The Career You Never See is IVMF’s campaign to expose the structural hardships military spouses are up against when it comes to family and career. Military spouses are some of the most educated and deeply capable individuals, yet they face persistent unemployment and underemployment driven by the realities of military life.
Frequent moves, licensing barriers, childcare gaps, and repeated career restarts compound over a lifetime to limit income, stall advancement, and degrade retirement security. These are systemic outcomes, not individual failures, and they carry real costs for families, military readiness, and the national economy.
Data tells that story in aggregate, but these stories are most powerful when heard from the military spouses themselves. Over the coming weeks, we’re publishing guest blogs from military spouses in their own words, sharing what career disruption, invisible labor, and starting over again actually look like from ground level.
by Melanie Vernoia
There are certain phrases that, if you’re a military spouse, you hear all the time.
“How do you do it?”
“I could never!”
And my favorite: “You’re basically a single parent.” It’s my favorite because…yes…and also no?
One of the most interesting parts of being married to someone in the military, once you have children, is that you spend weeks, months, and sometimes longer living a life that, from the outside, looks a whole lot like single parenting. You’re the one packing lunches, handling daycare drop-offs, cleaning up stomach bugs at 2 a.m., figuring out why the refrigerator suddenly stopped working, catching a mouse in the house (seriously, that happened) and remembering which kid likes the granola bar open all the way and which one likes to do it themselves to avoid a Mach 3 meltdown.
But unlike someone who is truly single parenting because of divorce, widowhood, or circumstances they never chose, you know there is an end date. At the end of the day, you still have a partner. You’re still texting when schedules allow, celebrating birthdays over FaceTime, and even finding something to argue about on occasion. Your marriage doesn’t disappear just because geography gets in the way.
That’s why I’ve started thinking about it as seasonal single parenting. It’s certainly not the same as being a single mom, but similar enough that pretending it isn’t hard doesn’t feel honest either.
Living Two Lives at Once
As I write this, I’m sitting on an airplane en route to Tokyo.
The good news is we’re visiting my husband.
The less good news is I got into an argument with someone at the airport because my suitcase was overweight, and while I was trying to sort it out (sort it out = pay for it while rolling my eyes), my son pooped his pants.
This made me realize the world seems to always assume there’s another adult standing next to you, and it all felt very on brand for single parenting.
By the time we finally boarded, everyone was fed, everyone was changed, everyone had stopped crying…including me…and I started thinking about how strange this life really is.
Because yes, there are days where I feel like I’m doing everything myself, but there are also days where I realize this same military life has taken me places I never imagined I’d go.
I’ve visited my husband in countless places, and now we’re headed to Japan. My kids are growing up thinking it’s completely normal that Dad might live halfway across the world for a while, and that one day, if geopolitics and schedules allow, we’ll hop on a plane to go see him… (and some friends, because somewhere along the way we’ve accumulated friends in almost every time zone—that’s what military families do).
This life can be exhausting, but it is also one of the most extraordinary lives I could have ever imagined.
The Mental Load Doesn’t Deploy
What I don’t think people always understand is that when your spouse leaves, they don’t just leave an empty seat at the dinner table, they are also behind every little decision that used to belong to two people.
Who is taking the dog to the vet? Did someone sign the field trip permission slip? Is that cough worth a pediatrician appointment or should we wait another day? Why is there a puddle under the washing machine? Is it leaking or did someone leave a wet towel on the floor? Did we already pay that bill?
It’s not that any one of those things is particularly hard. It’s that nobody taps you on the shoulder halfway through the day and says, “I’ve got this one.”
And then there are the moments that make you laugh because what else are you going to do?
The toddler has a blowout in the Costco parking lot, you remember it’s Spirit Week at school, the dog throws up on the rug, and your spouse texts from the other side of the world asking how everyone’s doing. You usually say “we’re good” because what else can you say? But sometimes you feel resentment building, and that is the most important thing to stop before it spreads.
That’s probably the hardest thing to explain to people who haven’t lived this life. You can be incredibly proud of your spouse, grateful for their service, excited about the opportunities military life has given your family…and still wish they were home to carry the tantruming toddler off the Target floor.
It took me a long time to realize I didn’t have to pick one feeling or the other.
Learning to Carry It
These are the conversations you have with yourself. You don’t want to resent someone who is doing something that they have been training for. Something that we may not even understand the importance of at times.
You remind yourself that yes, if they get an afternoon (or five) to play golf or grab beer with friends while they’re away, that’s probably a good thing because it means a) they’re not in a combat zone, b) they’re building relationships with the people they’ll rely on, and c) for a few hours they’re not thinking about how much they miss home either.
Some days those reminders are easier to believe than others, but you have to. To preserve your sanity, your marriage, and your spirit.
Until the Season Changes
That’s why I keep coming back to the phrase seasonal single parenting.
It’s truly a season.
Some are longer than others. Some are easier than others…but none of them last forever.
Eventually the season ends, at least for a little, and oh boy is that a magical feeling. You go from an ultramarathon uphill, to a breezy walk downhill for a while. You know it’ll come again, but you try not to think about it. And you readjust back to life with two parents (which I’ll save for a whole other post).
And then when it happens again, I wonder how the heck I’m going to do it…but like anything, you rise to the occasion. You set your countdown and you march on.
The views and experiences shared in these guest blogs are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of IVMF or Syracuse University. We’re grateful to each contributor for their honesty and for trusting us with their story. Learn more about the professional and personal challenges military spouses face on a daily basis at IVMF’s The Career You Never See.