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A wife thinking she is entitled to the same as her spouse who was a high-up something or other in the corporate world before retirement is similar to the officer's wives in this discussion. Their life revolved around their husband's career.
The base commander about to retire remarked that he didn't think civilians should be entitled to things like Medicare and Social Security BUT don't touch his precious retirement because he worked for it. If it wasn't for civilians, who would be left to fight for and who would support the rest of society!
Sadly, the self-righteous attitude is here to stay as long as there is stratification in the military. Often those attitudes are not well accepted once they are out in the real world.
So glad we left that narrow world behind us years ago.
Question for some of the Vets from the WWII, Vietnam, Korea, etc era.
Did you notice this entitlement from spouses from that timeframe as much as it is now? I personally think women back then would have a more gracious attitude.
Question for some of the Vets from the WWII, Vietnam, Korea, etc era.
Did you notice this entitlement from spouses from that timeframe as much as it is now? I personally think women back then would have a more gracious attitude.
I am curious what kind of answers you get for this question. I'm 33, so I obviously don't remember what things were like in the 1970s and earlier. But I've listened to my parents and theirs, and many friends who are in their age group. It definitely seems like we live in a more entitlement minded culture today, and it should come as no surprise that our military shows signs of this entitlement mindset within its ranks.
To be fair, this mindset does not even come close to defining military members or their spouses. Most have good hearts and a spirit of service. But it is naive to say it doesn't exist. And where it does exist can really go a long way toward creating negative impressions of military members and their families.
I've experienced it more with actual service members than with their spouses. Where I have dealt with it with spouses has generally been those spouses who like to become involved in unit affairs with other spouses as "key volunteers." A lot of them did good things for other spouses, but a lot of them were just busy bodies. In one unit I was in the CO was all about supporting what the key volunteers wanted to do. There were days I thought my real boss was the CO's wife. When an opportunity to change units and deploy to Afghanistan presented itself, I jumped on it.
So, I'm a mil spouse and I'm definitely not saying ALL spouses are like this but I have seen my fair share of those who think they are entitled to way too much because they are married to a service member.
For instance, they want discounts at numerous stores, they get mad if the MP doesn't salute them (officer wives), but mostly, it's just places that won't hand them out a deal because THEY aren't the service member.
What do you think of this? Personally, wives should be grateful if anywhere gives them a discount. They HAVE NOT served. I don't see many places offering police/firemen wives discounts.
I haven't seen this...BUT, I've only been a spouse for a short time, and quite frequently don't follow the unspoken social "rules," because I don't know them anyway. I also am at a small, atypical command in an area that's not hugely military, so my exposure to other spouses is sparser than most, and even though I live in base housing, it's not a massively military culture (our housing is actually open to civilian rental, as well). Perhaps if I were at a bigger and less isolated command, I'd have exposure to a wider range of spouses and their attitudes). This command has so many geobachelors, we don't even have that many spouses AROUND here for a subset of busybodies to crop up, that I've noticed.
My husband is an E-7, which in the Navy is part of what's kind of its own community, that of the various levels of chief petty officer. I couldn't say if the enlisted wives are looked down on by officer wives, because in my experience, I spend zero time around any officer spouses. Our social events and social circles that are related to my husband's work pretty much exclusively involve members of the Chief's Mess and their families. It never comes up that I'm around non-enlisted spouses, honestly.
My husband is an E-7, which in the Navy is part of what's kind of its own community, that of the various levels of chief petty officer. I couldn't say if the enlisted wives are looked down on by officer wives, because in my experience, I spend zero time around any officer spouses. Our social events and social circles that are related to my husband's work pretty much exclusively involve members of the Chief's Mess and their families. It never comes up that I'm around non-enlisted spouses, honestly.
I'm sure some officers' wives do look down on the enlisted wives. Especially in the Navy. The Navy, due to the compartmental nature of a ship, is able to maintain an almost "old world" class system between officers and enlisted. Not like the Army or Marines, where if you are in the field and it rains, the officers get rained on alongside the enlisted troops. In the Navy, the difference between the accommodations on a ship even for a junior officer over an E-6 and below is mind blowing.
I believe this class system is most pronounced in the Navy, and probably spills over into the spouses in the Navy more so than other branches.
I recently attended the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Officers from all branches study in various Master's programs here. I met a few wives and generally speaking found the Navy wives to be the most elite-minded. Within this group, those wives whose husbands attended the Naval Academy were really snooty and looked down on the wives of Navy officers (and the rest of us as well) who were commissioned through some other source.
The joke was on them, though because most officers poke fun at Academy guys, despite the fact the Naval Academy churns out a pretty solid product for both the Navy and Marines.
I'm sure some officers' wives do look down on the enlisted wives. Especially in the Navy.
It could be, but, again, I haven't ever, even once, come into contact with a single, solitary officer's spouse that I know of. There are very, very few spouses, comparatively speaking, living at this base, whether enlisted or officer spouses. And, honestly, most of the spouses who are here are military themselves, so they don't really socialize with the civilian spouses.
Also, we're shore duty, which is a very different world than being on a ship...even for E-7, 8, 9.
I did have a neighbor who is former Army and whose husband is an E-5, Army, here on a recruiting billet...she was asking me a bit about Navy-specific stuff, it being a Navy base, and said she'd heard that Chief's wives won't talk to other enlisted wives. I said, "Well, I'm a chief's wife, and I talk to who I want." My husband may not be able to go get beers with an E-6 on his staff, but if I wanna hang out with that guy's girlfriend, I certainly can. I'm not enlisted, I don't have a rate, and I don't have to worry about fraternizing.
And former spouses get up to 50% of the service members retirement. What's fair in that? Thanks to Congress thinking this is acceptable.
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