vulnerability

Why all this thinking and writing I've been doing about relocating, since I started this blog, is suddenly getting more practical and less philosophical:

In the past 12 years that my husband and I have been moving together around the world, his has always been the job that anchored us abroad and almost always when we've been in the US.  I have worked and volunteered in the various places that we've lived but it's his employment that covers our health insurance, pays our rent, buys our groceries, etc.   

I’m not happy with the terms trailing spouse or housewife- they create pictures in my mind of me stumbling along, tethered to my husband, or staying home peering fearfully at the impossibly complex world outside my tidy little house.  Neither of these images bear any relation to my real life.  Like all of the other friends I’ve talked to about this subject, my husband and I work together to decide where we will go next and how to make the transition.  I could never stay home all the time and my house is rarely tidy, unless I have a housekeeper.

I can’t deny that it’s a privileged position to not have to be the one who provides financially for my family.  I may be busy with the responsibilities of my life but I have no supervisor or manager, my days are mine to design around our routines.  I make dinner and pick up the kids every day, make them their breakfasts and lunches, grocery shop, take them on hikes or to the park.  I also get to fit in time to paint murals, talk to friends across the country and around the world, go for walks, even take the very occasional nap.

There are sacrifices to this lifestyle, though.  My dreams of having a career beyond family have been put on hold indefinitely, as we get further and further from my graduation from grad school and any semi-relevant work and volunteering that I’ve done.  We also don’t have the security of having a back-up income in case one of our jobs should end unexpectedly, and several have. The international humanitarian development/emergency employment world is ever changing: money goes where the crises are. Our stint in Kosovo in 2001-2 was cut short when funding went to aid refugees from the war in Afghanistan, and the story was similar in 2002-2003 when we left Sierra Leone and Guinea because resources were shifting to help victims of the war in Iraq.  Out of his past seven jobs, only twice has he gone seamlessly from one job to the next, and several have ended in layoffs.  The layoffs are getting harder to manage as our family grows and the kids have their own routines and friends.  The end of health insurance coverage is scarier than it used to be. 

We moved to San Francisco a year ago for my husband to work at a small and relatively new organization.  It seemed like a great opportunity, and worth the effort to try to make a home here.  At that point he had been out of work for several months since the last layoff.  The months of unemployment combined with moving expenses had not been good for our finances, but we were hopeful that eventually we would catch up and begin to be able to save again.  We were stunned when, two weeks ago, they informed him that his job would be terminated. 

He has been applying for new positions ever since we got the news.  Some might require us to relocate our family, and while I have my issues with the expat lifestyle (see here and here, for example, from posts in October), the idea of moving within the US again just collapses me inside.  Moving internationally, it's an easier landing- the expat community is usually filled with other families with similarly transient lifestyles.  It's more obvious which neighborhood, medical clinic, school we should choose.  I would not mind at all handing over the housecleaning duties to someone else.  

At the same time I wonder if this isn't a chance for me to escape from the 'trailing housewife' system once and for all.  In my own fantasy world I imagine finding the anchor job myself and then somehow keeping track of that and home and kids while my husband consults internationally or works from home.  I imagine it being an opportunity for me to creatively use all the skills I have acquired through education and life, and work with a witty, intelligent, and diverse group of people to make the world a better place.  This is probably as ridiculous as calling myself a trailing housewife in the first place. I know there are plenty of people who have been steadily employed over the past ten years who are now looking for work and I can't pretend that my spotty employment experience over that same period qualifies me for my imaginary brilliant career.  

In any case, my first responsibility is doing what I can to make sure this complicated period rattles my kids as gently as necessary.  And I will remain quietly vigilant for any way that I can make myself better qualified for positions resembling the one I have created for myself in my head.   

letter to my husband's unemployer

This letter was written two weeks ago, at 3am, the morning after we heard the news.  It will not be sent, out of respect for my husband's concerns that it could complicate his situation and hinder positive references

Dear ___________,

I am so angry at you right now. You call yourself a humanitarian organization, your mission is all about the importance of educating children. Do you even care that you laid off my husband a month before Christmas? That he has kids in elementary school who may well have to be withdrawn when we are forced to move since we will no longer afford our rent?

