Ladies, you have had it easy.

In recent years, military families have become accustomed to discounts, freebies and over the top help from the community. Dare I say it, we are spoiled.

At the same time, veteran’s organizations have noted a recent trend of generational gaps between veterans of different eras. Older vets of Korea and Vietnam, officials said, see younger Iraq and Afghanistan veterans as soft and needy.

Read the article here at http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/24/15392392-older-vets-to-post-911-vets-we-had-it-harder-did-they?lite

I make the same argument for spouses.

Early in my husband’s career, we were responsible for mowing our own lawns. There was no hourly childcare on base and if your car broke down, you better darn well have insurance that provided a tow truck.

We watched each other’s children and worked together as neighbors, fellow spouses and friends to make the homefront run smoothly. We were a team with a common goal.

Then war erupted and everyone rushed forward to help. It created a community of  spouses are seem more interested in sitting around and demanding services for which they feel they are “owed” rather than getting off their duffs and accomplishing anything.

I have seen spouses, and soldiers, throw outrageous fits in stores and restaurants when they were told the establishment did not offer a military discount.

I have seen spouses blither on about all they do for their nation and how much they are “owed’ a debt of gratitude just to get a free mini-bottle of lotion.

And when we were stationed at Fort Bragg, one young spouse in our unit didn’t want to mow her grass. She felt it would irritate her asthma. Ok, good point. However, this is why you make friends. This is what you should be using part of the extra separation pay for - to pay for the needs your husband would normally take care of if he were not deployed, i.e. yard care.

She, however, felt the Army owed her for allowing her husband to deploy. So she called up and down the chain of command and screamed and stomped her feet until the battalion commander relented and sent a soldier to her house to mow the lawn while she sat on the front porch and watched.

Spoiled. Rotten.

Personally, I think the battalion commander has better things to do. Personally, I would prefer those officers spend their time figuring out how to keep my husband safe and win this war, rather than remove a soldier from the ranks to mow her front lawn.

I could write pages of examples of military spouses I’ve seen gone bad.

I won’t. Instead, I’m going to gently remind these ladies that the gravy train is coming to an end and you need to buckle down.

First, as military deployments to the Mideast begin to wind down further, the civilian population who donates all that fabulous, time, money and product during the up tempo of war is going to stop giving.

They are civilians and don’t understand that even in peacetime there are deployments, separations and hardships for military families. The feeling of patriotic duty is quick to wane and with it will go your free meals and hand lotion samples.

Next, and most importantly, the Department of Defense, which pays your service member’s salary, never approved the 2013 budget. Currently, every federal office is bracing for sequestration by the end of March. In other words, there will be sweeping budget cuts, layoffs and furloughs throughout the federal government. Most government employees are expected to take nearly a 10 percent cut in pay. 

While military pay and money to fund the war in Afghanistan is protected, very little else is.

So, you will still be paid. So why should you care?

Because many of the services you have become used to on base will be cut or gone. Service hours and staffs at commissaries, exchanges, gyms and Child Development Centers could be slashed. 

And if I had my way, perks like free lawn service would have been gone years ago.

Ladies, it’s time to make friends, learn to use the weed eater and get back to basics. While the attention the public gave to our military families was nice and well deserved, it’s not going to continue through this budget crisis.

The nation is in this one together. It’s time we started doing our share.