h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I must admit you've got quite a well-thought out theory there. Very impressive. So what would you say the strongest part of your theory is, and how does a sceptic like me know that it is more than a theory, and is in fact applicable to the real world?

There is an entire industry that has been developed to cater to these hapless victims of corporate fickleness. Relocation specialists are employed to hand hold and otherwise lead trailing spouses through the maze of legalese for selling the present home, purchasing the new one, assuring that all legal requirements are met on the contracts at both ends, not to mention the more important chores of finding a new hairdresser/barber and dentists.
For the most part, they're female, mostly because the female's earning potential doesn't meet up with her spouse's. However, it's unfair to say all are women. Whichever, the secondary career/income is put to the side and the typical trailing spouse is carted along from location to location until the transfers slow down.

I would agree that there is more and more pressure now to go out and get better jobs and move to where they are - but I do not think it is a good thing at all. As you mentioned, it creates what you call Trailing Spouses, and is more likely to create Nucleur families of a couple, and possibly children. However, as this means that that family is likely to move to another part of the country, it automatically prevents the family from having the support of an Extended Family - as they live too far away. Whereas before it was possible to leave the children with their grandmother who lived a couple of streets away, now there is the inconvenience and impersonal need for babysitters - who aren't supportive in an emergencey. Settling in one place is a lot better for a more supportive family, where there is a loving and supportive group around you - it is much better also for taking care of people who have difficulties settling in - would you want trusted family members to help with your problems, or some professional who you pay, and cares more for the wages?

I agree 100%. The family in general has apparently taken a backseat to the whims of big business in many areas. In my own situation, for example, when asked where she's from, our older daughter states simply, "the United States." She was buffeted from the midwestern states, to the northeast, although she was born in Alabama, a southern state.
For the trailing spouse the attitude remains "whither thou goest", and this spouse shelves personal goals for the sake of steady income. This may not be a significant problem in the typically outdated single income family, but with dual incomes the norm rather than the exception, it certainly is a problem.
Looking at it simply from a career standpoint (although there are many other points to consider) the trailing spouse may easily have a string of receptionist or retail types of jobs. The chief breadwinner's career takes precedence, of course, but the trailing spouse, simply (by virtue of repeated moving) will never develop either career or self sustenance.

True, but I've lived a sheltered life living on the Isle of Wight. It being the Isle of Wight, traditionally anyone who lived here never left. There are records of a Sprack in 1170 being on the Isle of Wight joining the militia to fight the French - and I live there still. So most of my relatives live here also, or did as many of my grandparents have died unfortunately...
Still, people who have moved to the Island since don't seem to fit in so much as those whose families are here - yet unfortunately there are no jobs available on the Isle of Wight anymore, so all of us are forced to leave to seek jobs, which is destroying a fine tradition.

Although my father was an immigrant, he and my mother instilled a great sense of family in us. It was very hard the first time we moved away from the extended family. My phone bill is astronomical trying to keep up with siblings and parents. Now, of course, my daughter lives in still another state with her husband and their new son. I may just move back north and try to rebuild the intimacy you can only share with your family when you actually see them.
Still, with the extensive corporate shuffling that has so interfered with my own development, I find myself wishing to start over rather than move on.

I know the feeling.
However, I feel I must just remind us both that Family is not always a good thing, but for some people a family can be a choking experience that is a threat to individuality, and needs to be escaped from. Not all families work, and not all families understand all the people who are inside them. A family isn't the answer to all the problems of the world - but is something that ALL the members of it have to work on for the benefit of ALL the members. If any one person is excluded from that, and not understood, the whole purpose of the family collapses. And it is a pity when that happens, but it does happen.
However, I said that in order to avoid over-generalising, and it is not really relevant to the Trailing Spouses theory.

Several problems are solved if the trailing spouse teaches English as a
foreign language and the transfers are overseas: I had taught in Ethiopia
and Malawi when my spouse decided he'd prefer another trailer.
I subsequently took the children to Lesotho and Cameroon.They
went to boarding school in their mid teens travelling for long holidays in
China,and Poland We had a whole year in England to get me a further
degree necessary for a senior lectureship but braver souls than I
(whose husbands have stuck by them as well as vice versa) have done
the degrees by correspondence and kept on trucking.
Good luck with it and enjoy your moves.
Buy your family a cheap computer and use email / ICQ ?.
Claim all your frequent flyer miles

And I thought that being at opposite ends of the country was bad!!!
But then, does distance REALLY make a difference? If you are far enough away from someone to not be able to be with them all the time if you wanted to, does it matter if you are 50 miles away or 5,000? (50 miles is quite a distance for someone who cannot drive and does not have vast money for public transport.)
If you feel uprooted and dragged somewhere new, surely the fact you're not home is more important than the fact you are somewhere new?

