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The normal demands on a growing family are, in and of themselves, substantial. But imagine combining the "everyday" demands with the added pressure of a marriage in which circumstances dictate that spouses live in different locations (often called "commuter marriages"). This situation can take a significant toll on a family, for obvious reasons.
Jennifer Conlin of the New York Times wrote about this ever-more-common scenario earlier this month. Due, at least in part, to fewer job choices in a faltering economy, Conlin reported that that
In 2006, the Census Bureau reported that 3.6 million married Americans (not including separated couples) were living apart from their spouses. In March, Worldwide ERC, the association for work-force mobility, released a report revealing that three-fourths of the 174 relocation agents surveyed had dealt with at least one commuter marriage in 2007, a 53 percent increase since 2003.
She went on to discuss the reality that while economic pressures may drive families to this difficult choice, modern technological advances (Skype, e-mail, etc.) make the physical separation a little easier for some families to bear:
“A couple of hundred years ago a sailor went to sea and you didn’t know if he were dead or alive for a few years,” says Tina B. Tessina, whose latest book, The Commuter Marriage: Keep Your Relationship Close While You’re Far Apart, gives couples tips on how to stay connected, which include making use of the latest technology.
Nancy Jamison of Jamison Consulting reflects on how such technology is benefiting not only families in the corporate world, but in the military one as well:
Outside of corporate life, feel good press pieces have also made much about the use of video for keeping armed services families in touch with each other. This is on top of the fact that troops now have cellphones, which they can often use from anywhere in the world (when allowed) to call home. This in itself has amazed me the most as never before in any conflict have we kept so close to the troops by getting everything from phone calls, to pictures and videos sent by cell phones and other devices.
With or without the technological aids, it's hard to imagine that this scenario is one that families would enter into lightly. Dad reading books to the kids via webcam may be helpful in a pinch, but it's no substitute for the real thing. Many families feel it's a leap they just couldn't make, including Betsy Shaw of MOMformation:
...Leaving the country to pursue career goals, and not seeing your children for weeks, months, possibly even years, is not a choice I think I could make.
Perhaps this is the spoiled, sheltered American in me talking. I realize that many immigrants have been doing just that– working in foreign countries and sending money back to their families to keep them fed– for decades, not to mention active military members, but it’s a concept this child of the sixties and early seventies can’t easily grasp.
It's a valid point. I agree with Betsy , knowing the dynamics of my own marriage and family, that this option would be unthinkable for me. But perhaps it's unthinkable to me because it's not required of me, and it doesn't appear that it will be any time soon. Families have had to make tough choices for generations, long before webcams made it seem more palatable.
When Rachel Emma Silverman of the Wall Street Journal Juggle (a blog geared entirely toward handling work/family balance issues) addressed the topic of commuter marriages, commenters reacted strongly, with a majority of them expressing their own discouraging experiences with the arrangement. One wrote:
My DH and I subsisted in a commuter marriage for 5 years back when we were in academia (it is very very common in academia because it is so hard to find jobs in the same geographic location). It was horrible and we would have to be on the brink of losing everything before I would do it again. The person doing the commuting (in our case, it was me) always feels like a guest.
Anissa Mayhew puts a very personal face to commuter marriages in her post "Getting to THAT point." A job opportunity for her husband required that he moved, but Anissa, for many reasons, including having
