
spouses like Cindy found the outreach to be somewhat impersonal which seemed to be a
turn-off and possibly an additional deterrent to developing relationships with others from
the unit.
In terms of social networks, understanding what spouses were lacking and what
they were looking for will help us better understand the processes they created to meet
their own needs. The final two sections address exactly how spouses created social
networks for themselves, and how those networks met their needs. As we will see
sometimes the processes worked and other times they didn’t.
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Establishing Civilian Support Networks
One of the ways spouses weathered the deployment was to establish civilian
support networks for themselves. Considering that Army Reserve wives typically lived
far from military communities, they needed to establish networks within their own
communities for support. The two ways in which spouses sought support from their
communities was for logistical help and moral/emotional support. Spouses seemed to
draw upon people in their communities that they already knew, even casual
acquaintances. Typically, support people consisted of neighbors, coworkers, friends or
family. The dynamics of those relationships changed, however, from casual interaction
to more of a giving, support role from the community member towards the spouse.
Interestingly, it seemed that community members had no expectation of reciprocity
during the deployment. At times, however, civilian relationships became strained and
were unequipped to meet the needs of Army Reserve spouses due to the unique demands
of the military and the unfamiliarity of the civilian community with regard to the military.
Those strains on spouses, however, were experienced only with civilians from whom the
spouses expected moral support not logistical support. Those strains will be discussed
later.
Civilian Networks as a Means for Logistical Help
Andrea was experiencing medical issues during the deployment and explained
how her neighbors chipped in to help over the winter because they knew she couldn’t
shovel snow:
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Andrea: our neighbors shoveled our snow all winter. Um, you know, of course I felt awful. I wished I could do it, but… I probably shouldn’t have. So, um, you know, they helped. We have a, a guy friend of [my husband’s] that lives down the road… and he’d come over if something happened, you know? My car got stuck in the snow one time and he came and dug me out. You know… things like that. Sarah needed some work done in the house and asked around for references from her
church friends. She explained how a couple from church volunteered to do the work for
free when they found out her husband was deployed:
Interviewer: So what about um, what’s your support system back here? Sarah: I have a lot of friends. I am so loved by a lot of people!... Interviewer: Good! Good for you! Sarah: And, I have a gentleman named, RJ. He’s retired and his wife and I get along really well, so he…[laughing] He crawled around in my attic and fixed stuff in my attic that needed to be fixed. He was so funny! He was like a doctor. He was, “Sweatshirt!” “Gloves!” Het was so funny. He was like, “Okay, I need that duct-tape! Set it on the.” It was so funny. His wife was cracking-up. So they come over and do stuff in the house that needs to be done… So, you know, I just feel hugely supported. He’ll email me and say, “Hey, Sis, how ya doing?” You know, it’s just really sweet. Andrea and Sarah’s stories are typical in that members of the community often
volunteered to do chores or maintenance work around the house to help during the
deployment. Several of the wives mentioned that community members told them it was
their way of showing support for the military and that they took pride in being able to
help local families and their country in this way.
The Army Reserve wives were similar to active duty wives regarding their
logistical support networks in that they received support from their community and
neighbors (Klein et al. 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1990).
One difference between Army Reserve wives and active duty wives is that the Army
Reserve wives received logistical support from civilian neighbors, not necessarily other
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military wives who lived near them. Another difference is that while a military base
creates an all encompassing community with a ready made circle of friends (Mederer and
Weinstein 1992), living as a civilian meant that Army Reserve wives had to create and
maintain those friendship networks for themselves.
Civilian Networks as a Means for Moral/Emotional Support
While Army Reserve spouses did report frequently depending on neighbors to
help with logistical aspects of home and vehicle maintenance during the deployment,
they did not depend on neighbors for moral support. Instead, moral support was often
received from friends, family, and coworkers. Cindy tells a touching story of how her
coworkers comforted her when she was sad, especially since work was a place where she
typically corresponded with her husband by email:
Cindy: The people I work with we [sit] in a pod. We sit four facing the corner and so if you turn the chairs around then you can look at each other. Normally we’re talking to each other’s back. And they’re my comedy team. When I come and I cry all day they come and they pat my back. You know, when I need to be with somebody other than the children Mary Ann figures out how we can do the show. You know, a movie or a play or something, so we can do something… And, so, um, if I didn’t, you know, I know that we always have someone we can turn to. They’re really good people. Patricia also explains how a friend from work offers her moral support during the
deployment. Interestingly, Patricia takes comfort in this friend because she is patriotic
and because she knows Patricia’s husband. Typically, in a military community this
would be an unspoken characteristic of interaction between friends, however, it is
interesting that Patricia seeks this out in her civilian friendships. Perhaps it is because
she grew up in an active duty military community and seeks similar camaraderie:
Interviewer: When you need to talk about stuff who do you usually go to?
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Patricia: I probably talk to um, one of my friends at work… I have a friend at work who it’s just easy. She’s the one person I can just, I can say whatever in front of and you know it never comes back out. Three days later she doesn’t say, “but you said!” So, so, but she has [kids] like I do… so we sort of have that thing where I can complain about my kids or I’m going to kill this one or whatever so um, but she’s definitely my one. And she’s a very patriotic person. Was even before, you know, her and I became friends. So she’s very good about you know, she would, just gives you that gentle reminder occasionally, “Yeah, but he’s doing what he needs to for his country” kind of thing. So um, she’s my one person that I can just sort of vent to and, and you know in the end she always goes okay, but that’s just life so, get going with your day! It’s just nice to, plus she knows him, that I, you know it’s so much easier to talk to somebody when they know who it is you’re talking about. You know you don’t have to do the explaining part. She knows [my husband] really well so it’s easy to tell her. Sarah explained how moral support for her came in the form of people meeting her social
needs and reaching out to do things with her that had sentimental value. For Sarah, the
emotional connection of social gatherings made her feel connected to her community and
helped her through the deployment:
Sarah: There’s another gal in our church whose kinda like “the mom”. And she always checks in with me. She’s started a um, a Sunday card game playing, you know, get together. So we get together every Sunday and now we trade-off houses. So, you know I’m getting that contact and interaction. There’s this card-game that [my husband] and I love called Nertz. It’s a solitaire game where you play off each other, but you have to have a partner. You know, and I just haven’t played since [he left] and I love that game! We used to play it everyday when I’d come home from work! [Laugh!] … So, anyway, so they play it with me. It’s just stupid little things that make you feel really connected. Cindy explained how moral support from her mother (Klein et al. 1989; Rosen and
Moghadam 1990) was invaluable for helping her weather the deployment. She found
comfort and strength in her mother’s advice about how to manage being a single parent:
Interviewer: Ok. Ok. What about family? Are you… are you close with either your family or your husband’s family for support? Cindy: My mom calls me all the time… and I can call her and cry to her all the time, which I do… My parents were divorced when I was two, so my mom raised four kids on her own, so she definitely knows what it’s like to be on your own, having to figure out things on your own.
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Family, friends and coworkers who provided moral support were there to listen,
console, and sympathize with spouses and helped facilitate social interactions that
distracted the Army Reserve spouses from the stress of deployment. These types of
intimate friendships provided support that allowed spouses to adjust and adapt to the
change and the unpredictability of the military lifestyle (Klein et al. 1989).
Challenges with Civilian Support Networks
Interestingly, while civilian support networks helped Army Reserve spouses
weather the deployment in some aspects, they also posed some unique challenges. The
wives often reported having issues with mothers in-law and members of the community
who, in casual conversation about the deployment, responded in ways that were
offensive.
