Welcome to the Women's Consortium Blog

The Women's Consortium is a non-profit organization dedicated to the empowerment of the women in the Hampton Roads community to effect positive change to their community. As members of the community we push toward progress; particularly on issues of importance to women and their families.

Even as we look forward to the many productive activities of the year, on this Memorial Day we consider the cost of our freedoms. As a fourteen year veteran of the military myself, I know a little of the separation from family that accompanies military service.

While honoring our service members, let us not forget the cost of service upon their families. Sunday's Virginia Pilot ran a story in its editorial section from the wife of an Army lieutenant colonel that exemplifies the challenges they face.

Army families are under fire

The loose network of support systems for families in place when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began was quickly overwhelmed.

By KRISTINA KAUFMANN

AS WE approach eight years of war, too many military families are quietly coming apart. The public hears the most dramatic stories and statistics — soldiers killing their wives, themselves, each other. Less well known are the effects that prolonged war and multiple deployments have had on our daily lives.
As the wife of a commander of a battalion that deployed last year, I know that many of us feel embittered, powerless and disconnected from the Army in which we and our husbands serve.
The blogosphere provides a sense of the many families coping with health issues and the less tangible effects of war and military life, including how marginalized many feel. “Spare me the rah rah party line about how much the Army is doing for the soldiers once they come home,” wrote one wife whose husband had suffered a traumatic brain injury. “[T]hey don’t do even half of what they should to provide adequate treatment for soldiers coming back from deployment.”
Dishearteningly, the response from Army and Defense Department leaders has been haphazard, sluggish and widely ineffective.
To be fair, no one expected our all-volunteer military to be bogged down in yearslong battles across the globe. But the loose network of support systems for military families — which arose from the more traditional and rankbased officers’ wives coffee groups — in place when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began was quickly overwhelmed. And the military’s inability to assess the wars’ effects on its families and to adapt and restructure its approach has frustrated families in the “trenches.”
Questioning policies and speaking out are considered presumptuous breaches of protocol that could land your soldier in hot water. I know this from experience.
In April 2007, my husband and I were among a group of commanders and wives invited to meet with a visiting fourstar general. When the general took questions, I stood and said that after six years of war, the Army should no longer expect its burned-out volunteer Family Readiness Groups, running almost entirely without funds, to handle the serious issues facing military families. Some senior leaders on base were not happy about my comments.
For years I tried to draw attention to these issues the “right way” and got nowhere. These issues are too important for me to remain quiet.
What needs to change? First, families — particularly the volunteer wives upon whom the military relies so heavily — need Army directors willing to ask and listen instead of dictating and commanding. It might be naive to suggest such an approach to the nation’s most hierarchical organization, but most of those responsible for soldier and family support initiatives are out of touch. New gym equipment and child-care facilities are great, but expanding and implementing mental health services so a soldier’s child doesn’t have to wait six months to see a psychiatrist is more important.
Second, families, like their soldiers, connect with their units, not “Big Army.” Too often, the leadership at the unit level — from senior sergeants to colonels — fails to provide basic support. Today, commanders receive months of training regarding how to lead their units when they deploy but are taught next to nothing about how to care for the families of their soldiers. To show that it is serious, the Army should include in its evaluation reports — the key to promotions — an assessment of how well officers do on family support.
Finally, the Army should directly fund its mandated Family Readiness Groups. Currently, Army regulations require that fund raising be done within units — so we bake cupcakes and sell them to our own husbands in the motor pool, effectively taking from the people we are trying to support. We shouldn’t have to fund-raise to treat families to pizza and bowling while their soldiers are deployed.
The Obama administration has said it will convene a military family advisory board. I hope it includes a broad spectrum of families — the spouses of staff sergeants, captains and lieutenant colonels. The current situation is not sustainable.
Kristina Kaufmann is married to
an Army lieutenant colonel. E-mail her at kkaufmanncool@gmail.com. This column appeared earlier in
The Washington Post.