Effect of deployment on military marriages?

[yamiyugikun]

Hi,

I read this article and wondered what people here thought of it. Have you noticed any increase in divorce over the last 8 years of war?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_military_divorces

Naomi

[jcustis]

There has been an increase for sure, but that may be due largely in part because more troops are getting married just before the deployments, and they are not around during those formative months when the bride needs them most. This is from an infantryman's experience though.

[Entropy]

I've heard this statistic before and it always made me wonder "why":

As in previous years, women in uniform suffered much higher divorce rates than their male counterparts: 7.7 percent compared to 3 percent for men in 2009.

A DoD-wide increase, as reported in the article, isn't very helpful for analysis. I suspect that small increase actually represents very large increases among a few military communities, but who ultimately knows unless the DoD releases the statistics?

[Cavguy]

Hi,

I read this article and wondered what people here thought of it. Have you noticed any increase in divorce over the last 8 years of war?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_military_divorces

Naomi

I would suppose it is higher - a 15 and 14 month tour, respectively, placed my marriage under a great deal of strain - then again, the wife sometimes says my second 14 month absence may have saved our marriage!

Anecdotally, I will say that fewer junior enlisted and officers seem to be married now than when I first came in the Army - part of the consequence of not being around long enough to court a spouse and then convince her to accept a marriage to someone who will be gone on a 1:1 or 1:2 basis pretty much indefinitely.

That said, I also believe there has been a military "baby boom", usually coinciding 9 months after returning from combat!