Patrolling the Homefront: the Emotional Labor of Army Wives Volunteering in Family Readiness Groups
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PATROLLING THE HOMEFRONT: THE EMOTIONAL LABOR OF ARMY WIVES VOLUNTEERING IN FAMILY READINESS GROUPS By Copyright 2010a Jaime Nicole Noble Gassmann B.A., Southern Methodist University, 2002 M.A., University of Kansas, 2004 Submitted to the graduate degree program in American Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Chairperson: _________________________________ Brian Donovan Committee Members: _________________________________ Norman R. Yetman _________________________________ Robert J. Antonio _________________________________ Joane Nagel _________________________________ Ben Chappell Date Defended: 30 August 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Jaime Nicole Noble Gassmann certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: PATROLLING THE HOMEFRONT: THE EMOTIONAL LABOR OF ARMY WIVES VOLUNTEERING IN FAMILY READINESS GROUPS By Jaime Nicole Noble Gassmann Chairperson: _________________________________ Brian Donovan Committee Members: _________________________________ Norman R. Yetman _________________________________ Robert J. Antonio _________________________________ Joane Nagel _________________________________ Ben Chappell Date Approved: 30 August 2010 ii ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the emotional labor of Army wives as they volunteer in Army-mandated family-member support groups in each unit called Family Readiness Groups (FRGs). Since its inception, the Army has relied unofficially on soldiers’ wives’ contributions to the success of their husbands’ careers in a two-for-one career pattern—two workers for one paycheck. The Army made such expectations official when in 1988 it began to require volunteer labor to run each unit’s FRG. The Army tasks FRGs with connecting members to resources and relaying official information to soldiers’ family members. These support groups also serve a vital socializing function, though not all soldiers’ spouses participate in the information-dispensing and community-building groups. I conducted thirty-seven in-depth interviews and nine months of participant observation fieldwork among Army wives on and around a large Army post from 2006-2007, during a time when most soldiers were deploying to fight a war in either Iraq or Afghanistan every other year, leaving behind family members to manage the domestic effects of the Global War on Terrorism. This dissertation analyzes the participant-observation and interview data to show how and why the Army’s emissaries, in particular FRG leaders, use emotional labor to impose traditional, institutional, “old Army” behaviors including satisfying expectations to work on behalf of one’s soldier-spouse with a an Army-supporting attitude. Army wives who normally do the work of managing and displaying prescribed emotions in the private sphere for their own families do that same emotional labor publicly on the homefront iii when they volunteer to lead FRGs in the tradition of “good” Army-wife behavior. Army wives who lead FRGs often volunteer their labor to satisfy unofficial yet prevailing expectations that they serve, particularly if they are commanders’ wives, to contribute to the success of their husbands’ careers, to build a social network for themselves and their peers, and to gain a modicum of power (real or perceived) over the process of adjusting their lives to an Army fighting two wars. FRG leaders’ emotional labor also includes managing their members’ (often unhappy) feelings about the flow of scarce but valuable information about Army life, diffusing or solving family-member problems before they burden soldiers, and patrolling behavior of other Army wives through mentorship and gossip in service of the Army’s goals. The Army’s usage of volunteers’ emotional labor grants the Army increased control over soldiers’ families. Even though the Army requires emotional labor in FRGs to help improve family members’ attitudes about Army life and thus keep soldiers in the Army, volunteer spouses’ efforts are still devalued—both unpaid and derided—as women’s work. The dissertation also finds that though the Army provides FRGs ostensibly to support family members, the emotional labor it prescribes for FRG leaders in handbooks and regulations, when combined with informal expectations, sometimes values supporting the Army over family members. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I extend my sincere gratitude to The Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship at The University of Kansas for funding, to Brian, Norm, and Bob for always wishing me the best out of life, to my family, and most of all to the Army wives. v STATEMENT REGARDING RESEARCH SUBJECTS This project began after gaining approval from the University of Kansas’ Human Subjects Committee Lawrence Campus (HSCL #16096). The research was neither Army-sanctioned nor conducted covertly. I was forthcoming, among those I encountered, about my intention to conduct research about my fellow Army wives and Family Readiness Groups. Interviewees’ and informants’ names have been changed. I also changed some identifying details, borrowing at times from other informants to obscure the person in question yet maintain the sense of what I observed during my fieldwork. I omit the name of the Army post to further offer some plausible deniability to the Army wives in question. The goal of these changes is to attempt to protect subjects from backlash against their attitudes and behaviors collected under the promise of anonymity. vi CONTENTS ABSTRACT................................................................................................................ iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...........................................................................................v STATEMENT REGARDING RESEARCH SUBJECTS ...................................... vi PROLOGUE.................................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1. Introduction.........................................................................................................4 Hochschild’s Concept of Emotional Labor......................................................10 Family Readiness Groups ................................................................................15 Institutionalized Emotional Labor in FRGs.....................................................23 FRGs’ Gendered Labor Pattern .......................................................................28 FRGs as Executors of Institutional Military Ideals..........................................39 Map of the Dissertation....................................................................................44 2. Data Collection ..................................................................................................45 Fieldwork .........................................................................................................45 Soliciting Interviewees.....................................................................................52 Considerations of Rank....................................................................................57 The Interviewees..............................................................................................61 Figure 1: Interviewees' Husbands' Pay Grades Compared to All Active-Duty U.S. Army Soldiers by Grade in 2005 ..................62 Figure 2: Distribution of Interviewees' Length of Time as Army Wives ..63 Narrowing the Sample .....................................................................................64 The Interviews .................................................................................................66 Reflexivity........................................................................................................70 Grounded Theory.............................................................................................80 3. A History of FRGs ............................................................................................81 The Army’s Historic Disregard for Family Support........................................82 Army Husbands ...............................................................................................86 Traditional Role Expectations..........................................................................89 Historic Changes Affecting Army Attitudes about Families...........................96 The 1980s.........................................................................................................99 From Family Support Groups to Family Readiness Groups..........................107 Recent Developments: The Army Family Covenant .....................................113 Conclusion .....................................................................................................116 vii 4. A “Good” Army Wife .....................................................................................118 Jill...................................................................................................................118 Normative Constraints Prevail, Despite Variation.........................................130 Conforming: Commanders’ Wives’ Two-for-One Labor..............................135 Surface and Deep Acting ...............................................................................142 Jenna the Conforming Emotional Laborer.....................................................148 Conclusion .....................................................................................................153 5.