Managing Mothers In-law
Not all of the spouses, but four out of the seven, reported having issues with their
mothers’ in-law. Three of these four, disliked the idea of having to manage their
emotional mothers in-law. Those who were fortunate enough to have supportive mothers
in-law were very appreciative, but those who didn’t were often irritated that the
emotional balance of the household was often upset when their mothers in-law were
around.
While Jane didn’t seem to mind managing information flow to her mother in-law,
she explained that it took a lot of effort to manage her mother in-law’s frequent panic
attacks about the safety of her son:
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Jane: Last week, one of the Chinooks went down, and, his mother was convinced he was on it and she never called me… I, I didn’t know what was going on... At the time, the internet was down. You know, there’s a couple days there where I didn’t catch any news. I was completely caught-up in work. And, apparently she was freaking out. [My husband] calls me, gets a hold of me and says, “Look, you need to tell my mom I’m okay.” And, I was like, “Well what happened?” And he’s like, “Well she thought that the Chinook that went down was one that I was on.” I was like, “Why would she think that?” And he said, “Well, because, you know, it was in the news.” And I said, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “It was on CNN. You didn’t see it?” And I said, “No.” Um, but she never called me, you know, if she would’ve she would know that I had talked to him… I told her that. I was like, “Look, next time call me, because sometimes I might know something you don’t. And you know, I’m not trying to be secretive, uh, but if there’s a question, we can always talk about it.” You know? Jane’s experience with her mother in-law was similar to that discussed by Ender in 1995.
While Ender acknowledged the possibility of technology allowing viewership of the
death of a loved one, Jane experienced the fear of that reality first hand with her mother
in-law. While viewing the actual death of a loved one over television is an idea discussed
by Ender (1995), managing the fear and anxiety surrounding the possibility of an
occurrence like that is one that has not been anticipated by previous research.
Additionally, Jane was expected to provide emotional support for her mother in-law
instead of receive it. Interestingly, Jane’s husband actually asked her to provide that
support to his mother instead of calling her himself.
Patricia explained her frustration with her mother in-law getting emotional with
the kids about their dad being deployed. Similar to Jane’s situation, Patricia was
expected to provide support, not receive support from her mother in-law. Patricia
resented the fact that, ultimately, she was left to manage the emotional fallout from her
kids and to reestablish the equilibrium in her household:
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Patricia: It’s hard too for [my husband’s] parents to be around. I know they mean well but I find that when they come around it’s depressing… She’ll start questioning the [kids] about, you know, what’s it like…and then they’ll look at me [with] tears, and I’ll be thinking, “Okay this is not how I was thinking the day was going to go!” But I think she herself has a hard time dealing with it, so that’s her way of dealing with it is to talk about it… I’m not sure she believes that he’ll always come back so she worries about it and then in trying to be nice to the [kids] she’ll question them and then it’s just the way she says it and then I can just see oh… the tears are coming, here we go! You know and then she says like, “See you’re as upset about daddy being gone as I am.” And I’m thinking, “No they’re really not.” But you know, so that part’s a little weird.
Andrea explained a similar situation where she avoided inviting her mother in-law
to the airport to say goodbye when her husband deployed because she anticipated that her
mother in-law would get emotional. Interestingly, Andrea chose to spend the evening
with a friend, rather than her mother in-law because her friend offered stability and
support, something that Andrea, at that time, didn’t feel that she could give to someone
else:
Interviewer: Did, did somebody go with you to the airport? Andrea: No, because I didn’t, you know. It was just my son, I and [my husband]. Then we came home and I had a girlfriend that came over. We went after and bought dinner, and kinda hung-out, but I didn’t, I didn’t know how we’d all react. So, I figured, the less eyes on people, the better. I know [my husband’s] mom had said she wanted to come with, and um, I had told her, pretty much, flat-out… I’m like “No.” ‘Cause I knew she’d be a basket case and, you know, at the time my son was [young]. And I’m like, I can’t. It’s enough that his daddy is leaving. I couldn’t quite explain it, but I was like, No. We’re going to go by ourselves and we’ll be fine.
Spouses spent so much time trying to create an emotional equilibrium within their
own households that they avoided having to emotionally support others outside of their
nuclear families during the deployment. I argue one reason that the wives felt burdened
by their mothers’ in-law was because they might have had the expectation that the mother
in-law was supposed to occupy a support role during deployment instead of being an
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additional person who needed support.
Negative Social Interactions
Another challenge of civilian social networks was uncomfortable interactions that
occurred between Army Reserve spouses and members of the community who engaged
in conversation with them about the deployment. Often comments or questions spoken
by civilians were insensitive resulting in the spouses being defensive or guarded in their
future interactions with civilians. Patricia, for example, explained how people asked
loaded questions, which essentially inquired about whether she thought her husband was
going to die:
Patricia: People do say things sometimes like you know… Or they’ll say to me do you think he’s going to come home? Well how exactly should I answer that question? [irritated] Which way should I go? …I know that people don’t mean it but they, they just don’t, that’s not what you say… like “How do you do it every day?” Well some days I choose not to. It’s like well I don’t know, it’s just, that’s life. I know they mean well… it’s like when someone passes away and people don’t know what to say.
A typical response offered by civilians when they learned about the deployment
was to apologize profusely. This irritated all of the spouses for different reasons. Cindy
explained that apologies made her feel like her husband had died. She didn’t feel that
people took into account that the military was a job that required travel, not just an
occupation that meant you would die:
Cindy: Oh my god, I’m so sorry for you [referring to what others have said]. I’m so sorry for you. That’s all they ever say. Oh god. What can I do for you? I feel so bad for you. And you know, you want to go, “Nobody’s died here.” It’s orders. Yes, he’s going to Iraq… anything could happen. Anything could happen here! You know, it’s not the end. It’s just different… I will say, after a while, when we first started telling people that he was called to active duty, they kept saying over and over, “Oh, I feel so bad for you!” You know, and I didn’t like hearing that… I didn’t know how to respond to it, but that wasn’t I thought was an appropriate comment, you know?
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Interviewer: What’s bothersome about that… response to you? KP: It just acts like [pause] we have treated him like he’s died or something... I mean, I know a lot of people who travel for their jobs or who are gone for weeks. We have a cousin who works [in] China, so when he’s gone we send cards to China… I just see this as a different job for [my husband]… So, um, but that’s what I always want to say sometimes, and of course I never say it. While Cindy wished that people would normalize the military as an occupation and quit
apologizing for the perils associated with it, Sarah interpreted apologies as people
associating shame with the objectives of the deployment:
Interviewer: Umm, what about community? How have people in the community reacted when they find out that he’s been deployed? Or, how have they, what have the interactions been like with you? Sarah: Some people say, “I’m sorry.” And, I want to hit ‘em! [Laugh] I’m like, “I’m not! Don’t be sorry! I’m proud of what my husband does.” And I’ve said that a couple of times and then people have stopped making those comments. Jane explained how angry it made her when members of her church congregation
apologized for making judgments about why her husband didn’t attend church with her:
Jane: You know, I, I go to church by myself. And I notice people kind of look at me… It’s like, you know “Where’s your husband?” You can see the look, like they see the ring and they’re lookin’ at me like, “Oh, you can’t get your husband to go?” Well, actually, I had one lady ask me one time. And, and another person, a guy I know, his wife asked, “So, why isn’t your husband here?” Kinda like, “Huh! I got my husband here! But, you can’t get yours.” “He’s in Iraq.” She’s like, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” You know, I was like, sorry? If you were thinking, you wouldn’t be sorry.
