What jobs suit Army Officers wives????

[Wifey1]

A simple question here:

What jobs can Army Officers wives successfully hold down despite all the joyous compromises which come from marrying an officer???

I keep hearing that teaching is a popular choice, any advances on this

Thanks scary I was thinking of our friends there!

Now the assumption of doing what is expected of you is a load of old tosh in my book. Be yourself and be true to yourself. If you want to be a childminder be a childminder. If you want to arrange flowers in the mess - well so be it!

As an aside I went to a dinner party at the weekend and I met the most extraordinary woman. Officer's wife - she was the rudest, most foul mouthed, opinionated person I have ever met. Every 3rd word was 'Fcuk' and then she had the cheek to decribe various people as 'common'. She was so ghastly I wanted to punch her!!

snap Process very different indeed here. No more old school tie/network etc. Promotion purely based on ability, your profile, your reports etc. Your marital status would have nothing to do with it.

ScaryTeacher "Do you just open your mouth to change feet? You go in with an attitude like that and you won't get far at all."

I didn't mean to appear ungrateful at all and I didn't mean "motherly" in a derogatory fashion. I genuinely want to hear all of the advice you all have to offer.

My partner is quite interested too.

It appears I got off to a poor start but please forgive as this is my first venture onto this site.

Hope you haven't been put off wifey1.
So are you about to embark on a new career then?

Are you already a forces spouse or soon to be married?

we have spent well over 50% of our time out of the uk in a number of different places. if you are a teacher and are wanting to work in sce schools, you need to be an sce teacher. you can't apply for this job for specific schools. so you are ok if you're in the uk, but not o'seas. lots of wives are teachers because they met their husbands when they were sce teachers living in the mess (officers mess).
nurses - again, ok in the uk, but not o'seas.
honestly? you do whatever you can find, wherever you find yourself. and less than two years later, you fetch up in a new place and start again.

that is, if you can find someone to hire you because they know you're leaving again, and if you have jumped through whatever hoops are in force about employing foreign workers.

i'm a bit confused though - surely you are not planning on retraining? i mean, most of these 'career' things you're looking at a lengthy period of retraining... or at least a pgce for a year?

the thing about studying as a trailing spouse, is (again) that you move. i've been trying to finish my masters for some years.

interesting that someone mentioned the ta. i'm not army (dh is), but spent some time in the military, and joined the reserves some time after i left. whilst we were in the uk it was easily the most lucrative employment (particularly as with my skill set i picked up 6 month mobilisations which came with paid childcare) but you do run the risk of them being to drier, sandier climes rather than the nearest military facility to your quarter.

on our patch currently, about 10% of the wives work (in low paid unskilled jobs. i am one of them. my hard-earned first counts for diddly squat ). we have unemployed (and unemployable) teachers (lots), nurses (lots), physiotherapists, lawyers, civil servants (lots), ex-mil officers (lots), and a russian princess. oh, and a podium dancer. mostly, as an entity, here, we breed and lunch. (i use the 'we' loosely - have completed my childbirthing duties and as a worker, am unable to 'lunch'). i have seen this replicated in every o'seas posting...

there are of course those who are far less mobile and manage to engineer multiple uk postings around commutable distance - or who are established enough in their career to facilitate career breaks around postings etc. we haven't been in the uk that much, so i have to say out of the hundreds of army (officers) wives i've met, i can't think of a single one that has enjoyed a 'career' in the civilian sense.

please find something! anything! (and then tell us me what it is!)
anything freelance internet based, anything very very very mobile and not dependent on local employers.

i know i sound like a cynical jaded old hag - but this is a very real issue. i just haven't found the answer yet. certainly not for o'seas postings anyway. and i've been looking for some time.

Madwoman your post made me laugh! As I have said the best would be an internet based business. People, if they want to work, have to have a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit.

I am already at my desk, having left home at 05.30. Will get my thinking cap on!

I'm thinking I may go into monkey training next, it's got to be easier than training DCs to get up and to school in the morning

IT has worked for me. I've pretty much been with the same employer for 15 years and whilst the projects have evolved over time as long as I've got an internet connection it's fine.

In those 15 yrs I have done many other things as well but the timing has never been right to change track completely. At one stage when the IT work was looking dodgy I worked in the childcare centre and got SENCO qualified (loved the SENCO bit and would happily have pursued that further in a school environment but o'seas posting cut that short). Have also dabbled in Garden Design (qualified) and got some contracts but again moving made it difficult to build up a client base. Also done some translating work as my degree was in modern languages.

On the childcare front think about other options, ones I've used in the past are Day Nanny and Shared Aupair. The Day nanny worked out great, she lived with someone else and came to me during the day when the older children she lived with were at school. The shared aupair lived with me term-time and through 2 deployments and went back to her original employer during the holidays when her DCs were home from boarding school.

It isn't year round, but examining GCSEs can be done from anywhere on the planet as most of it is now done on line. I net £3k for about 6 weeks hard work, so not bad.

