Trailing spouse

The term trailing spouse is used to describe a person who follows his or her life partner to another city because of a work assignment. The term is often associated with people involved in an expatriate assignment but is also used by academia on domestic assignments.

The earliest citation of the term trailing spouse is attributed to Mary Bralove in the Wall Street Journal (July 15, 1981) in an article titled “Problems of Two-Career Families Start Forcing Businesses to Adapt” p. 29:

Another personnel man remembers the promising executive he lost because her husband was a dentist who couldn’t find a good practice to join in the area. To cope with this problem, some 150 northern New Jersey employers participate in an employer job bank. The bank is designed to provide job leads for “the trailing spouse” of a newly hired or transferred executive.

The phenomena of expat Trailing Spouses is most apparent in the military, diplomatic, and other government communities as well as the private sector where the employer regularly re-assigns their employees to new locations. In each case, the Trailing Spouse is required to relocate and as a result faces a range of issues that impact their personal and working lives.

Issues

• Dual-career challenges - Whereby the Trailing Spouse suspends or gives up their career to follow the lead partner on their assignment.
• Family issues - Stresses caused by social, financial and cultural strains placed on the family relationships as a result of the assignment.
• Barriers to mobility - The willingness or otherwise of the Trailing Spouse or other family members to relocate. Lack of support by the sponsoring employer to address the needs of the Trailing Spouse.
• Work/Life challenges - Difficulties associated with finding and maintaining meaningful work or other sense of worth while on assignments.
• Loss of identity - Difficulties associated with loss of identity and the subsequent period of reshape and remodelling that ensues in the new environment.
• Gender - Experiences and issues facing male trailing spouse vary from those faced by females.

Research into the Trailing Spouse phenomenon

2005 Trailing Spouse Survey: Findings of a 4-year study of accompanying spouse issues on international assignments

Yvonne McNulty is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Management, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University, Australia. In May 2005 she completed a research study and published an 80-page survey containing findings from the 4-year study of Trailing Spouse issues on international assignments which completed a project that was started nearly 5 years ago as part of a much larger study conducted at Southern Cross University, Australia.

From the executive summary of the 2005 Trailing Spouse Survey (paraphrased):

The costs associated with global mobility are high, with evidence suggesting that the costs exceed $1 million per assignee, per assignment, and that the total cost to multinational corporations could be as high as $75 billion a year. It has been clearly demonstrated by industry surveys that ‘family issues’ is the number one reason why international assignments are declined. ‘Family issues’ is also the main cause of assignment failure.

Fiction novels written by trailing spouses

(1) A modest silence, by Sheila Coral Grimes http://www.sheilacoralgrimes.com/ (All proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to Fisher House, for the benefit of wounded soldiers)