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Family Readiness Group - just a gossip group?

September 2nd, 2006 by Double Tap

The National Guard, and the Army as a whole, makes a big deal out of the Family Readiness Groups (formerly known as Family Support Groups). The idea is that if the families band together while their loved-ones are gone, then they will be able to weather life’s problems easier.

This is good in theory, and the army puts a lot of effort into it, but in practice, it leaves something to be desired. My wife, whose first husband was deployed for Operation Desert Storm, found that the FRG was just a big gossip group that spread rumors, innuendo, and gossip about each other and their respective husbands. They didn’t really assist one another. When I asked my wife if she wanted to be involved in my unit’s FRG while I was deployed, she replied, “If the water heater goes out, are any of them really going to come over and fix it?” I had to concede that no, none of them would.

In my experience during this current deployment, the FRG rumor mill was definitely in motion. It got to the point where I was very happy my wife didn’t talk to the FRG and they rarely talked to her. It would never fail that some guy in the unit would tell his wife something about someone in the unit, and the gossip machine immediately kicked into motion. You had to watch what you emailed to people back home, for fear it would forwarded into the “wrong” hands - meaning there would be blow-back from the home front.

I’m sure it wasn’t nearly as bad back in Vietnam or one of the earlier wars when communications back home consisted of a letter or a cassette-tape recording that took a couple of weeks to get there. Now, with internet in our CHUs (containerized housing units) and daily telephone calls from the MWR, the start of a rumor or a string of gossip is only a mouse-click away. We’ve even been admonished by our commander to watch what we say to the folks back home.

I don’t know that there is a solution. As I said, it sounds good in theory, but in practice, these groups are definitely problematic.

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