Divorce Rates Higher for Women in the Military

I ran across this article from divorce360.com, Military: Women Soldiers' Divorce Rate Twice as High as Men, Military Says and I pass along the following without comment. I just find this interesting and, because no one knows the cause, mysterious.

"Women soldiers in the United States military are more than twice as likely to become divorced as their male counterparts, according to figures released by the Department of Defense. And no one is exactly certain why."

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Karney said there is speculation, however. "One thought is that support services available for military families are geared for supporting civilian wives of male servicemen," he said. "Another possibility is that women who are service members are different than men in the military in important ways. It has been said that the military recruits the most traditional men in our society. But the military recruits the least traditional females in our society. They are not the women who are most invested in the general role assigned to women. A third possibility is that it may be more stressful to be a civilian husband of a military wife than it is to be a civilian wife of a military husband. We don't know the answers. But we recommend there needs to be more research done on women in the military."

Since 2000 and possibly further back, divorce figures for military personnel have changed little despite the current conflict in Iraq, according to MeInyk. “The highest divorce rate was among Navy personnel in 2006. That service had a divorce rate among its married personnel of 3.4 percent,” the colonel said. The Army’s divorce rate was 3.2 percent that year, the same as the average for all branches of the military. The Marine Corps chalked up a rate of 3.3 percent the same rate as the Air Force, Melnyk said.