Creating Home: The Art of Being a Military Wife

Abstract

The purpose of this capstone is to document and analyze the ways in which military spouses sustain family culture in the face of constant change. When one’s housing location changes every three to five years, maintaining a sense of home can be hard. It becomes the most difficult burden carried by a military wife. Previous studies have been conducted on military service members returning from deployment.1 However, few studies have been done on Military Wives. Therefore the selected target population for this study is wives of United States military members, although this study included one male interviewee. The study concludes that spouses use coping tools to help sustain the family unit during times of struggle. Tools discussed are: family rituals, communication, holidays, religion, faith, support groups, and self-care, as well as others that became apparent through interviews. This study was conducted by directly interviewing individuals, unlike most such studies which rely on second hand information. The ultimate goal of this capstone is thus to provide the reader with an understanding of the experiences and difficulties of Military Wives and the tools they use to recreate a home environment due to deployment and relocation; to provide information to other military wives that will help them to successfully deal with deployment and relocation; and to suggest ways that the public can be made more aware of the needs and experiences of military families.