"The big hidden cost for service members, of course, is that they may go to war & die," says Houppert. Or if they don't die, they could go to war & not come home for a year or two. Or they could come back maimed: Kris Atherton returned from Iraq w/an amputated arm & a case of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome.

Houppert's account of life as a military wife strips the veneer off of headlines announcing American casualties in Iraq & exposes the toll war takes on families at home. But more than just a chronicle of war widows' grief, her book shows us how day by day these spouses earn the right to boast, as it says on a Fort Bragg minivan bumper sticker:

"Army wife: the toughest job in the Army."

Military spouses cope w/childcare hassles, teenage moodiness, car pools, lawn care - all the same challenges parents face in the civilian world. Only they do it alone. For months at a time - all the while never knowing if their husbands will make it back safely.

The lives of families on the 170 military bases are, as Houppert describes it, closely prescribed by a "labyrinth of rules." At Fort Drum, home to 8,800 family members & 11,000 soldiers, a 129-page "Resident's Guide to Family Housing" spells out prohibitions against the use of clotheslines, trampolines, fences, waterbeds, ceiling fans, gardens & wallpaper borders (except by special dispensation).

Grass must be kept below 4" in height. Kool-Aid shouldn't be served near carpeted areas. Children can't leave toys on the sidewalks. Holiday lights may be lit only from dusk until 10 p.m. & should be removed by the second week in January. Dogs must have an identifying microchip inserted in their ears & there's a 2 pet maximum.

Even the logistics & protocol of death & military burial are carefully orchestrated down to the dress blue uniforms worn by the casualty notification officers, or "notifiers," to every sentence they utter, to the brand new 70,000-square-foot morgue built in Dover, Del., with room for 380 military caskets.

The other hidden cost for soldiers & their families "is a demand that they surrender self-determination to the institution." Handbooks for military wives suggest that they shouldn't complain to husbands overseas because it's their responsibility to help strengthen their spouses' morale.

By maintaining a happy home, wives are being patriots & doing their bit for the country, the military & their husbands' careers. Not until 1988 did the DOD stop the practice of incorporating commentaries on a wife's behavior in her husband's job review, but there's still overt disapproval when the authorities find Mrs. GI Joe failing to put his career first.

Realizing that their soldiers aren't going to be happy unless their families are, the Army has tried to provide support thru its Army Family Team Building program. But such programs go only so far in countering the loneliness & isolation that comes w/being a military spouse.

There are, i.e., Family Readiness Groups (FRGs) which function as support groups for military wives. FRGs engage in such morale-boosting activities as raising money to send supplies to soldiers & organizing phone trees to keep wives totally up to date about unit mobilizations.

Wives often volunteer as much as 40 hours a week at their local FRG - partly because they can't get paying jobs. Military bases are located in remote areas where skilled jobs are scarce; even when employment is available, families are transferred from base to base so frequently that it's hard for wives to keep jobs.

Also, the husbands' long absences mean that neither parent would be home to provide child care were the wife working outside the home. Given these 3 factors, very few military wives are able to develop meaningful careers.

Some of them find a sense of community, self-worth & patriotism when they volunteer at their FRGs, but others who happen to have jobs or choose to volunteer off base, feel pressured to participate. When one army wife Houppert profiled criticized her FRG in the "Military Spouse" column of Fort Drum's local paper, she was treated like a heretic.

But the greatest sin is to speak out against any war to which the troops may be assigned. Houppert had trouble convincing wives who opposed the Iraq war to talk to her because they didn't want their views published.

Being anti-war is a gateway drug to that other seditious offense, Hurting Your Husband's Career. One former female soldier told Houppert that people were afraid to criticize any army policy in the post newspaper. "It's ironic that we're charged with defending all these freedoms we're denied as members of the military."

Interestingly, Houppert dispenses with the question of male military spouses in her introduction, where she argues that 94% of military spouses are wives. Still, I find this omission significant in light of the rising numbers of women in the military & newsmagazine cover stories asking what happens when mom goes to war.

As of 2002, (according to the Women's Research & Education Institute) 15% of U.S. service personnel were women & approximately 10% of U.S. forces deployed in Iraq & Afghanistan are women.

The most chilling chapter in Home Fires Burning describes the serious problem with domestic violence on the base, or to use yet another military euphemism, the "spousal aggression issue."

It turns out that the rate of domestic violence in the military is 2 to 5 times higher than in the civilian population. Houppert goes back to the country's largest military base, Fort Bragg, N.C., where in the summer of 2002 - 4 wives were murdered, allegedly by their husbands or ex-husbands, in a 6 week period.

That summer of 2002, it was statistically more dangerous to be an army wife than a Fort Bragg soldier. Houppert tells the lesser-known story of Tabitha Croom, a former stripper who was murdered in 1999 at Fort Bragg. The evidence pointed to Croom's Special Forces boyfriend, but in a classically oxymoronic case of "military justice," the murder was never prosecuted & the suspect was honorably discharged.

Croom's case is one of so many that prove that the military justice system is built on an inherent conflict of interest. "Military courts-martial were created with a primary goal: maintaining control in the ranks. Justice was secondary," writes Houppert.

Karen Houppert was 14 in June 1977 when her 36-year-old father's T-33 airplane crashed into a potato field outside Brussels on a routine mission, a searing experience which has given her a special kind of emotional access to her subjects. She does an excellent job of capturing the hardships they face.

Yet Houppert doesn't spend much time on the many women (& some men) who willingly chose to marry into the military & are proud of the sacrifices they make. Houppert has given us an important & wrenching coming-of-age story Of an entire sector of women who, because their husbands chose such an honorable profession, are often prohibited from "being all that they can be."

Clara Bingham is the author of Women on the Hill and co-author of Class Action.

COPYRIGHT 2005 Washington Monthly Company
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

The Fear of Being Alone - By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Gina consulted with me because her marriage was falling apart. She'd discovered that her husband was having yet another affair & when he was with her, he was either angry or withdrawn. She had requested numerous times that he join her in couples therapy, but he had no interest in healing their relationship.

Gina was financially independent & could easily leave. Their children were all adults. There was nothing to keep her in this marriage. Yet she was still there.

“Gina, why are you staying in this marriage?”

“Because I’m afraid to be alone.”

I hear this time & time again from both men & women. Why are so many people afraid to be alone?

The underlying cause of the fear of being alone is self-abandonment.

Imagine yourself as a baby being left alone – a terrifying situation. As a tiny child, you can't take care of yourself. You can't