A cliché throughout the military is if they wanted you to have a family, they would have issued you one in boot camp. It is widely understood that if their child is sick, or has an orthodontist appointment, or there’s a school function during the day, the service member is not the one dealing with it. The service member will never be the one to call the office and say, “Sorry; my kid has a fever. I can’t come in today.” Career service members did not advance through the ranks by living a balanced life. They advanced by putting the military’s demands first, every time, all the time.
The disjointed efforts of the Department of Defense to promote spousal employment are not likely to accomplish anything until they address that imbalance in family responsibilities inherent to military life. Military members’ long duty hours, deployments, TADs, and PCSs are too disruptive for a spouse to sustain or grow a civilian career, or manage a full-time student course load.
Unless the military starts functioning predictably, no scholarships or spousal hiring preferences are going to change the military family dynamic. Since that’s never going to happen, all these spousal education and employment initiatives are just more “benefits” that sound good but benefit very few people.
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