Faith had the unique experience of previously being an active duty wife. She
reminisced about how different the interactions were toward deployment when she lived
on a military post, and how she currently felt misunderstood and unsupported in her local
civilian church:
Interviewer: Do, do you think that the deployment experience was different on active duty than it has been in the reserves?
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Faith: Yes! In ways, yes, because when he’s been active duty, we’ve lived on military bases, and, um, and I had the support of the other…spouses. ...But anyway, yeah, um, yeah I felt like, you know, I feel like, you know, when I go to church, you know, and my church members know that my husband’s on active duty, and they know that he’s, um, serving in Iraq, and at times I feel like, they’re almost afraid of saying anything to me. It’s like, um, he’s died, and they don’t know how to respond to me. They don’t know that I’m still a person and I’m still alive, and, you know, and how to, how to respond to me. It’s almost as though their husbands are going to be sent on active duty because my husband’s on active duty. Interviewer: Like it’s contagious. Faith: It doesn’t work that way! And at times I’ve actually even, you know, made a comment to several of the church members when they’ve brought different things up…hey, you know what? Your husband’s not going to be sent on active duty just because mine is on active duty. This was his choice. He volunteered for this and he knew full-well that he was going to get deployed the first time, when he renewed his contract for ten years. You know what, don’t get afraid of it. I’m still me and… at times I feel like I don’t fit-in, you know? Like, what, do I have some kind of a catchy disease and you guys are going to catch it? You’re not going to catch it! …They’re you know, like, “What do I do with her, a military wife?” It was clear that Faith had the expectation that women at church would rally around her to
offer support. Unfortunately, she became isolated and frustrated that people were
intimidated by her situation and weren’t equipped to deal with her unique needs.
Often negative interactions with community members left spouses feeling
offended and defensive. As a result, spouses became guarded and reported avoiding
discussions about the deployment with people they didn’t know or people they knew to
be anti-war. Sarah explained how an ex-coworker made an offensive comment about her
husband and his military occupation:
Sarah: I keep myself away from those people too; anybody who may seem like they may be negative. Like I had a colleague from my old work, and we used to talk all the time when I worked there. And I ran into him again and, uh, told him that I’d gotten married, and I told him about [my husband], and he’s like, “Well, sounds like a great guy except for the soldier part.” And you know what? I just, I just stopped. I just stopped. I’m not even interested in pursuing a relationship… And it’s just, it is who he is, but it’s not okay to say that to somebody. And that was before he deployed, too, not during the
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deployment. But, I would now be much more likely to um, stand-up to anybody who said that. Why don’t you go to Iraq! And see how long you would last! …People don’t understand, you know? They just don’t.
Spouses often reported conversing about politics with community members. (This
may or may not be due to the 2009 presidential elections occurring around the time of the
interviews.) Patricia explained how angry it made her when people would use her
personal deployment situation as a public platform to make comments about politics and
the war:
Interviewer: What about your interactions with folks in the community who know that he’s deployed? How are they? Patricia: You know his first deployment it was like every time I went anywhere the grocery store, everybody – “Oh, I’m so sorry,” and um, I don’t, I purposely don’t, I sort of don’t interact with people who I know are, you know anti-war or make, you know and there are some people at work who make comments and they’re on purpose. They want a reaction and they’ll say things in the staff room like you know, especially when Bush was President you know this is such a waste of money and blah, blah, blah. And sometimes I will respond and you know make comments like, “When you got in your car this morning and drove all the way to work and nobody shot anything at you and there’s a reason why.” And other times I just think okay, you’re trying to get me and so you’re not going to. During uncomfortable or offensive interactions with community members,
spouses sometimes became defensive and felt like they needed to stick up for their
husbands or the military in general. Faith explained an interaction where someone
accused her husband of going to Iraq to kill people. Faith explained how she handled this
accusation and came to defense of her husband and soldiers in general:
Faith: Yah, actually I had a response from one man that was derogatory. It was demeaning and derogatory. He had this attitude that my husband was going to the Middle East to blow people’s brains out. I’m putting it very bluntly now, okay? I’m like, you know what? My husband doesn’t go there to blow people’s brains out. He’s there to [help]. He’s there to support our soldiers. Actually, on occasion, I know personally, that
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he assisted three different soldiers out of Afghanistan because they’d been hurt so badly that the green zone couldn’t help them. Interviewer: Wow. Faith: They needed… personnel to fly them to Germany. So, you know, that’s what, that’s what he did. Um, you know, actually, one of them was a colonel, that would loose the eyesight out of one of his eyes. So, um, yah, you know what, even if he does have to protect himself, and I have no doubt that he does, who are we to put that down? He’s doing his job and, you know, he’s been commanded to do this and [pause] who are we to put it down? Interviewer: Umm, hmm. Faith: You know, um [pause] I’m very proud of him. For whatever, you know, I have, I’ve heard about situations up there that have happened in the war setting and, I, I don’t, and we bring them back here and put them on trial. And you know what? I think that’s shameful! I’m sorry. There are things that are going to happen in war time and we have to give these guys some slack and say, hey this is war and you commanded these people to do this, and some innocent individuals, you know, get hurt and or killed in the process, SORRY! You know, you know, we didn’t intentionally do this. Don’t put our troops through more hell by putting them on trial… You know, I have no doubt that they’re not doing it intentionally… To me, it’s wrong. It’s war. What part of war do you not understand? War is not right. War is cold. You know, there’s nothing beautiful about war. There’s nothing good about war. It happens…we’re in it.
Because Faith knew her husband had a helping, support role in Iraq she was
offended that someone would assume her husband would intentionally cause harm to
someone. In addition, Faith explained that, generally, she didn’t feel like the intentions
of troops were to kill people. In her opinion, gruesome situations of war were a reflection
of the institution of war, not necessarily the soldiers themselves; soldiers in her mind,
were victims of the institution of war.
Sarah’s interactions with others about the war in general were typical of the Army
Reserve spouses. Often the wives were put in positions were they almost became spokes-
people for the war. In a sense, Sarah was the public relations representative (Harrell
2001) for her husband and felt that she needed to justify her husband’s involvement in the
context of the larger conflict in the Middle East:
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Sarah: And, and I mean I understand, you know. They’re doing something that I can’t do in honoring and protecting our country in a way that if they weren’t there, there would be more terrorist attacks and I really agree with that. And I think the hardest thing with that is talking to people in society and friends and stuff, and some of them are very negative towards the war. And, you know, some people say, you know, “We should have been in Afghanistan this entire time.” And I’m like well, “Than they were in Iraq. We were in Afghanistan and Iraq.” And now Iraq is kind of taken care of and Afghanistan is the hotbed. Well I wonder why? Because they’re just switching countries, they’re moving around all the time, you know? That’s frustrating, and I have to really kind of reign-it-in.
