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The Latest from Livelines
A rich discussion about Foreign Service life emerged recently on AAFSW's Livelines in response to a question about whether members recommended joining the Foreign Service. Following are a few excerpts from the replies. If you would like to see all of the responses, join Livelines!
Foreign Service Life Is...
.seeing the world in more detail (more deeply than a tourist), meeting interesting and sometimes influential people, representing your nation, learning new languages and cultures, unforgettable and unusual experiences, culinary challenges and delights.
.missing home and hearth and extended family; brief or interrupted friendships; sometimes physical danger or health issues; much higher than average stress due to frequent transitions and culture shock; discontinuity of your own career in deference to your spouse's; possible complications with your children's education; occasionally unsympathetic (or idiotic) attitudes within the "support systems" and bureaucratic red tape of the State Department.
Foreign Service Spouse
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
CONS: Your career may be derailed, delayed, or destroyed. You may have ugly, inadequate housing. You may endure hardships (physical and/or psychological) that stress you more than you think you can take. You may feel isolated and friendless if you don't "click" with other spouses at post. You may feel pressured by your spouse, your spouse's boss, or others at post to do things you aren't comfortable doing (entertaining, joining the aforementioned clubs, volunteering for community and charity events, working at the mission, not working at all, etc.)
PROS: Your life will be interesting. You will have a wealth of experiences and opportunities your friends back home cannot even imagine, and your mind (if you allow it) will be broadened immensely. You will be forced to clean out your closets every two or three years. You will meet fascinating people and make lifelong friendships that survive years of separation. You will learn how to adapt.
I've never regretted marrying the Foreign Service, despite the craziness. My career is in shambles, and I have never once successfully predicted where we would be five years down the road, but I enjoy living in different cultures, traveling and learning languages, and I have discovered competencies in myself that I never suspected.
Marilyn Pifer Foreign Service Spouse for 19 years
"Professional" Spouse Speaks Up
I have an MBA and many years of experience in the business world. I entered with the idea I could somehow carry on a semblance of a professional career overseas, and I have been fortunate in finding good, professional jobs in the private sector in both of our posts so far. Speaking the language was essential to finding a job outside the Embassy (and most Embassy jobs were clerical in nature and almost not worth it financially if childcare costs were an issue). Because I'd worked for a large multinational corporation in the U.S. with local offices, I was able to secure a good position at decent pay. However, I don't think I received a whole lot of support from the Embassy. We ran into a huge issue regarding taxes and benefits and the reciprocal work agreement.
At one point, the spouse of a senior officer made a remark along the lines of "Why would any person with a professional spouse who expected to work join the Foreign Service at all?" (This was followed by an awkward silence on our part!)
The bottom line is-being a "professional" spouse in the Foreign Service is challenging. Keeping expectations in check is very important. My situation has also figured heavily into the jobs for which my husband applies, and that has impacted his career as well.
Foreign Service Spouse for five years
"Professional Spouses" and Portable Careers
If you take the quotation marks from the preceding article and move them so it reads "professional spouse," there's the old-fashioned way that it used to be done, and in many cases, still is being done. I used to believe that approach wasn't good enough, somehow, for someone of my generation, but I'm beginning to think that in some ways that's the most stress-free option. It depends how secure you are in your identity. Certainly the demands of traditional Foreign Service life are such that a full-time "job" could be made of running a Foreign Service household.
Taking the title "professional spouse" and doing it as a job, as an earlier generation once did-routinely-is actually a ton of hard work and a lot of pride can be taken in doing it well. The problem is that no one else seems to take it seriously in this day and age, even ourselves. I still hear people refer to us as "the wives," even though there are plenty of male spouses. I still find that women's clubs hold events that seem designed to perpetuate the bored, overly-coiffed middle-aged wife persona: bridge games, shopping trips, etc. To be fair, these are often the same people who do a lot for charity, which might be the most worthwhile use of our time living overseas. You could even argue that a spouse teaching poor children English or volunteering in a hospital does more for diplomacy than any diplomat.