Scary - that's quite lucrative then. Do you have to be a teacher or just have a certain set of skills?

Blimey Scary that's like yachting wages! I presume you need teaching qualifications for that though???

Vintage not married yet, so theoretically have the freedom to walk, however, that's NOT going to happen, hence my keen interest in choosing the right work field so we can both be happy. I've been a grafter since my teens and will get restless without a job so other half is very keen for me to find something fulfilling. Plus, I went into this relationship with a tidy sum under my belt after slaving away on yachts before Uni and wouldn't want to become entirely financially dependent on him once the money's evaporated.

The anthropology degree has left my choices very broad so I am in a position to choose nearly anything to pursue and am really appreciating the wise suggestions on this thread so far.

Teaching is something I have considered and I thought about getting my PGCE through the ELT by going TA for a few years and then hitting Civvy street. I also wanted to do the Civil Service Fast Track a while ago but then I heard about the cuts. I'm quite pleased to see that alot of the suggestions are things I'm not averse to though.

I reckon I've worked out who you are wifey1............you're Kate Middleton !

Hi,
When I had a career I was a civil servant but since following DH around the word I have found PA/ secretarial work quite easy to come by and doesn't pay too badly at all and if you are working in a big company you often get to see the internal vacancies so can use it as a stepping stone ...
My S-i-L is a Midwife and it has worked well for her moves over the years

Can you say what regiment your partner is in?

How about wedding planning? You could do that anywhere and it requires many skills, earns good money and with the right marketing, you could have quite a mobile business.

wifey1 when you don't have kids its a lot easier, before ours came along I worked,lived in our own house, earned more and actually managed at one point to get transfered into roughly the same area so even lived in a quarter (albeit with an hour commute to and from work). Then kids come along and you realise that the transferable job would have been a good option as the commute, not seeing each other until weekends is not really an option with little babies in tow. So now I am in the situation where my field of work was so specific that I can't get a job 90% of the time where DH is posted and now need to retrain. You are actually being very sensible in thinking about it before you start down you career path :)

vintage so wifey1 are coming to live in North Wales, if so there are not that many job opportunities that don't involve sheep

What about a private counsellor? Very transferable and useful and a rewarding job.

For team leading examiners (which is what I do) and marking the more lucrative questions you need to be a teacher, otherwise doing a PGCE lets you mark the easier (and cheaper) questions. I've marked for several years and got selected to team lead last year, so that is more lucrative.

I also don't pay tax so whilst it sounds good, that will be all I'll earn for the year.

If you not looking for money there is always SSAFA volunteer work ?

Vintage Kate Middleton I wish!!!
Nope, I'm just simple unknown me.

Those in the Military-know will laugh now when I say that the other half has not got his regular commission yet so could end up in any regiment technically (as this shows how young we are). However, he had a fam visit to 1RGR and came back buzzing but then broke the news that if he goes as a Ghurka Officer he may get moved about alot and end up in Nepal at times.

I can see he is worrying about how this affects us (he's itching to pop the question but he has been banned for a year atleast) and I want to be able to reassure him that he doesn't need to change his choices to keep hold of me.

He says he might not even get in (to make me feel better????) but this is bollocks and he knows it. He is a brilliantly able young man and there is no reason why he wouldn't be top of their list.

When we first started dating, I firmly told him that he was too young to make any compromises on his career for me (go do sneaky beaky, para stuff, what the heck), and that if at some point I couldn't hack military life, that would be my loss.

So, picking up on the point made by wheresthepimms, I really want to know early on what career path (if any) can adapt to the stages of life particular to a forces spouse. Then I won't be kicking myself or him later hopefully.

Now I need a nice morning cup of

I'm a bit at the and wouldn't want to become entirely financially dependent on him once the money's evaporated. post.

I think that once children come along, the majority of wives are dependent on their DH's salary for a good while and many officer's wives don't go back to work (me inlcuded) for a long time.....if ever .

So are you currently working?

What about working your way up a company like John Lewis/M & S/Next so you could be very mobile and get transfers within the company.

You get to choose your hours (if part time), earn decent money and see loads of people every day.

My friend who is a nurse but isn't practicing anymore, worked for a couple of years in a supermarket on the till. She loved it - not too much responsiblity, good money and discounts and was able to pick up kids and take to school.

I'm not saying this is for you but as a filler if you ever get posted somewhere where you cannot continue doing your normal job, it's fine.

vintage we do a full time job cleaning up after neglected kids, moving,packing (lets face it the removal companies are crap at it) and smiling sweetly making polite conversation with bulging senior officers who have quite obviously had their mess dress since they were at Sandhurst when it fitted .

How long do you reckon you have to train/establish yourself?

And with an anthropology degree what would you teach? It seems you could bend it to a variety of disciplines but what would interest you most?

Could you write for a relevant magazine/journal to do with your degree?