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Up until the 90's people in the military actually divorced at a lower rate than the general population, then in the mid - late 90's it evened out but in the 2000's GI's actually have a higher divorce rate than the general population. What changed?
I remember when the bars outside of any military base would be packed with women on the days when the guys would finish basic training/boot camp especially in small military towns(towns that had more than one base or post). I used to work a civil service job that took me to a lot of bases.
You would think all the military benefits would take much of the stress out of a marriage, so what has changed?
My first duty station was in North Dakota, 1990, right before the First Gulf War.
There were many guys in my unit who had spent nearly 20 years in the military and Minot was their only duty station and they had never deployed, not even once. They did go on a week long training course or a two week TDY every once in great while, though. Obviously, this stability went a long way in helping a marriage thrive. The guy was home to help his wife deal with life’s myriad of problems.
Fast forward to today, and military guys (and women too) are in a non stop cycle of deployments. The only way to make it stop is to leave the military.
Just using me an example, I’ve been on over a dozen deployments in a 30 year career (some as a contractor after retirement). I remember some years where I spent over 330 days away from my assigned duty station, and this happened multiple times. The worst was when I was assigned to Spec Ops, we were gone literally all the time.
So in my experience, when the ops tempo goes up, it puts a strain on families.
My first duty station was in North Dakota, 1990, right before the First Gulf War.
There were many guys in my unit who had spent nearly 20 years in the military and Minot was their only duty station and they had never deployed, not even once. They did go on a week long training course or a two week TDY every once in great while, though. Obviously, this stability went a long way in helping a marriage thrive. The guy was home to help his wife deal with life’s myriad of problems.
Fast forward to today, and military guys (and women too) are in a non stop cycle of deployments. The only way to make it stop is to leave the military.
Just using me an example, I’ve been on over a dozen deployments in a 30 year career (some as a contractor after retirement). I remember some years where I spent over 330 days away from my assigned duty station, and this happened multiple times. The worst was when I was assigned to Spec Ops, we were gone literally all the time.
So in my experience, when the ops tempo goes up, it puts a strain on families.
But from the mid 70's back solders were going to war all the time the only decade we didn't have a war or police action was the 30's and GI's have been shipped around the world on assignment since after WW2. Now once you got a little rank that slowed down, but not completely
So it has to be something else, the only thing I can think of was in the past there was a stigma against divorcing a GI as if it made you unpatriotic or something. up until the 80's the majority of the few divorces that did happen were filed by the GI(usually when deployed overseas) and that was still rare now the vast majority are filed by the spouse whether deployed or not.
Is our current culture not conducive to creating women who are happy being military wives(many women want their own careers and that would be hard if you have to move every 3-4 years and have to start over somewhere else)?
But from the mid 70's back solders were going to war all the time the only decade we didn't have a war or police action was the 30's and GI's have been shipped around the world on assignment since after WW2. Now once you got a little rank that slowed down, but not completely
So it has to be something else, the only thing I can think of was in the past there was a stigma against divorcing a GI as if it made you unpatriotic or something. up until the 80's the majority of the few divorces that did happen were filed by the GI(usually when deployed overseas) and that was still rare now the vast majority are filed by the spouse whether deployed or not.
Is our current culture not conducive to creating women who are happy being military wives(many women want their own careers and that would be hard if you have to move every 3-4 years and have to start over somewhere else)?
Back in the 70’s and before, the military was very different. There were hardly any family centers, and there weren’t many services set up for married families at all. I don’t know what the figures are, but the services were definitely made up of mostly younger and mostly single members back in the day, who mostly got out after one term. So you didn’t have that many older families who got divorced.
In the USAF, they went to a policy goal of “75-25” back in the 70’s, which they had never had before. Basically, they wanted more experienced Airmen and they wanted to improve retention past the first term. They understood that in order to do that, they would need to make family services, to include base housing and schooling, much more robust. I’m pretty sure the other services took steps to do this as well, except the USMC. As far as I know, their billet structure, even to this day, is set up so that most have to separate after their first term. Of course, most want to separate anyway, it’s hard to want to endure those hardships longer than one term, but true, some guys thrive on that lifestyle and want to keep going. Of course, I could be wrong on today’s USMC, maybe there is now a second term retention goal that is new?