Ultimately, while civilian support networks were useful for providing logistical
support and some moral support for Army Reserve wives, there were challenges with
these support networks because they often required that wives offer emotional support to
others, when in fact they needed it themselves, or they encountered unpleasant
interactions with civilians who said things that were offensive or combative. Army
Reserve spouses’ interactions within their civilian communities were very different from
those of active duty spouses. Because active duty spouses tend to live in communities
with other military families there is an unspoken understanding of military culture and
soldiering which means that the military community can empathize rather than be critical
or inquisitive. Within military communities, there is also an unspoken understanding
about the support duties of military wives (Harrell 2001; Mederer and Weinstein 1992;
Shehan 1987). Because the Army Reserve wives perceived themselves as support
personnel (Harrell 2001; Mederer and Weinstein 1992; Shehan 1987) and also as quasi-
members of the military (Jans 1989) they identified themselves with their husbands
military roles in the Middle East, which was often at odds with the perceptions of war
and soldiering from a civilian perspective. Because of these differing viewpoints,
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Reserve spouses encountered situations where they felt they had to defend their husbands
and their affiliations with the military. These interactions became personal and were
draining on the Army Reserve wives leaving them skeptical about future interactions with
certain groups of civilians. Because civilian support networks were unfamiliar with the
military culture, they were often unequipped to support Army Reserve spouses. Spouses
realized this as a limitation and as a result sought out an additional support network- a
military support network.
Establishing Military Support Networks
Military support networks were created by spouses in order to fill the gaps in
civilian support networks. While establishing military social networks did not appear to
be the initial strategy of the spouses, it did seem that once spouses realized civilian
networks couldn’t sufficiently meet their needs, they quickly valued the importance of
military social networks and sought them out. Interestingly, Army Reserve spouses did
not gravitate heavily toward the support networks established by the military institution
itself. Instead, spouses sought out creative ways to either form networks for themselves,
or plug into existing networks with civilians who had military affiliations. Often their
husbands were included in these networks. Spouses became interested in making
connections with people who were already familiar with the institution and helped them
navigate the institution, share/gather information, and create safe spaces for emotional
support that involved empathizing or camaraderie through shared experience.
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Military Networks as a Means for Information Gathering
Spouses depended primarily on four types of military social networks as means
for gathering information: 1) civilians who had military affiliations, 2) their husbands, 3)
newsletters, and 4) outside agencies who served the military. While a previous section of
this paper discussed what types of information spouses were interested in gathering, this
section will discuss the means by which the information was gathered.
Civilians with Military Affiliations
Cindy explained how she networked with a couple families in her civilian
neighborhood who were ex-military. By communicating with people she already had
friendships with, she comfortably got information about the military that helped her
through the deployment:
Interviewer: Um, if… if you’ve got general questions about the military how do you usually get those answered? Cindy: I usually ask the two wives in the neighborhood. Both of them… were Navy and both of ‘em, um, their husbands both were in over twenty years. So if I need to know something about post or something… She goes on to say:
Cindy: I know that there are people that I can [draw] from and if I can’t get them to give me answers I know I can call Gregg. He will make them get me answers type of thing. Interviewer: Now, who is Gregg? Cindy: Gregg is my neighbor. He’s a retired Captain in the Navy… He’ll find out an answer if I can’t get it. Those neighbors have stepped up and said, “If you need something, call me. And if I don’t know the answer I will find the answer.”
Cindy also explained how Gregg “chewed her out” for not letting him know right
away that her husband was on deployment orders:
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Cindy: He called and kind of gave me a pep talk, and a chewing out for not calling them as soon as we got the [deployment] call. He said next time to call him because you need people to call.
This is significant because military culture dictates that you take care of one
another, especially when a service member is deployed and can’t be there to take care of
their own family. An advantage to networking with civilians in the community who have
military affiliations is the shared understanding of this caretaking obligation and the
assurance that people understand what one is going through and will reach out to offer
support. Because Cindy had the ability to network with insiders to the military
institution, she had an advantage on weathering the deployment and obviously felt
confident that, one way or another, her questions would be answered and her family
would be taken care of.
Husbands
Interestingly, Army Reserve spouses included their husbands in their military
support networks. This was a fascinating and quite unexpected discovery considering
that their husbands were thousands of miles away fighting a war. Cindy’s insight lent
some perspective to how technology made this possible:
Cindy: I talked to [my husband’s] mom about when her husband went to Vietnam. She sent him letters every day and received a letter every now and then! And you know, this [is a huge] difference. So um, my husband would email us and say, you know, I’ll call on this time or something like that. And I got to the point, um, cause I do hear from him a lot at work, every day, I would sorta notice that I would start getting kinda bitchy and, you know, nasty or something like that. And then I go, “Oh, I haven’t talked to [my husband] yet.” Interviewer: yah [laughing] Cindy: Oh, I haven’t talked to [my husband]! That’s why I’m being so pissy! You know, and, um - Because that’s become really a daily thing. I know by ten o’clock, he’s [several] hours ahead, so I know by ten o’clock he’s usually just getting ready for supper.
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So that’s the time we’ll chat for a little bit and he’ll go, “Oh, I gotta go to supper with the gang.” Cindy raised an interesting point: email, not hand written letters, has become the norm for
communication during the current war. Cindy compared her experience of
communication to that of her mother in-law during the Vietnam War and recognized how
comfortable she had become with almost daily communication with her deployed
husband. Considering how technology has created opportunities for instant
communication (Applewhite and Segal 1990; Bell et al. 1999; Ender 1995), it becomes
more understandable how spouses can include their husbands in their military social
networks. Andrea simply explains that she asked her husband directly when she had
questions about the military:
Interviewer: If you’ve got a question about the military, how do you usually get your questions answered? Andrea: Through [my husband]. Interviewer: OK. Andrea: Yah, pretty much through [my husband]. Patricia, on the other hand, who conversed regularly with her husband over email and
phone explained how her support network with her husband sometimes involved him
getting his needs met through her instead of the other way around:
Interviewer: Did [your husband] talk to you about what kinds of stuff he’d be doing while he was deployed? What kind of missions- Patricia: Um, he told me… I mean I knew in the last two rotations what he was doing. As far as really what their goals were… I mean I know he just called me the other day and said can you please send ten pairs of girl’s shoes? Yeah, well you have to give me some sizes and, because there’s some orphanage or something they went out to and some of them didn’t have shoes. And I bought them and I said please don’t, I hope you’re right with the ages because I hate for these girls to think they’re getting shoes and they’re not getting them. But I bought a variety and sent them so we’ll see.
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Interestingly, Patricia’s network with her husband meant that she became intimately
involved in the objectives of the deployment, more so than just “keeping the home fires
burning.” She, incidentally, expressed satisfaction about being involved in this capacity.
Consequently, access to communication allowed spouses like Patricia to become more
involved in military missions further reinforcing their quasi-membership role in the
military (Jans 1989).
Husbands occupied a support role as members of their wives military network by
providing information not moral/emotional support. Husbands’ gave wives information
about their day-to-day experiences, the deployment, and answered questions about the
military in general and its processes/culture. By merely initiating communication, even
for a short period of time, husbands were able to show their wives they were alive.
Spouses appreciated communication with husbands because the relationship was
comfortable, safe, and spouses felt like the information relayed to them was reliable.
Newsletters
A grassroots newsletter created by the deployed soldiers and one of the military
spouses was another way that Army Reserve spouses were able to network with others in
the unit, and a way for them to share stories about what was happening in Iraq and on the
home front. Patricia explained what made those newsletters so special:
Patricia: Now this time they do, do a newsletter and it’s being done over there… It’s actually very good. It’s, um, I mean it’s probably, if you print it when it arrives it’s probably eight or nine pages. There’s pictures. He, the group, I don’t know how many of them there are, but they’re split up in, in different places. He goes to each camp. He gets pictures… but you know it’s nice because um, it’s not all serious... They talk about the games they play. I mean they had, the previous time one of the, there’s a female officer over there, well the guys got a hold of her iPod and it had 80’s love songs on it.
