Married to the military: It’s not so bad, study finds

A drumbeat of news stories has warned that military marriages are being stressed to the breaking point by repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But a study by the Rand Corp. think tank has found that the divorce rate among military families is no higher than a decade ago.

The study also found numbers that suggested that war-zone deployments could actually strengthen marriages by providing extra money -- in the form of combat pay and tax breaks -- and giving the deployed spouse a sense of job satisfaction.

The yearlong study, “Families Under Stress: An Assessment of Data, Theory and Research on Marriage and Divorce in the Military,” was commissioned by the Department of Defense and conducted by the Santa Monica-based think tank. It was released Thursday.

In 1996, 3% of marriages among male enlisted personnel and 1.4% among male officers ended in divorce. By 2000, the figures were 2.7% and 1.2%. In 2005, the figures were 2.8% and 1.5%. Differences among branches of the active-duty military were small.

Kristin Henderson, author of the 2006 book “While They’re At War: The True Story of American Families on the Homefront,” said the Rand conclusions might reflect the success of the family-support programs that the military had begun. But she said that the study was only a snapshot and that other studies would be needed to get a fuller picture.

“It’s a double-edged thing: Each deployment piles stress upon stress,” said Henderson, a journalist married to a Navy chaplain. “But at the same time, you’re learning coping skills.”

The study recommends an expansion of family-support programs, including an effort begun by the Army to counsel young soldiers and their partners before they consider marriage. The Army calls it the Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge program. Troops call it the “How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk” program.

Divorce statistics, researchers noted, are not the only measure of the stress on military families from repeated overseas deployments and the daily fear that a loved one has been killed.

Lead researcher Benjamin Karney said his study, for example, did not examine how deployments affected children or influenced alcohol and drug use by troops or spouses. “The full impact of these conflicts on military families may not be known for years,” he said.

Divorce and war have long been linked in the public mind. Yet two studies found that the divorce rate among Vietnam veterans was no higher than that of nonveterans of the same age, the Rand study said.

“The conventional wisdom about how deployments affect military marriages turns out to be wrong,” the Rand study concluded.

The study found little difference between divorce rates of Army and Marine Corps members who had deployed and those who had not. In fact, some figures showed that the longer the deployment, the smaller the chance a soldier or Marine had of getting divorced compared with nondeployed troops.

“Although some may find these results counterintuitive, in fact they are consistent with other recent findings that document the benefits of deployment ... for military families,” the study concluded.

The study also found no rise in first marriages among troops since the start of the Afghanistan-Iraq deployment cycle, suggesting that the cliche about young troops marrying their sweethearts just days before going to war was overdrawn.

Henderson said she was concerned that the military would shift money and effort away from family-support programs to deal with such worsening problems as brain injuries and post-traumatic stress among returning troops.

“We need a holistic approach,” said Henderson, whose husband has deployed with the Marines.

The Rand researchers also confirmed what the military had long known: The highest rate of divorce is among female military members in the enlisted ranks. The rate is more than double that of their male counterparts in the service.

One theory is that men are ill-equipped in American society to play the role of stay-behind spouse. Support programs “may be tailored specifically to wives and their concerns” but offer little for husbands whose wives are in Iraq or Afghanistan, the study said.

tony.perry@latimes.com