Surrogacy and the military spouse: the only job option?

About 2.5 years ago I read a magazine article about military spouses serving as surrogates to other families with Tricare footing the bill for health coverage, which in my opinion is a clear cut case of "fraud, waste, and abuse" of government resources. Apparently this was either never looked into or nobody cared, but now it's cropped up again and is breaking news, probably because the economy is crappier now and people are more worried about how the government is spending it's money. Spouse buzz has written up a piece on it and they rightly pointed out that the Glamour article basically states that contributing to household income is "otherwise unattainable" outside of being a surrogate. Good Morning America interview said that:

"They move around a lot, so they really can't get their teeth into a career, and if they want to contribute to society and do something useful, it's a good use of their time," said Brisman, whose agency employs about 20 military surrogate mothers out of more than 200."[Emphasis my own]

Glamour and military spouses who believe this statement, I am calling you out. Is it hard to keep a job and move around all the time? Yes. Is it doable? Absolutely. Why can't Glamour run an article about all the home based business military spouses run, about the CPAs, lawyers, doctors, nurses and teachers that are military spouses? Why not write about Jehanne Dubrow, who is a college professor and a military spouse? I have really, really had my fill of society and military spouses selling military spouses short of their potential. No one is ever going to value military spouses' myraid and varied contributions to society until we advertise them and tell people we don't want another article about "Poor me, helpless woman who can't do more than be a baby factory". I am not saying military spouses don't have to do more with less. And I am not saying being a stay-at-home mom is a bad decision. There seems to be this culture in the military community where being military spouse can be used as an excuse for not going out there and pursuing personal and professional development. In fact, if anything, what I have experienced over the past 6 yrs has been my husband's commands telling him he just needs to get me pregnant so it's easier to control me. I have experienced military spouses getting angry with me because I have a career and I don't accept that I married a sailor and therefore I no longer have choices about how to live my life and conduct my business. I have experienced service members who have less education and life experience than me (i.e. green around the gills Ensigns) talk down to me, because "they're on the ship". I have experienced professionals and faculty who think I am stupid because I married someone in the military and have said as much. All of this has lead me to believe that military spouses on the whole allow themselves to be convinced of  these negative stereotypes and then internalize them and embrace them.

There is nothing wrong with surrogacy as a way to make money per se. I can see how it might be a good short-term option for someone who wants to be home with their little ones, but using the "this is the only job option available" is really not true. Nor is it fair or appropriate to suck up obstetric appointments from military families trying to have babies of their own, so you can make an extra buck. Seen in this light, using Tricare for surrogacy is basically earning your money at the cost of other military spouses, which is really inappropriate and smacks of a level of selfishness I am unable to quantify. It makes me furious, because I have had to pay out of pocket for an annual exam because I can never get an appointment at an MTF.

There are other options out there and lots of other careers a woman, a military spouse, can undertake. It is simply unfair for military spouses who can't or don't see the big picture that there is a big world out there and there are lots of careers available that are interesting, challenging and contribute to society that are portable to dictate the dialog. Yes, it is more work to pursue them and it is more challenging to keep up in your field and contribute when you move all the time. But it isn't impossible, it simply requires the same ingenuity we apply so well to other aspects of military family life to personal and professional growth and development.

I know GMA and Glamour will never read this blog. They will never run a feature on all the great careers and personal contributions military spouses make outside of being a baby factory. It isn't the type of story that sells magazines. But for those women who are considering surrogacy on Tricare's dime, I want you to think about this. When you allow yourself to be put out there in the media saying that this is the only option available for military spouses and then they say that you are basically conducting "government fraud, waste and abuse" by not following Tricare's rules, you are making not only other military spouses look bad during an unpopular war, you are making the military organization look bad. This makes their jobs, as well as our jobs as spouses, harder. It increases the disconnect civilians feel with the military. It means that in less than 24 hours, when I go to work among professionals, I will be asked to justify your behavior and choices, because the professionals I work with keep up with the news and they view me as a representative of the military community and they will expect that I have some sort of insight into this craziness, which I don't.

It's things like this, and the things my husband's commands continue to say, and people who seem to think I signed up for having my life hijacked and that I should "suck it up and drive on", that make ME feel disconnected from the military community. I wake up everyday in No Man's Land, where I don't understand asking less of yourself or giving up on your dreams because of who you married any more than I understand a complete lack of civic responsibility and dedication to seeing our nation succeed together. There is no support group for I have my own career and life, but I support his career too. To me this is the story, because there are occasional glimmers, women and men who pop up on the internet who are professionals and military spouses, but then they inevitably disappear, probably because they are too damn busy to hang on the internet all the time. And so every once in a while, I think what I am doing is pretty normal, that military spouses are really just a subset of society and so you will find all the same types of people here as you do in civilian society. But what gets promulgated from larger organizations is largely the same old same old. I tell myself that the glimmers of hope are what's important. I tell myself that although it is slow going, there is a sea change coming in which the same old mantra will no longer be used to beat up military spouses who challenge the status quo and live this lifestyle differently. Then I see things like this and it makes me really angry and really depressed that what we continue to put out there about ourselves is so mindnumbing, so 1950s, so backward.

I want military families to be able to earn a decent living, so that if you need to be home with little ones, you can. I don't want military families living below the poverty line. All these things require choices. They require that maybe you put off having kids right away and get an education that will lead to a well paid portable career and that means sacrifice on your part and your spouse's part. It means learning that if you do have a kid, you can still get an education, like lots of single parent I meet (many of whom are working on advanced degrees). It means that we will have to work together as a community to support one another in these endeavors, so that you aren't disenfranchised and treated as a social pariah because you can't go to a play date in the middle of the day, but that there is some give and take and mutual respect between spouses who do work outside the home and those who chose not to. There is also responsibility for your choices. If you choose to stay at home, then you can't have the lifestyle of someone who has two incomes. You have to make do with less and you need to accept that is your choice and there is nothing wrong with it. But there are ways to make ends meet on one income with kids; I've seen it done. None of these things are going to happen, outside of small pockets I encounter from time to time unless we start having honest, intelligent discussions about them and I don't see that happening very much.

Military spouses have a choice about how they want to be viewed in the world. The people they put in charge of them to promulgate their viewpoints are the people that others look at and assume are a good representation of who we are as a whole. Right now they represent a large segment of the military spouse population, but they don't represent all of us. We need to raise people's consciousness about who we are, what we do, and how we do it. We need to inspire young military spouses to resist this notion that because you married a service member, your dreams and your life outside of this organization are over. Let's celebrate the stay-at-home moms, but let's also celebrate business leaders, teachers, nurses, scientists, dual-military couples, etc. The scientific community, a few years ago, put together a campaign of "I'm a scientist" commercials. The mormons subsequently ran a similar campaign "and I'm a mormon". I may not agree with the mormon church, but I do have sincere respect for their PR machine and I think they and the scientific community have this one right. We need an "And I'm a military spouse campaign". If we want America to connect with us in a positive way, then we need to put ourselves out there in a positive way and tell people who we are and how diverse we are. Then and only then can we effectively communicate what we need. But allowing this type of negative press to dictate the narrative is completely shameful and unless we do something about it, we have no one but ourselves to blame for the disconnect with American society.