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So then somebody else borrowed it and downloaded it so now they’ve been harassing one of the guys over there about having love songs. So then there was this whole thing about you know being a man and so that’s really, I actually enjoy getting the newsletter. Because it’s like [my husband] will come home and start talking about these guys… So now there’s a couple of them who I’ve seen their pictures enough that I recognize who they are… Several of them have been um, promoted while they’ve been there so they put their pictures in. They talk about their promotions. So that has, this is the only time [my husband has] been gone that there’s been a newsletter but it’s really nice to get. Because you see pictures of them there, and you know, you know he always writes to the families and says you know thanks for stuff. And then his wife does the last page. And then she writes about you know things happening here and you know who came home… so she wrote about him coming home and them meeting in New York and stuff… I mean it’s nice because it, you sort of feel like you have a connection to just this little group.
The grassroots newsletters provided information about the day-to-day experiences
of their husbands. Spouses liked the pictures in the newsletters because they helped to
paint a picture of what life was like in combat. While the grassroots newsletters did not
provide emotional support per say, they did foster a sense of camaraderie and solidarity
especially since one of the spouses helped to compose the newsletter. The grassroots
newsletters seemed to promote a feeling of partnership; that spouses and soldiers were in
this together. The grassroots newsletters validated spouses’ inclusion in the deployment
experience.
While Army Reserve spouses didn’t necessarily reach out to the FRG (Burrell et
al. 2003), they did anticipate correspondence from the FRG and used the FRG
newsletters (different than the grassroots newsletters) as a way to stay connected and gain
information about the deployment. Faith expressed her desire to receive FRG newsletters
from the unit because they made her feel more connected:
Faith: And this guy [from the FRG] called me asking if I was getting newsletters or not, and I said, “No.” I think the newsletters are really, you know, help us to feel connected. And, um, so he promised me he would send me… newsletters.
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As discussed earlier, spouses did expect more information about timelines from
the FRG (which was not possible). While Pam appreciated the newsletters, she wished
they included more dates about the deployment. When asked what the unit could do to
help her through the deployment, Pam gave the following response about the newsletters
including timelines:
Pam: You know the [FRG] newsletters? I think I’ve gotten two newsletters and I think both times they’ve been just full of, um, you know, here’s the Military OneSource website, you know, here’s the, you know, here’s the this and that website. Well maybe some more specific stuff about the unit and its time, it’s hard to say, its timelines or, um, its, the newsletters have been really bland. Pam’s frustration relates to something mentioned by Andrea in an earlier section of this
paper, which is that the spouses have an expectation that the FRG disseminate mission
related information to the spouses. Unfortunately, for spouses, this is not a function of
the FRG (Family Readiness Group Leader 2010). While spouses did use the FRG
newsletter as an information source, a limitation for spouses was that it did not include
deployment timelines. Unlike the grassroots newsletters, the FRG newsletters did not
seem to foster a sense of inclusion in the deployment experience; something the spouses
were looking for.
Outside Agencies Who Serve the Military
A couple of the spouses reported using outside agencies as networks for military
information. Military OneSource and USAA were the two agencies mentioned as having
useful information:
Interviewer: When a question comes-up about the military, uh, how do you, how do you get your questions answered?
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Faith: [Short pause] For the most part, honey, you know, um, I have Military One. That’s Military OneSource dot com. Cindy also explained how USAA, a financial institution that serves military personnel
and veterans, has an invaluable deployment checklist geared toward financial stability:
Cindy: We bank with USAA. So when I called them… it turns out they have a deployment department now. And they run through a checklist. Have you taken care of this, this, this, this? And, um, you know it’s a practical checklist, but it’s still a checklist. And I have to say every time I call them and, you know, I have to ask them anything… they are a wonderful source of support when it comes to anything with the finances or insurance:
Earlier in this paper, lack of information was discussed as a central theme in the
lives of Army Reserve spouses. Plugging into existing military networks was a strategy
used by spouses to gain information about the deployment. Spouses, typically did not try
to create information networks for themselves, they simply sought out existing networks.
Interestingly, spouses did not reach out to the FRG as a source of information, however it
was acknowledged by some spouses as being included in their network on a more passive
basis.
Military Networks as a Means for Moral/Emotional Support
Emotional support was an important element that Army Reserve spouses sought
during the deployment. As discussed earlier, because Army Reserve spouses could not
get their emotional needs met entirely from civilian support networks, they sought
support from military support networks. The strategy for seeking emotional support
from military support networks was based almost exclusively on spouses exercising their
own agency and initiating contacts for themselves. Common ways of getting that support
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were through establishing friendships with other military wives either through face to
face interactions or through social networking over the internet.
Sarah explained how, through networking with her husband and his friends, she
became aware of another spouse who was feeling isolated. Sarah reached out to her but
explained that it was difficult because they lived several hours from each other:
Sarah: She had a really hard time with the Army and so I got in touch with her because [pause] her husband talked to my husband and said she needs some friends. But, we just, we live so far away… And, so I’ve spent some time with her. You know, and she just feels really isolated… and stuff, but [long pause] she is the other military wife that I’ve gotten in-touch with. Faith explained the camaraderie she felt when she networked with other military spouses
during the last deployment, and how she planned to make a trip out to the unit to connect
with them during the current deployment:
Faith: And, on the first tour of duty, I, you know, I should have done it before, I didn’t, but the spouses meet up once a month. And the women get together and, you know, just crack as many stupid jokes as we could possibly think up. Yah, but anyway, that was really, really helpful that I went. I flew [pause] to his duty station when he was gone the first go ‘round. I haven’t done that this time, and, you know I really think that I’m gonna. I’m going to go ahead and, um, either drive-up or fly-up to [the] base. Probably, you know, when I get a break... Probably around Christmas time I’m going to fly up… and rent a car and go, you know, be with the other spouses. Interviewer: Oh, that sounds nice. Faith: I’m, you know, so far away from everybody that, you know, I don’t know if I’ll fit in, or um, but we had such a hilarious time the, the last time I did it. I really wish I had done it more often. But right now there’s just no way I can pick-up and leave.
Another interesting way that Army Reserve spouses connected with each other
was through the internet, blogging and social networking sites. Practically speaking, this
was an ideal way to connect with other geographically-isolated spouses who were going
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through the same thing. Sarah explained how she used this method to connect not only
with other military spouses, but also with her husband:
Sarah: Yah. Nobody understands it unless you’ve been through it. And there isn’t a huge support network. Interviewer: Umm, hmm. Especially for reserve families, because you’re so disconnected from post and the community. Sarah: Oh, yah. And distance. There’s a huge distance [pause] and, um, through FaceBook, I feel more connected with [my husband]. That’s helped [pause] in a weird way… and, I love it. It’s been a great way to just network with people. I’ve gotten to know a soldier’s wife [pause] whose husband is in the Army. He’s been in basic [whispering] for six months! And he keeps getting sick and he can’t get better… And I’m involved in the website called, “Women of Strength.” I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? Interviewer: No, huh, uh, I haven’t. Sarah: It’s a great website. If you’re on FaceBook, there’s a group there, too. And the gal’s name is, Amy Jones. And, it’s [pause] specifically for wives of any, anybody in any branch of the military, um, that go to church. So, extra, so support in both areas, which, you know, is important. If that’s your worldview and that’s where you get your support from, it makes sense. ‘Cause, my faith is what’s making me, what’s getting me through this [laugh]. My faith and my friends, but um, so, anyway, I’ve gotten to know her and we chat all the time and [Laugh] we’ve never met each other.
