F OCUS - American Foreign Service Association

They may also not expect changes in
themselves after living and working
overseas. Further, families and friends
generally do not expect the travelers to
have changed, and may show little interest
in the overseas experiences of
those returning. Returnees are thus
set up for a clash between expectations
— their own and others’ — and experience.
Repatriation has come to be understood
as the return of “a stranger to a
strange land.” The result can be varying
degrees of feeling lost or not fitting
in, short- or long-term loneliness, isolation
and even depression. This can
affect not only the emotional wellbeing
of the individual, but also the
family. According to social work’s family
systems thinking, which views the
family as a dynamic interacting unit,
what affects one member affects the
other members as well. As such, reentry
symptoms in the spouse can affect
everyone in the family unit and
their interactions at home, as well as at
school and in the workplace.
I learned about this issue the hard
way. My first re-entry, with a 3-yearold
child and another on the way, was
the most difficult. In fact, a stress test
taken at the time put me, the test administrator
said, “way over the top.”
The second return was not as hard for
me personally, but my middle-school
sons were “way over the top” trying to
fit in. The third time, with children in
late high school and early college, was
the easiest for the entire family.
Repatriation has come
to be understood as the
return of “a stranger
to a strange land.”
Experience-Based Research
These experiences motivated my
choice of re-entry as a thesis topic
while I was a student at the Smith College
School for Social Work. I wanted
a better understanding of the conditions
and the factors that influence the
readjustment of spouses.
My proposal to the Associates of the
American Foreign Service Worldwide
to conduct a study among its membership
was approved by the board of directors.
(I did not seek a sample within
the State Department due to the
lengthy and uncertain approval process
involved.) The 10-page questionnaire
I sent to 580 active AAFSW members,
including all Foreign Service spouses
who were not current U.S. government
employees, produced a 158-person
sample, more than adequate for
meaningful statistical analysis of the results.
I chose four areas of exploration:
demographics, characteristics of the
spouses’ last overseas assignments and
last re-entries, and any changes in their
cultural (American) identity after living
overseas. My aim was to identify
factors in each of these areas associated
with spousal re-entry adjustments so as
to be able to provide preventive information
useful to spouses and those
working with them overseas and at
home.
The data analysis had two parts.
The first was descriptive in nature, providing
demographic, overseas and reentry
information about the sample.
The second part, measured by the
Homecomer Culture Shock Scale designed
in 1988 by Jeffrey Fray of the
University of Tennessee, looked for relationships
between factors and each
spouse’s re-entry adjustment. Both
parts could provide valuable information
for the continuing development of
programs to address the needs of FS
spouses. A third set of results consisted
of the spouses’ own short-answer reflections
on their last experience.
Study Results
The descriptive results provide an
interesting overview of a group of Foreign
Service spouses who are not normally
tracked by the State Department
due to privacy concerns. Though certainly
older, on average, than the
spouses of active-duty FSOs, the sample
accurately reflected the range of experience
of accompanying spouses.
Seventeen percent were foreign-born
and another 9 percent were U.S. citizens
raised internationally. Eighty-six
percent had a college education or
higher; of these, nearly 44 percent had
postgraduate degrees.
As a group, they were married to an
FSO for an average of 26 years and had
2.32 children per spouse, nearly the
same as the U.S. national average. At
the time of the study, 40 percent were
working full-time, 30 percent were volunteering,
20 percent were working
part-time and volunteering, and 10
percent were retired. Most spouses
appeared content with their last overseas
assignment and reported that
their participation in activities had
been high (though their interaction
with embassy personnel and formation
of friendships within the U.S. embassy
community were both low).
More than half were employed at
least part-time at their last assignment;
of those, more than three-quarters
were completely or mostly satisfied
with their work. Eighty percent had
volunteered at their last overseas post
and reported high satisfaction with that
work — an indication that the Family
Liaison Office initiative to extend employment
and volunteer opportunities
for spouses overseas is working.
At the time of their last re-entry,
most spouses (80 percent) had had
previous returns, while for 20 percent
it was their first experience. More than
50 percent had been back for more
than 10 years, while 25 percent had
been back for three years or less. Onehalf
had young children and adolescents
at the time of re-entry, and the
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