Sam said:
My daughter has been accepted to the US Naval Academy. She has also been accepted to 2 other reputable universities with sufficient scholarships so that money is not a major issue.
Well the first step should be: congratulations! It's wonderful to have that many choices. It's also quite a testament to being the parent of a teenager who must have despaired many times that she'd never get you guys straightened out...
Sam said:
My daughter loves the Academy, and so do I, for many reasons. Leadership, academic challenge, moral and physical quality. But I find myself awake at night wondering what would life be for her as an officer.
Spouse and I talk about this all the time. Life for women in the armed forces is about the same as it is for WASPs, Hispanics, African-Americans, Asians, Catholics, Jews, Moonies, gays, lesbians, most Democrats, and even Marines aboard naval vessels.
Sometimes it's fun, a lot of times it sucks. Months of boredom punctuated by minutes of sheer panic. Times when you're so proud of your organization and your people that you think you'll levitate, other times when you wonder whether you should just beat yourself unconscious from the shame of an abysmal performance or whether you should beat up your alleged "leaders" first. You're usually paid enough to take care of your family but there are times when it's never enough money.
Above all it will be the most challenging thing she can ever claim to have done. Other goals in life will be achieved (or not) but they'll all be based on the skills, integrity, leadership, time-management skills, and perseverance that she'll develop. For the rest of her life she'll be able to say about her day: "Phew, that sure sucked, but I remember this time at USNA that sucked even worse..."
Sam said:
As a woman, how will she balance her career and family responsibilities? What do other female officers do if they were assigned to a far away post, or to a long duty tour? Husband? Kids?
I'm predicting that she'll manage them better than most men, but that's just my personal bias and possibly not objective. My wife was smart enough to marry me (or smart enough to overcome even that) plus raise a kid. We know plenty of other women naval officers, many of them married to men naval officers, who have done the same. In the worst case it sure helps to have grandparents or other family who can take over for a month or two every few years. (Isolated incidents.) Regardless, the same prioritization & time-management skills learned on the job can help a lot with the family. If it stops being fun, leave the service ASAP.
Female officers on hardship tours do pretty much what the men do. Work out a lot. Some drink a lot. Everyone spends a lot of time swapping e-mail & letters with their families, and gazing at their pictures. Spending money foolishly. Reminiscing with shipmates about what they're going to do when they get home, and telling each other about their families. Many families feel a little jealous when the deployment's over because their long-lost and newly-found spouse/parent is still calling their deployment roomate to catch up instead of devoting all their attention to their family. Sometimes the shipmate bonds seem tighter than family ties.
If you're asking if sex rears its ugly head, of course it does! Whether she's single or married she'll have about as many opportunities to get laid as the men. Doing it within the chain of command is about as smart as drunk driving, though, and equally as deadly to one's career (& perhaps marriage). I suspect that women have better judgment in these areas than men. Many of the sex-scandal stories at the service academies are steeped in underage drinking and blackout memory losses. It's probably like that at any college, but it occurs far less at service academies (although it's far more newsworthy). I can't tell your daughter how to hide alcohol in Bancroft Hall but she's probably smart enough to not drink herself into a coma with the football team.
Oddly enough, having both genders in the workplace dramatically raises the behavior standards and completely avoids a lot of locker-room stuff that can turn hostile and even harassing. I greatly preferred working in mixed-gender commands because guys behave more professionally and spent less time behaving like guys. Spouse says the same about working in all-women commands-- when there are guys around the women are actually nicer to everyone and less vindictive. (I really didn't want to know about the rest of being in an all-woman command.) I think one of the smartest moves the submarine force could make would be to add women to submarine crews, but that's a separate rant topic.
Speaking as a career-oriented naval submariner, I'm extremely glad that I didn't have to compete for fitness-report rankings against women, especially my spouse. Most of them would have wiped the conn with my comparitively substandard performance. I joke with naval couples that I married my spouse so that I'd never have to compete with her for promotion. (It's a joke-- luckily we're in different year groups.)
Sam said:
I guess what I'm really asking is if it is possible to have a happy family and be a female officer at the same time.
Yes. My spouse is living testament to that, and I know a lot more married naval couples than divorced ones. However, like anything else worth having, it's a heckuva lot of work. Again USNA equips one with far more skills than most colleges to handle those tough situations.
As a parent of a veteran, Sam, you're gonna spend the rest of your life worrying. I can't help you with that because I don't know what that's like. I worry when my spouse is at sea or on travel but I also know that she's mean & nasty smart enough to stay out of trouble and better at handling it than I am.
But I would worry less about life at USNA than life at a big, disorganized, free-for-all college where people don't always look out for each other, let alone have high goals & standards. Keep in mind that your daughter's attendance at USNA is no longer your choice, and if you interfere then she will hold it against you for the rest of your life.
I know quite a few USNA grads from the Class of '80, the first class with women, and I went to sea with the subsequent classes. Generally the '80s was a few years of "Lookee there, a GURL!!" and several subversions of the anti-drug motto "Not on my ship". However today's admirals and & senior enlisted have served with women for decades, and most of them have adult daughters of their own. The leaders are mature enough to stop seeing women as objects and to see them as professionals. They're also responsible enough to be held accountable and appropriately punished if they don't see it that way. Women are running the academy-- CAPT Kathy Shanebrook '80 is in charge of the Math & Science departments and just missed being Commandant-- and USNA knows how to handle gender issues much better after a generation's experience. I think gender is settling down to the same level as racism, intolerance, drugs, alcohol, and failure to study for mid-term exams.
By the way, your daughter doesn't really have a choice to attend USNA anymore either. If she passes up this appointment and doesn't put herself through Plebe Year, then she'll spend the rest of her life wondering if she's tough enough to handle the experience. Experiencing it and deciding to quit is completely different from never making the attempt in the first place. She can't back off from this challenge any more easily than she can decide to change her sexual preference or her skin color. I've talked with dozens of people who started & dropped out of USNA before finishing the first year, and their stories are all filled with the same refrain of "I wish..."
If she passes up USNA, that's it. Her one chance is gone forever. She may finagle a nomination in future years but she'll never be offered an appointment again.
If she accepts USNA and later decides to quit, the other colleges will be very happy to have a USNA student. They know the service academies, they know what they're getting, and they're delighted to claim USNA's former students as their own. She'll also have the opportunity to return to the civilian schools for other degrees or graduate programs, something that doesn't exist at USNA. Heck, the Navy may even be willing to pay her to do it someday.
Your daughter is probably already doing it, but she needs to be able to meet the Academy's physical standard for pushups, situps, runs, and pullups. Especially the pullups, and I'd recommend striving to exceed those standards by 50%. Passing with the minimums is not perceived to be good enough to avoid the attention of the PT experts.
She should also read
"Annapolis Autumn" by Bruce Fleming. It's a very balanced perspective on the Academy from a guy who can't be stripped of his tenure but who is definitely not a fan of USNA. She also needs to do that in case she encounters Professor Fleming for her Plebe English class.
PM me if you want your daughter to have the e-mail addresses of Kathy or a midshipman in '07. They'll be happy to talk to her.
As for you guys thinking that women don't belong in combat, and most of you are definitely guys in every pejorative sense of the behavior: If you've never served with a woman in combat, then keep trying. Someday you'll meet the right woman and you'll understand. Until then you don't have a clue to what you're proclaiming.
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