Andrea explained how she started her own blog as a way to vent and to network
with other military spouses. She tells how a shared understanding of what deployment
was like was an invaluable support for her:
Andrea: I started keeping a blog. So I think, and that’s what I probably don’t tell everybody else, I put on there [chuckling]. Cause then I feel like I can say, like, whatever I want [chuckling]. ‘Cause oh well… Interviewer: Are you getting a lot of response from that? Andrea: Um, you know, I have been. Um, a friend of another lady whose husband was a marine and, um, just came home a few weeks ago. So, you know, she kind of said, “I totally understand how you feel” you know? …so that was pretty cool. You suddenly feel like you knew somebody, but yet you really didn’t. It was really cool.
Whether spouses like Andrea who created their own blog to generate interaction
with other military spouses, or like Sarah who joined an existing group, spouses found
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comfort in the shared understanding that other military spouses could offer. There was
safety in these interactions and a camaraderie that allowed spouses to let their guard
down and not feel obligated to defend their roles or their husbands’ roles within the war.
Patricia explained that in the grassroots newsletter she received, one of the spouses
contributed a column naming the top 10 stupid things civilians say when they find out
your husband is deployed. Forums such as this were places where spouses could go to
vent about their daily experiences of deployment, get support, and even find humor in
their unpleasant interactions with civilians. Existing research (Rosen and Moghadam
1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1990) explains the ways in which active duty wives seek
support from each other, but none has explored the ways in which Army Reserve wives
navigate the networking process for themselves. This research has shown that Army
Reserve spouses are increasingly taking advantage of advanced telecommunications to
overcome geographical isolation and gain emotional support from other military spouses.
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Chapter 5
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
Discussion
While existing research explains how active duty wives navigate the process of
deployment (Klein et al. 1989; Rosen and Moghadam 1989; Rosen and Moghadam
1990), none has explored the unique circumstances of Army Reserve wives, the obstacles
they face, or the processes by which they overcome the challenges of deployment. This
research has shown that geographic isolation from a military post and from the deployed
unit have caused substantial barriers for Army Reserve wives with regard to information
flow and access to military support networks.
With regard to information, Army Reserve wives wanted information from the
military they could mark their calendars by, enabling them to plan and giving them
something to anticipate. Army Reserve wives were often frustrated that they couldn’t get
that information from the military. Because Army Reserve wives considered themselves
intimately tied to the deployment experience as a support person (Harrell 2001; Mederer
and Weinstein 1992; Shehan 1987), the fact that they weren’t privy to deployment
information undermined their association as quasi-members of the institution (Jans 1989).
Essentially, they were the support that enabled their husbands and the military to
accomplish their goals, yet they felt excluded from information about the very endeavor
for which they were providing support.
Army Reserve wives also sought descriptive information that allowed them to
visualize where their husbands were and what they were going through. This information
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helped them identify with their husbands and gave them peace of mind about their safety.
Because Army Reserve spouses were geographically-isolated from the unit, and because
they didn’t have established friendships with other wives from the unit or with the FRG
they lacked the social networks (Burrell et al. 2003) for information sharing. Often this
meant spouses’ questions remained unanswered.
Army Reserve wives sought support from civilian support networks. Civilian
support networks were a highly effective means of getting logistical as well as emotional
support among those with whom friendships already existed. The limitation of civilian
networks was that there was not a shared understanding of the military culture, which
sometimes resulted in upsetting interactions between Army Reserve spouses and
civilians. In addition, spouses sometimes felt that interactions with their mothers’ in-law
were draining and required them to either care give outside of the nuclear family or
reestablish equilibrium within the nuclear family, emotional work that spouses resented
doing during the deployment.
Spouses often sought out military support networks as a way to gain information
about the military and deployment. Interestingly, Army Reserve wives included their
husbands in their military support networks as a way to gain information but not
necessarily emotional support. Spouses also sought out other military wives as a means
of emotional support. Military support networks provided an unspoken understanding of
the military culture and safe spaces where spouses found camaraderie, stability and a
place to vent to other military wives who could empathize.
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Finally, telecommunications turned out to be a substantial theme in this research
and was related to both information flow and social networking. In fact,
telecommunications were the means by which Army Reserve spouses overcame almost
every obstacle during the deployment. Army Reserve spouses used the internet, the
phone, the news media (Applewhite and Segal 1990; Bell et al. 1999; Ender 1995) and
written telecommunications in the form of newsletters as a way to communicate with and
gather information not only from other military wives but with their husbands who were
also part of their military support networks. Telecommunication became the fix for
almost everything as it bridged the gap of geographic isolation, a unique and substantial
barrier for Army Reserve wives.
Limitations
First, while I was able to gather rich data from extensive interviews with seven
Army Reserve spouses I would have liked to have spoken with more spouses. The fact
that spouses’ contact information was protected by the military was a limitation in this
research. Had I had access to contact information I may have been able to do more
outreach and acquired interviews with more spouses. The second limitation was that no
male spouses volunteered to participate in this research. While there were a few male
spouses in the unit, none contacted me to volunteer. Since female spouses make up the
majority of the spouse population (ODUSD 2008), the response is not surprising;
however, it would have been interesting to get a male spouse’s perspective on the
deployment experience.
Finally, while this study initially aimed to incorporate significant others, I am
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disappointed that no significant others volunteered to participate in the study, however, I
am not entirely surprised either. Considering that the military does not acknowledge
significant others as beneficiaries or next of kin where benefits or dissemination of
knowledge is concerned, it is not difficult to surmise that significant others may isolate
themselves from activities surrounding deployment. This is unfortunate considering that
significant others share in the intimate details of the deployment experience and may
have unique perspectives that need to be understood.
Future Research
This research is only the tip of the iceberg as far as mapping the deployment
experience for Army Reserve wives. Research needs to be done that explores other
aspects of the lived experience for Army Reserve wives. Possible ideas to be explored
are roles of the Army Reserve spouse, emotional and psychological coping strategies
during deployment, the pre-deployment experience, the post-deployment experience, and
the experience of Army Reserve spouses in dealing with PTSD during and after
deployment.
An interesting theme that came out of this research was that mothers of Army
Reserve soldiers often needed emotional support. Army Reserve wives resented giving
that emotional support because it jeopardized the equilibrium of their households and
required them to care give. The ripple effects of deployment on families should be further
explored paying special attention to parents and children of soldiers.
In the same vein, the ripple effect of deployment on civilian employers is a minor
theme that surfaced from interviews with spouses and should be considered in future
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research. Considering that Army Reservists are being deployed at tempos never before
seen in the history of our military, the effects on civilian employers and the impacts on
Army Reservists’ careers is an area of concern and should be explored.
Finally, because telecommunications have become such a factor in the current
war, research should be done to explore their effects on military spouses. Spouses’
involvement in real time acts of war, such as being on the phone while their husband gets
bombed, is not an isolated incident among military spouses. These experiences warrant
exploration about the traumatic effects of war on military spouses as a result of
experiencing a trauma via telecommunication. Existing research that does explore PTSD
among military spouses indicates that spouses can indeed experience traumatic side
effects of war, however, the trauma must be passed vicariously to them by their soldier
(Dekel and Solomon 2006; Dirkzwager et al. 2005; Galovski and Lyons 2004; Milgram
and Bar 1993; Nelson and Wright 1996; Solomon et al. 1992). Recent research on the
correlation between television watching and PTSD has found that exposure to traumatic
footage was associated with new-onset PTSD (Ahern et al. 2004; Bernstein et al. 2007).
