Quote Originally Posted by Uboat509 View Post
In my experience, FRG has always been a hit or miss thing. I have known some that were awesome and others that were nonfunctional or even counter-productive and the reason for either good or bad was always based on the personalities of the wives involved. There Army has created classes and lectures and killed a lot of trees to try to make FRGs into universally functional organizations but none of that matters if the right people are not involved or if the wrong people are. Expecting the commander's wife to always be the head of the FRG is a huge mistake that I have seen over and over. I have seen too many who thought that they wore their husband's rank or didn't have time to run the FRG because of their own career or family or simply just weren't cut out to lead any organization. I have also seen FRGs that had good leaders but were so poorly supported by the other spouses as to be useless. A well functioning FRG is an absolute asset to any unit but a dysfunctional one creates nothing but drama and more problems than it solves.
Great points. However, there is a major cultural hurdle to overcome in the officer corps. There is huge informal pressure for the CO's wife to head the FRG. If she doesn't, it is often seen as a "ding" on her husband. You won't find that stated anywhere in print. But it is clearly expected in most cases. My wife refused to head the FRG in my company during its second deployment for several practical and personal reasons. Ultimately it didn't hurt me, but I felt the pressure, and so did she.

Funny thing is she got very involved at our next assignment in spouse activities, and even received TRADOC's highest spouse award. When the pressure wasn't on it was much more "fun".

Bottom line is that it is still "expected", especially as a field grade, that a spouse will head the local FRG. If she does not, the husband usually has to be outstanding in every other respect to compensate.

I think many bad FRGs stem from spouses who grudgingly accept the role, but their heart isn't in it. They do it out of duty/loyalty/guilt, and it reflects in their performance. Pure volunteerism by the "right" sort of people makes a difference.