The Foreign Service Journal, April 2009

other half had children who were col- lege age or beyond. After their return to the U.S. most spouses quickly be- came involved in their new lives, with two-thirds locating employment or vol- unteer work within the first six months. Findings: Expected and Unexpected The sample’s overall score on the Homecomer Culture Shock Scale was in the low to moderate range (36 on a scale from 20 to 100), showing that the level of re-entry adjustment problems for this group during their last experi- ence was relatively low. Though I had not expected this score to be high, it was even lower than anticipated. For most spouses, re-entry did not appear difficult. However, for approx- imately 20 percent of the sample, the process was more onerous, as shown by scores ranging from 50 to 96 on the HCSS. Statistical analysis was used to identify the characteristics of those who had more and those who had less difficulty, respectively. The statistical results showed that age, the number of years married to the FSO, and the number and ages of their children were strong factors in the spouses’ level of re-entry adjust- ment difficulty. Specifically, spouses who were younger (in their 20s to 40s) reported greater distress than those who were 50 years old or more. Simi- larly, spouses who had been married for shorter periods of time (under 10 years) showed more re-entry culture shock than those who had been mar- ried longer. Spouses with young children re- ported more difficulties than those with older children. The number of children in the family was also associ- ated with re-entry problems — those with fewer than three children had more distress than those with three or more children. These findings struck a personal chord, as they were similar to my own experience, but why should it be so? The answer may be that accompanying spouses are more often the family caretakers. And in this role spouses A P R I L 2 0 0 9 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 35 In an interesting and surprising finding, foreign-born spouses did not report significantly more re-entry difficulty than U.S.-born spouses.