In fact, television may merit consideration as a potential exposure to a traumatic event
(Ahern et al. 2004). Exposure to traumatic television footage has also been found to
cause trauma and stress reactions including nightmares (Davidson et al. 2005; Propper et
al. 2007) which are one of the indicators for PTSD (American Psychiatric Association
1994).
Given new discoveries about the correlation between trauma and television
watching in addition to the fact that wives, like Faith, have personally experienced
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violent acts of war over the phone, the concept of PTSD among military wives is one that
should be reconsidered. PTSD may no longer be couched in terms of vicarious
transmission, but should be further researched in terms of spouses’ trauma resulting from
their own experiences of war, not the experiences of their husbands6.
Conclusion
This research has found that experiences of Army Reserve wives vary from those of
active duty wives because Reserve families are often geographically-isolated from
military units/posts. Despite lack of information and isolation from military social
networks, Army Reserve wives were resourceful in establishing structure for themselves
where none previously existed or where a hole was created by their husbands’ absence.
These women’s resourcefulness allowed them to overcome structural and geographical
barriers providing survival mechanisms for themselves and their families during the
deployment. Their unique experiences, needs, and coping strategies should be considered
in future policy/programs that aim to help Army Reserve families.
6 I recently attended family day (in 2008) in preparation for the unit’s deployment. The VA representative announced that a limited number of counseling sessions would be offered by the VA for spouses, because they are now finding that spouses are getting “secondary traumatization.” This in an indication that not only is the concept of secondary traumatization being reproduced in the current war, but that VA intervention programs are being constructed around a concept that may be informed by outdated knowledge.
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APPENDICES
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APPENDIX A
Advertisement Narrative Published in the Unit’s Family Readiness Group Newsletter ATTENTION SPOUSES AND SIGNIFICANT OTHERS: UPCOMING RESEARCH AT THE [UNIT’S NAME] Angela Prince, a veteran and also a military spouse has made arrangements with us to conduct her master’s thesis research at [Unit’s Name]. She is interested in hearing about the deployment experience from the spouses’/significant others’ point of view. We understand that deployment can be stressful for families, so we welcome this opportunity to have a third party document your shared experiences and give us feedback on the unique challenges that spouses and significant others face. Participation in Angela’s research will be voluntary. Participants’ identities and conversations with her will be kept confidential. Neither the unit command nor any of its soldiers will know who chose to participate. This will be a safe way for you to share your experiences while helping us understand what we can do during future deployments to support our military families. You will receive a letter from Angela with more information about the study in the next few months. In order to protect your privacy the letter will be mailed on Angela’s behalf by the unit, and you can make direct contact with her if you are interested in participating. Angela will be at the unit for “Family Day” in [date forthcoming], so feel free to stop by and meet her!
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APPENDIX B
Introduction Letter Dear Military Spouse or Significant Other, You are receiving this letter because you are a member of [UNIT’S NAME] Family Readiness Group who has a loved one previously or currently deployed, and I’m interested in hearing your story. Let me explain a bit… My name is Angela Prince and I was a soldier in the [UNIT’S NAME] for four years. During that time I also met and married a soldier from the unit. After only 11 months of marriage, he was deployed to Iraq. I thought since I was familiar with deployments myself, weathering his deployment would be a breeze… It turned out to be one of the most challenging times of my life. Shortly before my husband deployed I made the decision to get out of the military to pursue my education in Sociology. Needless to say, I have a special interest in studying the military. I am now working on my Master’s thesis at Sacramento State University and am looking for Army Reserve spouses and significant others to participate in my research on a volunteer basis. My research will focus, specifically, on better understanding how war affects spouses and significant others. I will also pay special attention to unique challenges of the Reserves. There has been a fair amount of research done on how war affects soldiers, but little research done on how war affects the families of soldiers. War can be experienced from the battle front, but also from the home front, and it is my hope that through the shared experiences of military spouses we can better understand the unique challenges of war that spouses face. It is my hope that this research will provide insight that can be used by the military to better meet the needs of Army Reserve families experiencing deployment. [UNIT NAME] command has approved my research idea and invited me to return to the [UNIT NAME] as a student to conduct my research. Currently, to protect your privacy, I do not have your contact information. Instead, I provided the unit with this packet which they mailed out on my behalf. If you are interested in sharing your story and talking about your experiences during deployment, I would love to talk with you. If you are interested in participating, please call me at (916) 437-8459 or email me at [email protected] Once you make contact with me directly our communication will become confidential. Neither the unit command nor any of the soldiers in the unit will know who contacted me, or who chose to participate, and your real name will not be used in any reports. For more information about the study, please read the informed consent letter included in this packet. If you have questions please contact me directly at (916) 437-8459 or [email protected]
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Kind Regards, Angela Prince
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APPENDIX C
Consent to Participate in Research:
“Deployment Experiences of Army Reserve Spouses and Significant Others”
You are being asked to participate in research which will be conducted by Angela Prince, a Master’s Degree student in the Sociology Department at California State University, Sacramento. The study is called “Deployment Experiences of Army Reserve Spouses and Significant Others” and will investigate the experiences of Army Reservists’ spouses and significant others during deployment. If you participate, your identity will be kept confidential. If you agree to be contacted, you will be asked to participate in one interview (telephone or in-person) which may take up to an hour or two of your time. If you agree, you may be asked to participate in additional interviews which could also last up to one hour each. All interviews will be scheduled at your convenience, and interviews will only be conducted during the timeframe your soldier is deployed. Some of the questions during the interview may seem personal. Some of the questions during the interview might ask you to remember and describe specific challenges, experiences, stress or fears you had during the deployment, but you don’t have to answer any question if you don’t want to, and you can stop the interview at any time. If you choose to participate, I will mail a list of resources to you. If talking about the deployment raises any concerns please contact the appropriate agency from the resource list that can help you address your concern, or contact the Unit Family Readiness Group at (XXX) 396-2427 and they can help you or direct you to someone who can help. It is my hope that the results of this study will be used to improve the quality of life and well-being for family members experiencing the deployment of a soldier. You may or may not personally benefit from participating in this research depending on whether the Army Reserves are able to institute changes in the future. Your participation in this study will be confidential. Neither the unit command nor any soldiers in the unit will know who chose to participate. For the most part, the findings from this study will be reported as group trends, however, if something you mention during an interview is directly quoted, no identifiers will be linked to your response. This includes identifiers that may be implied in the context of your quote.
