Army Divorce Rates Drop Significantly
Soldiers and their spouses are flocking to new and improved programs to help them strengthen their marriages, and a dip in divorce rates appears to show it's having a positive effect. The Army’s divorce rate had soared over the past three years, most notably for officers, as longer and more frequent war zone deployments place extra strain on couple’s family life. Military families are being asked to make enormous sacrifices, and unfortunately, not every family structure is up to the challenges. Between 2001 and 2004, divorces among active-duty Army officers and enlisted personnel nearly doubled, from 5,658 to 10,477, even though total troop strength remained stable. In 2002, the divorce rate among married officers was 1.9 percent — 1,060 divorces out of 54,542 marriages; by 2004, the rate had tripled to 6 percent, with 3,325 divorces out of 55,550 marriages. Divorce experts believe that young military marriages, co-ed military units, financial decision-making, and the bureaucracy of being a military officer’s spouse were just some of the factors contributing to the already established problems of spousal absence and combat stress among military families. Allocation of finances were a huge problem because so many military members have no control over their finances when they’re overseas and their at-home spouses are spending the monthly checks the way they see fit, sometimes on their new love relationships. When deployments became more frequent and for longer periods of time, infidelity must have been the leading cause to why the Army divorce rates have sharply increased. A lot of times it is the women who remain on base to take care of the children and when her husband is gone for 6 months to a year, she may inevitably make new relationships with the men on the base. The Army began to realize the stresses of military life and multiple deployments that were being place on couples, and the Army and other services...