We took this huge chance on you. We drove all the way across the country for him to take this job. We accepted the minimal compensation that didn’t even close to cover our moving expenses (which we are still paying off, with interest). We put up with his frequent travel over the first few months and resigned ourselves to the prospect of more in the future. We had to put medical bills on installment payments because the health insurance you provide is so poor. We’re not a family that spends lavishly. Our kids go to public school. We don’t expect fancy vacations, lots of new clothes, or the latest technology. We are more likely to go for a hike in the woods together on a weekend than go to the movies or eat out. Sure you could say we should have planned better, saved better, chosen a less expensive place to live. We were coming off of another lay-off, though, a year ago, and hoped that eventually we would catch up somehow and were crossing our fingers that it all would work out. We chose to live in the same city as your home office so that during the stretches that my husband wasn’t traveling, he would not spend all his spare time commuting.

I don’t expect this letter to make you hire him back or change anything for us but I want you to be more aware that you haven't just cut one salary from your budget, you've caused the total upheaval of a family of five. I am not so concerned at how this affects me or my belongings but it tears me up for how it could affect my kids, who may have to leave a school at which they’re thriving and a neighborhood full of friends, for an uncertain future.

I don't know how you prioritize how your funds are spent, but I hope that it was an excruciating decision for you to let people go. I honestly hope it haunts you for a long time.

Yours sincerely,

...

Letter from Dhaka

Monica, originally from Switzerland,  was my neighbor and one of the first friends I made in Hanoi.   She has experience moving internationally as a child with her family, and later as an adult with her husband and children.  They currently live in Bangladesh and will be moving again the new year.  I love her perspective on moving and parenting.  

On the term « trailing spouse »:

I do not consider myself as a trailing spouse and to tell you the truth I hate this expression because it makes me think that the spouse plays a passive role in this kind of life style. I see Tommi and myself as a team and we always choose what is best for both of us, career-wise, and for our children, as a family.  Because I also work in development I know that the countries that we move to are countries where I can also find a job and so I don’t see myself as somebody who had to give up my career in order to follow my husband.

On home:

For me home is where Tommi and I grew up. We are very lucky because we both come from the same city in the Italian part of Switzerland, so family reunions are simplified. We both want our children to feel that they come from Lugano and each summer I put my 6-year-old in a local summer school, so that hopefully she develops a certain memory of where she comes from and it allows her to meet children from the same region.

I have very positive memories from my childhood as a trailing kid and this is part of the reason why I also would like my children to experience this life style. Tommi, on the contrary, never moved as a child and his family has strong roots in small the city he grew up. However, he is proud to offer such an experience to his children. Both of our childhoods are full of positive aspects and so I am never 100% sure if what we are doing is right. However, I do think that this is the same for every parent no matter the life style and the only thing we can do is listen to them and be ready that one day they might want to stop roaming the world.

On moving:

I always have an equal say when we choose where to move.  At the moment I am the one taking care of the children on a day-to-day basis and Tommi is the one that has the better and more stable job. So I have more say when it comes to our children and a potential country, because I have a better picture of the day-to-day difficulties concerning our children’s lives. Tommi would never ask us to move to a country that he doesn’t consider “family-friendly,” even if it would be the perfect move for his career.

Moving brings mixed feelings of excitement but also anxiety. Before becoming a mother I never thought twice about moving. But now having three small children makes me wonder whether we are doing the right thing. Bangladesh has been their country and home for the last 4 years and I am afraid of taking them away from what they know and love. I know that they will be fine, but still I wonder. Maybe by next year, after we move to our next post, I will be able to give you a better answer!

I do not prepare much, but I do a lot of online research. My first concerns are school and house. I make sure that we have a good school for the children and if possible Tommi tries to fit in a mission before to prepare for his new assignment and also to look for a new house before we actually move. We also try not to over-plan or over-think the move and just go with the flow, because there are so many factors that we cannot influence and stressing out would just ruin everything.

The most important thing for me before we move is to prepare the children and ourselves to say goodbye. I also always try to find new employment for our house “staff”, it makes me feel better knowing that they will be alright when we leave. The rest is practicalities and once you’ve done one move I think it gets easier the next time.

The hardest part at the beginning is living in a hotel or a temporary residence, if we don’t have a home right away. Other then that I love the first weeks, because everything is new and exciting!

