Thursday, December 19, 2002
Study shows that combat soldiers more likely to divorce
A story released today by the Associated Press reports that according to a study conducted by the researchers of Brigham Young University, men who served in combat in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were 62 percent more likely to get divorced than other men of their generation.
The study published this week in the academic journal Armed Forces & Society, found that combat duty was a consistent hazard to marriage. Military service alone - without combat duty - had little effect, the study determined.
The study focused on combat veterans for all three wars as a whole but didn't compare that data among wars. The report also looked at veterans as a whole from each war - those who served in and out of combat - and compared them to veterans from other wars and to their non-serving peers.
All World War II vets - including those who served on the front lines and those who never saw combat - were overall better able to maintain their marriages than other men of that generation who did not serve in the war, the study found.
But Korean War vets, as a whole, were 26 percent more likely to get divorced than non-veterans of their generation, and twice as likely to divorce as World War II vets.
Researchers say the Korean War anomaly was their most surprising finding. It was more pronounced than that for the Vietnam War, whose veterans are commonly thought to have suffered the most devastating effects of war. But Vietnam War servicemen - those who saw combat or not - were overall no worse off at marriage than other men of their generation, the study found.
They speculate that many such veterans fought gritty, mostly cold-weather and often brutal battles that never seemed to earn the status of the earlier "great" war. Social changes, meanwhile, were making divorce more acceptable at home in the 1950s, said Sven Wilson, assistant professor of political science at Brigham Young University.
The study was based on information taken from government-funded surveys of families between 1987 and 1994 that included 1,600 war veterans. Of those, 623 saw combat duty. The study examined the first marriages of all soldiers who got married before, during or after their military service. Any marriages that dissolved before someone's military service were not considered.
The stress of service has even been linked to violence. This summer, an Army report concluded that five marital murders involving couples at the military base in Fort Bragg, N.C., were likely due to existing marital strife made worse by frequent separations of military families as the soldiers trained and fought.
