Military family life has never been a high priority.

[searchingforlight]

The military has never really supported family life. Oh, they have had programs that were eyewash but when it came to the things that mattered they were sorely lacking.

Wives and children were expected to be an addendum to their husband's career: make nice, dress a certain way, entertain, smile and never complain or have a crisis.

I remember when I was a young military wife during the Viet Nam War and we were stationed at a SAC base, one of the wives got a job. The commanding officer's wife called her and told her that she must quit or it would affect her husband's career. A type of shunning was imposed on her and she eventually acquiesced.

I lived next to the OIC of the military police. I was made aware of the many things that the military glossed over and excused: wife and child abuse the chief among them.

Drinking was encouraged and if you didn't belong to the club AND attend stag night, it affected your career.

As a military brat, I knew that many of my friends father's visited their bedrooms regularly and that it was common knowledge even to the people in command. (The origin of "Don't ask, don't tell?)

Today is not much different. The military does very little to support the families and they still tolerate and excuse the worst of behaviors. Look at the number of unprosecuted and unpunished rapes at the academies, bases and in Iraq.

[displacedtexan]

1. My mother-in-law starred in the Air Force Training Films For Wives...

My father-in-law was stationed in London in the 50's and was the base commander in Wiesbaden in the 60's, and my mother-in-law was the perfect Stepford military wife. In those films, she demonstrated how to attend cocktail parties, how to host wives in the afternoon, how to do housework, how to go to church on base, and how to care for an officer's uniforms and other gear.

I thought those days were over.

[RivetJoint]

3. They are over

You don't really see anything like that anymore.

[searchingforlight]

4. I know the sanctions on spouses working are over. That was a different

era. But I am just as certain that the other abuses and cover-ups still go on.

They only want the spotlight on them when their brass is polished and ready for inspection.

[RivetJoint]

5. Drinking is highly

DISCOURAGED these days. No more happy hours; clubs losing big dollars. It's a whole different environment.

[luaneryder]

2. That's how I remember it as an enlisted person

I never lived on base (couldn't if I had wanted to; wait list was over 2 year long), but because I was involved in public affairs and community relations I saw the truth of how military families were treated and abusers protected. Coverup is the military way and families are regarded as burdens.

[Philostopher]

6. It wasn't originally intended, I don't think, that

low-level enlisted people have spouses. Or, at least, the services never managed to get turned around gracefully on the fact that there were enlisted people who were being driven into the military by the cost of college and lack of jobs who already had families.

I was one of those dependent spouses, back in the '80s. They didn't want to deal with it -- the social structure wasn't intended for it, and even though the makeup of people coming in changed from high school kids who couldn't afford or weren't ready for college yet to guys (and women) who'd had to drop out of college or couldn't feed themselves during a recession, and had already started their adult lives, the branches of the military continued to behave as if only NCOs and officers should have wives and families.

I spent four years feeling vestigial, and being reminded at every turn, 'when he signed up, he made the service his first priority; you will be second until he fulfills his enlistment obligation, and you are a pain in the neck because we never planned for you.'

I coped -- but I really felt sorry for the women who expected the military to somehow provide them a social structure, and even more for the ones who had kids before their husbands got their sergeant's stripe. After that, once they became NCOs, a whole world opened up -- base housing, day care, you name it. Until then, you didn't exist. Don't know if it's changed any since then, maybe it has ... but I have say, I doubt it.