With your permission, interviews will be audio taped. Audio taping helps me to remember important things that you say, and lets me revisit our conversation for clarity. No one except for me will listen to the audio tapes. Audio taping is optional, however,
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and will be your choice. If the interview is taped, the audio will be destroyed as soon as the interview has been transcribed, and in any event, no later than one year after it was made. All data will be stored in a secure and locked location. You will not receive any compensation for participating in this research. Your participation in this research is voluntary. You are free to decide not to participate, or to decide at a later time to stop participating. The researcher may also end your participation at any time. By signing below and listing your contact information, you are saying that you understand the risks involved in this research and agree to participate in it. If you have questions please contact me at [email protected] or (916) 437-8459. Calling to ask questions about the research does not obligate you to participate in the study. Name Mailing Address Contact Number #1(____)__________ Best Time to Reach you at that number________ Contact Number #2(____)__________ Best Time to Reach you at that number________ Contact Number #3(____)__________ Best Time to Reach you at that number________ Contact Number #4(____)__________ Best Time to Reach you at that number________ Email address__________________________________________________________________ Signature of Participant Date
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APPENDIX D
Military Resource List
American Red Cross (866) 351-9551 www.usaredcross.org Army Emergency Relief Fund (866) 878-6378
(703) 428-0000 [email protected] [email protected]
Army Families Online (800) 833-6622 www.armyfamiliesonline.org Army Family Team Building (AFTB) www.myarmylifetoo.com Mental Health Self-Assessment Program www.militarymentalhealth.org/ Military Homefront www.militaryhomefront.dod.mil Military Onesource Continental U.S. (800)342-9647 www.militaryonesource.com Military Spouses www.milspouse.org National Military Family Association www.nmfa.org Red Cross Military Services www.redcross.org Spouses Handbook www.soc.mil/Fam_Support/spouse_handbook/spouses.doc
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Step Family Association of America www.saafamilies.org/advocacy/activities.htm Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) www.taps.org TRICARE Handbook Website www.tricare.osd.mil/TricareHandbook U.S. Army Child & Youth Services www.armymwr.com
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APPENDIX E
Interview Questions
Screening Question 1. What is your relationship to the soldier? Demographics 2. Is it OK if I record the interview? 3. How old are you? 4. What is your race/ethnicity? 5. How long have you been married or living together? 6. Can you tell me a little bit about your family make-up? Possible probes:
kids, step-kids pregnant?
7. If they have kids: Are/were you the sole caregiver or do/did you have someone helping you during the deployment?
8. What kind of work do you do for a living? 9. What is your soldier’s civilian occupation? 10. What rank is your soldier? 11. How many times has your soldier deployed? 12. How many deployments have you experienced? 13. How close is the nearest military post to where you live? Pre-deployment experience 14. Can you tell me a little bit about how you found out your soldier was going to
deploy? Possible Probes: Did your soldier tell you? What did s/he say? Did you find out from another source?
15. How did you react when you heard the news? 16. Once you knew your soldier was going to deploy, did you and your soldier
discuss a plan for how things would work while s/he was gone? If so, what types of things did you discuss?
Possible Probes: Finances Jobs Living arrangements
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Children
17. Can you tell me a little bit about how your soldier’s civilian employer handled news of the deployment?
Possible Probes: Supportive upset demanding
18. Did your soldier explain any paperwork that the military might have him/her fill out? If so, what?
Possible Probes: Power of Attorney Wills Medical Executor Next of kin notification
19. Were you involved in filling out/reading any paperwork before your soldier deployed? If so, what?
Possible Probes: Power of Attorney Wills Medical Executor Next of kin notification Family newsletters Military (informational) pamphlets
20. Did you and your soldier talk about what kinds of things s/he would be doing
during the deployment? If so, what? 21. Did you and your soldier talk about how you would communicate while s/he
was gone? If so, what? 22. Did you and your soldier talk about what would happen if there were any
emergencies with him/her while they were deployed? If so, what? 23. In what ways do you feel like you were/were not logistically prepared for the
deployment? 24. In what ways do you feel like you were/were not financially prepared for the
deployment? 25. In what ways do you feel like you were/were not emotionally prepared for the
deployment? 26. What kinds of things did you do to prepare for the deployment? 27. Is there anything you would have done differently to prepare for the
deployment? If so, what?
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28. Is there anything you know now, that you would have like to have known before the deployment started? If so, what?
Deployment Experience
29. What was it like for you once your soldier shipped out? 30. What are some support systems that are helping you through deployment?
Possible Probes: Family Friends Church Unit Family Readiness Group
31. Who do you usually go to when you need to talk? 32. If you have a question about the military how do you get it answered?
Possible Probes: FRG Newsletters Military informational pamphlets Military OneSource or similar organizations
33. Do you ever go to a military post to use their services/resources? If so, what
services do you usually use? Possible Probes: Chaplain/church Commissary PX Gas sports teams medical services financial counseling
34. Can you describe how you keep track of your soldier’s movements and
whereabouts? 35. Do you use the media as a source of information to keep updated on the war? If
so, what types/how often do you consume? Possible Probes: Type of media (TV, news, news paper, radio, magazines) Types of shows/articles you are interested in Frequency of consumption Length of consumption per day in hours
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36. Do family/friends call you and tell you to turn on the TV when a significant event is being broadcast? If so, please explain an instance where someone has contacted you to watch/listen/read coverage of the war.
37. Do you feel that sometimes you can’t pull yourself away from watching coverage on the war? If so, can you talk a little bit about why the media is so important to you?
38. What kinds of things do you think about when you watch coverage of the war? 39. What kinds of things do you pay attention to when you watch coverage of the
war? 40. How does what you see on TV match with what your soldier tells you? 41. Can you talk a little bit about how you feel after you’ve consumed media
information on the war? 42. How has the deployment changed things around your household?
Possible Probes: Familial responsibilities Emotional changes Interaction with other family members stress
43. How are things going with you meeting both family and work commitments? 44. Can you talk a bit about any stress that you might be feeling?
Possible Probes: What types of things make you feel stressed? In what ways do you feel stressed? Did the particular stress exist before the deployment? Can you give me an example of a stressful day/time you’ve experienced?
45. What are some ways that you deal with stress? 46. Can you describe your sleep habits since/during the deployment? 47. How are your relationships with others since/during the deployment?
Possible Probes: Have your relationships changed/stayed the same? In what ways have your relationships changed?
48. What do you think things will be like when your soldier returns? 49. Do you avoid things/places/memories that remind you of your soldier?
Possible Probes: What things/places/memories do you avoid? In what ways do avoid?
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50. Can you talk a bit about your communication with your soldier during deployment?
Possible Probes: Methods of communication: email, phone (landline/cell/satellite), letter,
video cam, none Frequency of contact Topics of conversation Does soldier relay the events of his/her day? Can you hear any background noises? Frequent disconnections?
51. Can you describe some common thoughts and feelings you’ve had during deployment?
52. Do you talk to others about what you think and feel?
Possible Probes: What kinds of things do you share? Are you comfortable? Do you avoid? Are you embarrassed? Are you ashamed? Are you worried about being weak? Do you feel that the war experience is mostly about the soldiers?
53. Do you believe you play a part in this war? If so, what? 54. Do you believe your role is important? If so, how? 55. If you could describe your deployment experience in four or five sentences what
would you say? 56. If you could give advice to another spouse or significant other going through
this for the first time, what advice would you give them? 57. What kinds of things could the unit could do to help you through the
deployment experience? Post-Deployment Experience (For those who’ve gone through a previous deployment)
58. What were things like when your soldier returned? Possible Probes: family finances sex stress transition relationship/marriage
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59. Can you describe how your soldier was when s/he returned? Possible Probes: Emotionally physically stress fears worry sleep habits
60. Can you describe how you were when your soldier returned?
Possible Probes: Emotionally physically stress fears worry sleep habits
61. Can you talk a little bit about discussions you and your soldier had about his/her
reenlistment? 62. How did you feel when your spouse left the house, traveled or went on business
trips unrelated to the Army? Possible Probes: Worried Didn’t care
Wrap-up
63. Are you available for another interview should I need clarification or if discussions with other partners bring up new points that I’d like to ask you about?
64. Do you have any questions for me?
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