I completely agree about distance being irrelevant. Absence definitely does not make
the heart grow fonder.The other old adage about home being where the heart is is a
better bet if you can persuade yourself into it. If you are lucky, your children will become
independent and happy like mine, while still caring enough to send emails more than
four times a week,spending Christmas bonuses to come and visit etc. If you are lucky
you have a network of friends scattered around the country (around the world)who
have proved their worth and yours.If you are fantastically lucky you still have a husband
who thinks the world revolves around YOU.
I know several couples who are still hitched after thirty years of corporate travelling
Admittedly most of them have trailing wives,but I know a very high-powered financial
director whose husband has followed her for 20 years.
The wives have not really put their careers on hold- rather adjusted them slightly..
( I hated driving,although I could afford to do it.It was a great liberation when my
children learnt) I wish you more than the best of luck..

I'm extremely critical of the view that careers should be important anyway. I don't know why - I'm studying law at Southampton, and it's full of career-obsessed people (mostly women for some reason), and they just want to get the top jobs, the best pay, and be higher than everyone else. I ask them "once you've done that, then what?", and they just look at you blankly as if they don't understand the question.
Why is "being the best paid" so important - surely "being the best at what you do" is more useful, and "being the best partner possible" the most rewarding.

Ahh, here is the set up. For sure, those that put career above all else, will find themselves under direct control of their employer. Title becomes self-definition, family becomes support rather than primary focus. What is the old saying, "You cannot serve two masters."

And you're exactly right, the trailing spouse alters his/her own goals to fit the current available options. As time goes by though, luck does not necessarily hold. The children cannot always adjust their plans to include trips "home." Their own happy well-adjusted lives often now include the same alterations that their parent included.

Those trailing spouses who remain successful in their marriage are most often those who simply are able to continue adjusting both their own and their family's plans to suit nomadic life.

I'm glad you mentioned the families - as often it is far harder on them than it is on the spouses. Afterall, they can at least look at what's going on from an Adult point of view, but to a child, the idea of suddenly leaving friends, school, other family members etc can be very scary.
On a more personal level, my girlfriend "Eccles" used to live in Sandown with me, but her father decided to move to the other end of the country to Leeds. This has made our relationship a lot harder than it should be, and has produced a strain we could have done without. So, with a selfish view, I dislike the idea of getting people to go away from one place to another just for money, as it's not only hard on the spouse, but everyone involved - including those left behind.

Once again I totally agree with you A very dear friend died a couple of years
ago. A couple of weeks previously he told his wife his wife that he had so much
love around him that he could afford to give it away. That's what he'd been doing
for the 35 years I'd known him to so many friends and relatives that the church
wasn't big enough to hold us all for his funeral He left very little money and few
possessions but several hundred of us, including his wife and children, love(d)
and respect(ed) him.A much better life than those devoted to money.

Sorry - the last was a reply to families being more important than money.
Took me so long to think of it that the rest of you had got there first

No need to apologise - it's a very well made, and very true point.

My parents own a relocation company in the netherlands catering to the needs of trailing spouses and displaced children especially. The thing ive noticed most is that the trialing spouse find it alot harder to cope with. This is because his/her daily routine is altered the most. his/her social network is taken away and is left in foreign isolation. The lead spouse will retain much of their daily routine, continuing their job, and coming home in the evening, children too continue their daily rountine of going to school, although it will be hard on all memebers of the move the trialer spouse has it the hardest in terms of change and consequently needs the most support, (and attention )

Huh, well I have little sympathy for the above posters.


Try being a trailing spouse without children - I have done it with, and without is the pits.

You have no way to meet other trailing spouses - no school contact - and are getting on a bit - so the younger ones blank you (not that you want to know them anyway but it would be nice to pass the time of day) - perfecting your all over tan is a thing of the past, and a couple of hours in the gym is plenty. Learning a language is harder too, being older. Life is crummy.

Trailing spouse: whata lovely term - so much nicer, and conveys fewer assumptions than 'expat wife'.

Stich and bitch anyone?

What about the complicated trailing spice bit - the one where there is a trans-national marriage - adding an extra complication to discussions of 'going home', when there is not instant agreement as to where that is....