She's a Navy spouse and a mother of three, so Jennifer Barnhill understands the plight and the struggles military families face.
In fact, few understand it as well as she does: She’s a journalist and researcher whose work focuses on disability, gender and military family policy. Her work has been cited by the White House and her reporting featured in publications including Military.com, Military Times, The War Horse, The Independent, Military Spouse Magazine, Military Families Magazine and others. She’s also a regular guest on military podcasts, including Holding Down the Fort Podcast, The Spouse Angle, The Trident Room Podcast, Flight Talk, Milspouse Matters, Shine Sis Podcast, For the Sake of the Child and The Call to Marriage Podcast.
In a story she wrote for The War Horse, Barnhill recalls pursuing a career as a reporter and wanting to dig deeper into the question of “Why?” — why so many in military families seemed to be overlooked by military bureaucracy.
“If military families matter so much to the DOD, why do pivotal roles within military spousal support organizations go unpaid?” she wrote. “Why does our job of stay-at-home spouses, secondary breadwinners, and primary parents earn us the title of ‘dependent’ and not ‘teammate’?
“Why does it feel like we, as military spouses, are an afterthought?
“The answer seemed pretty straightforward: We are pin-ups. We are welcome-home signs. We are acknowledged with words but are also reduced to two-dimensional roles that do not take our individuality into account. Today military spouses are overeducated, underemployed, and underpaid. We live lives as temporary single parents, juggling work, parenting, marriage, friendships, and the military lifestyle.
“And yet,” she continued, “with all that is (un)officially asked of us, we are still labeled “dependents” on military paperwork. We are not dependents. We serve too.”
CityView’s Bill Horner III spoke to Barnhill about the state of military families and about her work in that area. For more about Barnhill’s story — and the development of her passion for the military family community — read this story she wrote for The War Horse.
What’s going right — and what’s not going so well — in that community right now?
My reporting and personal military experience as a Navy spouse have proven to me that military families are truly exceptional. They go through a lot and frequently. Although those military families are really exceptional at "making it work," I think the DoD relies upon families to elevate their concerns. The DoD is currently in a reactive stance. This could be easily corrected by performing more frequent program evaluations to see and assess where people are, and how they’re accessing the programs and supports that are already in place to help them. This would allow the DOD to sunset programs that are not working and bolster programs that are working.
In so many areas these days, we see a disconnect between data from research and actual change in policy and practice that should be driven by the data. Is that more common in the military?
I have observed that the larger military community is great at collecting data on its people. Organizations like Blue Star Families, Military Family Advisory Network, GAO, RAND and others regularly connect families with leaders by simply reporting the data on the population. While these organizations cannot ensure that policies are crafted that address these concerns, leaders have reliable data on which to base their decisions.
I think the disconnect I have observed more often happens at the implementation level. Through my reporting, I have witnessed families share their feedback with nonprofits or third-party data collection organizations in surveys. Those organizations then use this data to formulate recommendations. Those recommendations are often used in crafting policies. But ultimately the people on the front lines who implement these policies may not be unaware of the history of why they now have to do XYZ. It also can become a game of telephone ... where the family feedback gets reinterpreted along the way.
So much of your work — researching, writing, podcasting, advocating — focuses in and around the experiences (among them, the challenges and hardships) military families face. You’re working on a book about those experiences. What can you share about the book?
I have been telling military family stories and focused on military family policy for a few years and in doing that work I have noticed one main theme. Right or wrong, military families feel like the issues that they face don’t matter to the DoD. One of the reasons they don’t feel like they matter is because they don’t see their stories told in military media, or by the leaders themselves. We often see the issues that impact military families discussed not by the military/elected officials but by their unelected, unofficial spouses.
The military leaders I have interviewed seem to really care about military families, but are tasked with conducting an operational mission. Warfighting is seen as their primary mission. However, if we believe that military families are an essential part of that operation mission and maintaining a ready force, then a mindset shift is required. Wars are not only fought on battlefields because service members are not just instruments of war, but whole humans with flaws and families and complexities we can't understand just because we have seen a war movie.
This book presents the stories beyond the stereotypical primary military warfighter narrative, by telling other military stories. For example, when we think of the POWs who were held hostage at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War … we rightly try to remember the stories we heard of torture and photos of too-thin bodies, trying to remain strong despite years of agony. We remember their stories to honor their sacrifice.
But what we forget, or never knew in the first place, was who brought those men home. The primary and popular narrative tells us they got home because their government had their backs and the DoD doesn’t leave a man behind. But the reality is both the DOD and the government had failed those men. It took the advocacy of their wives, led by the courageous Sybil Stockdale to help facilitate their safe return.
My book hopes to highlight more of those amazing stories and individuals to offer a more diverse view of our military community. Not only does telling a more diverse military family stories help current military spouses feel seen, it serves to act as a bridge between the average American experience and the military lifestyle. We may not understand what it’s like to be held captive as a prisoner of war, but we can understand what it feels like to worry about our loved ones, and to do almost anything to ensure their safe return.
Over the summer, you were named as one of 34 scholars to the 2023 Stand-To-Veteran Leadership Program, part of the George W. Bush Institute’s work to improve veteran and military family outcomes across the U.S. It’s a new and unique initiative. What are you working on in relation to that?
My project is focused on telling more military family stories. In my presentation, I collected some data because I’m a data nerd. What I found was military family stories are underrepresented in military news media. I believe this is because military families don’t know how to approach the media and if they do, what they are allowed to say. My project hopes to eliminate these barriers.
I created Military Dinner Table Conversations, reverse town halls that give military families a seat at the table to better understand the issues they face. These Conversations will help inform my reporting and generate a source list for other journalists, who are looking to feature individuals impacted by specific issues. I will also be soliciting grant funding to fund a position that will solicit, edit and place military family stories.
Learn more about the program. Applications for the 2024 cohort are open until January 5, 2024.
If you could make it happen with the snap of a finger, what five outcomes for these families would be your highest priorities?
Among all the other work and projects in which you’re involved, you serve as the military spouse liaison on The League of Wives Memorial Project. What’s its objective, and how’s that work going?
The goal of this organization is to erect the very first statue, honoring the contributions of military spouses. We are in our final stretch of fundraising so please consider donating. The military spouses being honored are referenced earlier in this email.
The League of Wives was headed by Sybil Stockdale, and their goal was to ensure the safe return of their husbands from the Hanoi Hilton. They were called the League of Wives because at that time, during the 1960s-70s there were no male military spouses. We are nearing the end of our fundraising and hope to have a statue erected in the town of Coronado, California, in 2024. Coronado is where Sybil helped establish the League, holding many dinner table conversations (the name of my program was intentionally chosen to pay respect to this legacy) with other naval aviator spouses whose husbands were based out of the local Navy base. Once it is erected, we hope that military spouses will be able to visit the memorial and feel connected to this amazing legacy. The statue was intentionally designed with an open space in the back so that the viewer becomes a part of this group of figures. Although, at that time, all of the women were wives, we know today that military spouses are very diverse. This empty space makes the statue more inclusive, as we all seek to continue their tradition of fiercely caring for and protecting the people we love, who just happen to be military service members.
To contact Jennifer, go here, or visit her LinkedIn page. She can also be found on Instagram.
