November 19, 2009 
By Jacey Eckhart
MEMO
TO: Darling Person Who is Planning a Program, Briefing, Get Together, Coffee, Party, Class, Workshop, Event Of Any Kind for Military Spouses:
FROM: Generation Me
I’m sorry, but I can’t be there. I’d love to, but, no. Really. I can’t. I could tell you that I work, or that I don’t have daycare or that my kids play in a hockey league that only meets after midnight on Sundays. But the truth is that I have problems with attending anything that has the words “military spouse” in the title.
Oh no. Did I hurt your feelings? I know you work really hard to get that program together. That this would be so good for me. That your boss is breathing down your neck about the low attendance at your events. But, honest, this isn’t about you. It’s about Generation Me.
That’s the thing most of the people out there who are concerned about military families forget all about. Generation Me.. Or whatever you call that generation of folks currently in the military or married to it. You helping professionals forget that any time you are dealing with us that you are dealing with a whole generation of people who are uncomfortable with the idea of being a “spouse.”
It isn’t that we aren’t crazy in love with our husbands or wives. It’s that word Spouse. Ack. I mean, really, what is that? Spouse? Louse? Mouse? Frau of the house? That’s nothing I want to be. It’s the kind of word that sounds like it’s been growing on your service member’s intestine and ought to be nipped off before it blocks blood flow to his brain.
But it isn’t only the word that gets us. The word is just symbolic. It is the concept of being an appendage of another person that makes us squirm. Few of us were raised to that. Unlike previous generations, if we wanted to be in the military, we went down to the recruiter’s office, laced up the boots and started to run. We didn’t need to marry into the military to partake in the military, thanks.
In fact, when we married military members we signed up to marry that individual, to take on the role of Nicole’s husband or Brad’s wife. That was what social psychologists call an achieved role—a position that you voluntarily take on that reflects your own skills, your own abilities, your own efforts.
It is only after we were actually married to the dude or dudette in uniform that we found out that there is this funky ascribed role that comes with it. Suddenly we were assigned to the position of “military spouse” without regard to our own interest or merit but because of the person we married.
That’s icky for me. And I’m a girl. I can hardly imagine what guys think when they wake up with “spouse” tattooed on their left buttock.
It isn’t only the ascribed role of military spouse that is uncomfortable. either. It is also the negative stereotypes that surround spouses. This isn’t a role with a fun reputation. Sociologist Margaret Harrell found that junior enlisted spouses had to deal with a widely held stereotype that they were lower class, uneducated, unintelligent, out of control both sexually and reproductively, in unstable relationships and lacking morals and financially irresponsible. Would you be running to a party or a class if you thought this was how everyone was looking at you?
The opposite stereotype of military spouses is no more attractive. Male or female, officer or enlisted, the good military spouse is supposed to be some kind of uber-housewife willing to undertake separations, able to leap across the country with all her household goods, raising above average—nay, gifted—children , an ultraorganized, volunteer who holds down a full-time job and writes Harlequin romances like “Admiral’s Bride” or “Out of Uniform” on the side.
Most of us don’t fit in with that group either. If you are going to do your job, you’ve got to know before you ever build it, before you ever organize it, Generation Me does not want to come. Maybe if we don’t come, then we aren’t really military spouses. We aren’t like them.
So outsmart us. It’s part of your job to fold and bend the role of military spouse like a gum wrapper until you’ve made it into an origami crane that flies away. You have to experiment until you find a method of delivery that appeals enough that we can overcome our aversion to “spouse” and move on. Don’t blow it. Because we need you far more than you know.
Jacey Eckhart is a military/life consultant based in Washington DC. She is the author of The Homefront Club: The Hardheaded Woman’s Guide to Raising a Military Family" and the voice behind “These Boots.” Check out more columns and her speaking schedule at www.jaceyeckhart.com. Write her at Jacey@jaceyeckhart.com