Another option for spouses is to design some sort of portable career that can be taken anywhere. That's what I've done, and I must say that no other life now suits me. I have some sort of work separate from my husband's, and yet, my profession (writing/editing) only seems to benefit from living overseas. I can write to my heart's content and not worry that I only earned a few thousand dollars last year-and can still pursue that elusive goal of selling the six-figure blockbuster! Not only that, but here's the most important thing, the thing I probably should have mentioned first: I love the luxury of being able to stay home with my kids while they're young. I wouldn't trade that for anything.
So go into this life with your eyes wide open, and don't think that you can really get away from your role as a Foreign Service spouse. No matter what else you do, that one sticks to you as long as you follow your husband or wife to an overseas posting.
Francesca Kelly, Managing Editor, The SUN
Self-Knowledge Essential
I do not think it is possible to have a corporate career of one's own. Eventually, if your husband continues as a Foreign Service Officer, you will have to serve at a post where you are not employable. (In Japan, for example, consular spouses are not permitted to engage in for-profit employment. Embassy spouses can and do work, including the wife of our Ambassador. Consular spouses may not. Period.) I think that, even if you miraculously do find employment at every single post, subjugating your career goals to your husband's-or at the very least to the mobility required of your husband-means that you will never achieve the same kind of career success you would if your own career was paramount.
I do believe that being a Foreign Service spouse can be an incredibly satisfying and rewarding life. Occasionally, for some spouses, it may include lucrative, stimulating employment outside the home, but I think such employment is the exception, not the rule, and even then is very seldom "a career."
The issue of "spouse employment" has derailed many promising Foreign Service careers, and much more tragically, I have watched it derail more than a few marriages. Knowing what you want, what you will and won't do, knowing what your own priorities are in terms of marriage, career and family, is absolutely essential-not just in the Foreign Service of course, but maybe especially in the Foreign Service.
Shannon Jamison
Everywhere in the World and Nowhere, Texas
Just to play the other side of the fence here.WE joined the Foreign Service and I have found positions that I never would have looked for in the "real world," they have formed a career path that suits me and looks good on my resume, and I've been paid well for what I do (much better than a similar position would have paid in that "real world").
I guess what I'm thinking here is that we in the Foreign Service aren't so different from some couple who gets an offer to move and work at the big factory in Nowhere, Texas, and she has to work at the Piggly Wiggly-no one promises that couple anything to begin with, so maybe their expectations are just more realistic than ours? A lot of this simply has to do with whether your glass is usually half full or half empty.
The best thing to do is try on all of these different attitudes and see how they feel. Then, if you make the decision to join the Foreign Service, it's important to reevaluate as a couple or a family and make sure it still feels right for all involved throughout the career. Maybe we should have to fill out yet another form, during that medical process or when renewing the dip passport: "Does this Foreign Service lifestyle still suit you and your needs? Circle yes or no." How would you answer that question?
A Satisfied FS Lifer (Sheri Mestan Bochantin)
A Real Picture of the Real World
The fact is, the Department does not control the "real world" in which it operates abroad - language barriers and host country labor policies are among the many factors that often mitigate against employment in other countries.
With few exceptions, the jobs for spouses in embassies are clerical. In addition, there is the non-immigrant visa line. Personally, I have always valued my own time above any recompense that might come from any of these positions. But I'm surprised at how many women seem happy to fill them. I would rather use my time to explore the country where I'm living, but there aren't many similarly idle spouses left to pal around with while doing so.
I do feel that those who speak for the Department owe it to all concerned to publish a realistic, rather than a wishful, picture of Foreign Service life-so that those who contemplate joining can make an informed decision based on their own values, and so that those who are already in the ranks will not be further disillusioned. The Foreign Service life can be a very good life, but it is not without cost. Sounds like the real world to me.
Thirty-year veteran Foreign Service spouse