As soon as we arrive in a new country my priority is our house. If possible I try to move in as quick as possible and if our boxes are already there, I fix and decorate our house so that it becomes home right away.

On career:

My career at the moment is nearly non-existent! I try to do some consultancy in my field (program management and gender mainstreaming), but at the moment I prefer to be available for my children (6,3 and nearly 2).

On organizational support:

I think we have the best support from Tommi’s organization (bilateral donor) and I couldn’t ask for more. We still have to take care of ourselves (find our own house, car, schools, etc.) but they allow their new employees to take the time at the beginning to settle in and the support staff is always there to provide logistical support. I like it this way, because I like to be responsible of our move, it is part of the experience.

Advice for someone headed out for the first time:

Be open-minded. If you are not ready to adapt to a new context and a new culture, then maybe this kind of life style is not the best for you.

Meredith's story: the importance of family support

I met Meredith and her son, Adam, at a baby-group in Dhaka.  Originally from the eastern United States, she had come to Bangladesh with her husband, son, and two big dogs. She always seemed to be one of the most relaxed and friendly people around- a good match for the tensions of moving internationally with family and pets. After three years they moved back to the US, to southern California, where they live now. 

Her story is different from most of my fellow expat friends because her husband is Bangladeshi and her most immediate support network and sources of information, when she arrived in Dhaka, were her in-laws. This gave her a unique window into Bangladesh to which expats don’t usually have easy access, but also added some stress to her acclimation phase.   “They were helpful in that they already knew where the locals shopped, where you could get the best deal, also the good vs. bad restaurants to eat at.  Their presence just helped me mesh better with the local population.  It was hard in that they were very protective and would 'advise' me to not go somewhere or do similar things that other ex-pats were doing.”

My conversation with Meredith also reminded me how much one’s partner can be a very important source for connections in a new home.  My own husband, like the partners of many of my trailing spouse friends, is usually so busy with his new job during the transition time of moving that I don’t count on him to help me much at all when we arrive. It followed that my questions for trailing spouses, until now, have not included anything on how the working spouse helps support his or her partner. Meredith’s husband was very attuned to her needs as they moved and made extra efforts to help her feel settled and make connections with people in Dhaka.  “He is very cognizant of my feelings and comfort level, and really pushed hard to get our [Dhaka] apartment live-in ready.  He also was the one to reach out to the American women’s organization, and to other ex-pats, as well as Bangladeshis married to American women, and made sure I got to meet them.  He made a special effort to get us a membership to the American Club so that we would have a place to go and hang out.  Immediately after moving back to Southern California, he invited all my family out for Christmas so that I would get to see them for the holidays, since we very well couldn't fly back across the country to be with them.”

Trailing spouses must be flexible in their own careers- the work available may not relate directly to previous jobs and may not seem relevant to the job market in the next country.  In Dhaka, thanks to in-law connections, Meredith was able to find work teaching and advising on policy with the Institute of Governance Studies at BRAC University.  “Although the policy advising job in particular was very relevant at the time, bringing that experience back to the US has had little effect in helping me find a job.”

Meredith and her family are now settled into Southern California and think ahead to possible future moves, acknowledging that the next one may be harder now that her elder son is old enough to feel attached to their current home and lifestyle.  “Honestly, some days I want to move; others I want to stay put.  From October - December, all I want is to go back east and plant down some roots, because it's the holiday season.  The other nine months of the year, if someone came to me and offered a job to me or my husband overseas, I'm outta here!!!”

Meredith’s advice on preparing for a move and what information she would want to have available in those first weeks after arriving:

·   Tending to the kids' needs first is paramount: research the schools, sports leagues, anything that can get your child involved.  

·   After the move, getting the house in order is her number one priority.  "I don't like for things to stay in boxes for long because I'm ready to start settling in ASAP and I don't like that feeling of everything in chaos."

·   Moving somewhere new, she would want to know which organizations (social, athletic, academic, etc) she could join where she could meet fellow ex-pats.

·   Find out where most expat kids go to school- with the local population or international schools,

·   Find the best places for an expat (not a local) to go for groceries and other shopping.

·   After that, how do you really get to know and enjoy the local culture?