However, I hear what you are saying. In addition to the ops tempo, there is probably some other factor going on as well. I’m not sure how you could ever know unless the military started collecting data on why military families break up. I suspect they don’t do this as that would take a lot of work to maintain that database.
But from the mid 70's back solders were going to war all the time the only decade we didn't have a war or police action was the 30's and GI's have been shipped around the world on assignment since after WW2. Now once you got a little rank that slowed down, but not completely
So it has to be something else, the only thing I can think of was in the past there was a stigma against divorcing a GI as if it made you unpatriotic or something. up until the 80's the majority of the few divorces that did happen were filed by the GI(usually when deployed overseas) and that was still rare now the vast majority are filed by the spouse whether deployed or not.
Is our current culture not conducive to creating women who are happy being military wives(many women want their own careers and that would be hard if you have to move every 3-4 years and have to start over somewhere else)?
All the time is a bit much. A battalion here and there were in a small fight or peacekeeping mission but the bulk of the Army was Monday through Friday most of the year. Only the troops in Korea went unaccompanied
Back in the 70’s and before, the military was very different. There were hardly any family centers, and there weren’t many services set up for married families at all. I don’t know what the figures are, but the services were definitely made up of mostly younger and mostly single members back in the day, who mostly got out after one term. So you didn’t have that many older families who got divorced.
In the USAF, they went to a policy goal of “75-25” back in the 70’s, which they had never had before. Basically, they wanted more experienced Airmen and they wanted to improve retention past the first term. They understood that in order to do that, they would need to make family services, to include base housing and schooling, much more robust. I’m pretty sure the other services took steps to do this as well, except the USMC. As far as I know, their billet structure, even to this day, is set up so that most have to separate after their first term. Of course, most want to separate anyway, it’s hard to want to endure those hardships longer than one term, but true, some guys thrive on that lifestyle and want to keep going. Of course, I could be wrong on today’s USMC, maybe there is now a second term retention goal that is new?
However, I hear what you are saying. In addition to the ops tempo, there is probably some other factor going on as well. I’m not sure how you could ever know unless the military started collecting data on why military families break up. I suspect they don’t do this as that would take a lot of work to maintain that database.
For this thread I was mostly speaking of lifers(those who stay in 20+ years) yes it's pretty much always been around 80% that sign up for 2-4 years and yes the Air Force has had the highest percentage of lifers of all the branches(it's the only branch where the officers do most of the fighting lol), it's the reason why the AirForce is the slowest to move up in rank in (the more lifers the more competition for rank).
I'm guessing its the career thing, since women have more opportunities now the downsides of military life stick out more, while in the past when women had fewer opportunities the stability of being married to a GI and getting to see the world(or at least most of the country) + full medical and dental was more appealing one step above landing a guy with a union job. I knew a few guys back in highschool(back in 89) who weren't that good looking who joined the service to improve their options for a future wife lol all but one was married within their first few years and though not all of them married hotties they all married many steps above what they were able to date as civilians lol.
A friend of mine is a contract nurse on a airforce base. She describes these "family services" to be quite the welfare programs. On her base female GIs and their wives are popping out babies like crazy.
Because we've been at war for 20 years. I was recently watching a WWII documentary and it stated that approximately 40 or 60 percent of returning servicemen got divorced. I don't recall the exact percentage, but it was one of those two numbers.
Seems many I knew that got married and ended up divorce, got married due to the benefits, mainly to get some housing and comrats versus living in the barracks. If not that, then many rushed into marriage because it was the first adult like thing it seems they ever did, so they sort of was starry eyed about it all.
Societal changes.
Spouses no longer feel compelled or forced to put up with marital problems because it's expected of them. For a long time it was almost a sin to divorce a servicemember as if it's some unpatriotic thing. Now, if the person is a rats dropping butt head, dump the bum! As society's maturity advances, so will it's people and their thinking.
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