from the service member. Due to the high cost of moving, as well as the inability of unmarried service members of low rank to live off-base, it makes more financial sense to marry. Once married the military then pays for spouse and family relocation, therefore when a permanent change of duty station is imminent tying the knot can seem prudent to a couple that is unwilling to separate. According to Lundquist and Xu, both warzone deployments and permanent changes of duty station can heavily impact a couple’s decision to marry (Lundquist). Both of these situations are common and frequent in the military, unlike in the civilian sector, and likely have a significant impact on marriage rates. Of course when it comes to something as life altering as marriage, there are other factors in play. For instance, one should not overlook the isolated environment of being far away from previous support systems and how that affects bonding. A relationship grown during this vulnerable state can also result in faster marital arrangements. Two further contributing factors are commitment and job security. One could argue that those who are willing to sign onto a military contract likely have no qualms about commitment and that compared to the civilian entry-level sector, the military is more secure employment and can result in the confidence to make these long-term commitments. Unfortunately, when compared to the more cohabitation centric civilian community, military communities may seem out
The authors concluded that the shorter that dwell time, the harder it is for military families to maintain a stable relationship. The authors also provided helpful information on family support and how stress factors can be reduced when military families come across deployment.
The second article, “Military Community Integration and Its Effect on Well-Being and Retention”, Burrell, Durand & Fortado (2003) ask; does integration In the military community affect the spouses
The biggest challenge we face is finding harmony amongst our military obligations, our family obligations, military and civilian education, as well as mandatory training and operational deployments. Your family has to be your first priority. If you don’t get this right, nothing else will work well in your
But, for members of the military, it is a violation of military laws for them to start another relationship while still married, regardless of where they are located.
A survey of 14000 adults states in ‘A Guide to Family Issues: The Marriage Advantage’ that marriage was a pertinent factor contributing to happiness and satisfaction with forty percent of the married individuals being happy as opposed to 25 percent of either single or cohabiting individuals. The same study shows that ninety eight percent of never married respondents wished to marry and out of those 88% believed that it should be a lifelong commitment. Even though, divorce rates are rising numerous researches show that young people aspire to have a lasting marriage.
The podcast, NPR Programs: Talk of the Nation- Faris Family Fights for Their Military Marriage, was enlightening and informative. I would like to say that I commend Command Sgt. Maj. Chris and Lisa Faris, for the service they are providing and having the courage to talk about their life story so the world can get a glimpse of the strain that military has on service members and their spouses. Command Stg. Maj. Chris Faris and Lisa Frais elaborated that marriage isn’t easy and that couples have to really put forth an effort if they want their marriage to work. This interview discussed the reason behind Command Sgt. Maj. Chris and Lisa Faris deciding to share their struggles within their marriage, how the experience of combat affected their marriage, how their struggles in their marriage affected their children, treatment that’s available, and how social workers can assist.
The military lifestyle is simply one of a kind. Our military places enormous stress not only on each of its members, but on each of their families as well. Long periods of separation, lengthy training, and combat deployments affect those in the battlefield and their loved ones at home. Our military has changed forever after the infamous terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. With continuous, hateful threats from our enemies, the demands placed upon our service members have become even more pronounced. Tours have become longer and more frequent. Marriages to military members are constantly burdened with these conflicts. Despite these increased hardships with recent conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq, military marriages are becoming more resilient and are more likely to prevail.
Drawing on relational dialectic theory, Sahlstein, Maguire, and Timmerman interviewed 50 Army wives whose husbands were either deployed at that time or recently returned to discuss their experiences before, during, and after their husbands’ most recent deployment. Through qualitative analyses of 2000 transcribed pages of data, they identified three contradictions with marriage and deployment; uncertainty-certainty during predeployment, autonomy-connection during the deployment, and openness-closedness during reunion. For the most part, they discovered that during their husbands predeployment they experienced high levels of uncertainty because they did not know what to expect. During their husband’s deployment their levels of uncertainty decreased,
This study will utilize the ABC-X Model by Ruben Hill developed in 1958. “The ABC-X formula focuses primarily on pre-crisis variables of families: A (the crisis-precipitating event/stressor) interacting with B (the family’s crisis-meeting resources) interacting with C (the definition the family makes of the event) produces X (the crisis) (https://www.sagepub.com/sites/default/files/upm-binaries/38638_Chapter4.pdf). Crisis-precipitating factors (the A) that can occur within the military would include last minute deployments, back and forth change in PCS orders, finding out the military spouse will be gone to training for a month to six weeks without much prior notice. The A part of the model has to be viewed as problematic. The adjustment to the family structure, as in losing the patriarch or matriarch of the family for an extended period of time during a deployment, can be viewed as problematic especially for families who are new to the military life. The family could also lose their military member entirely during the deployment, or the military member could sustain life changing injuries while overseas. The different resources (the B) would be based on each individual family.
I concur this was a major challenge to me likewise when I retired two years ago adjusting to the civilian work culture, but I just adapted and overcame. The Pew Research Center conducted a survey of 1,853 veterans on asking them did they have a difficult time readjusting to civilian life, and 44 percent of veteran said it was hard. Those who reported the transition to be difficult cited the following reasons: civilian counterpart attire, speech communication and choice of words, the formality of verbal and nonverbal communication, receptiveness to opinions, leadership styles, a focus on responsibilities versus results, and even possibly the definition of success (para.
Through various testimonials, we realized that military spouses were expressing similar concerns about the shift in family dynamics, lack of resources, and lack of support systems. The role reversal was a problem for both female and male military spouses; but especially more so for the male military spouses. The males seemed to have a tough time accepting the fact that their female partners were now considered the “breadwinners.” They also had a tough time adjusting to the domestic lifestyle. Again, this goes back to the fact that males are naturally conditioned to be the “breadwinner.” This then makes men feel emasculated; therefore leading to an increased divorce rate. Resources were not
Brandy, I totally understand the system and the various factors that may come into play during ones enlistment. People on the outside believe that it’s a cozy affair, but there are times were situations are definitely out of our control. I always reenlisted during my initial tours of duty with the Army and since I had no family (marriage) decisions were easy, reenlist for base of preference.
MILITARY SPOUSES AND THE CHALLENGES OF MILITARY Military spouses role vary in ranks, from enlisted to officers they are all seen and approached in different ways because of the military rank his or her soldiers rank may be. “The role of the officer’s spouse encompasses a set of activities that are mostly traditional” (Harrell, 2001, p. 59). Officer’s spouses often are considered to be as elite as their soldier, depending on their rank, “in fact an officer’s wife becomes an extension of the officer” (Harrell, 2001, p. 61).
As I graduated high school, many of my female classmate were getting married to soldiers after a few months of dating. The idea of this terrified my parents and they did not like the idea of me dating a military man. Fate had a different plan, when I was 19, I met Jason. The day we met had been his first day back on U.S. soil after a 14-month deployment to Iraq. As we began to spend more time together, my parents grew used to the idea that we would eventually marry and welcomed him with open arms. Others in our life were more apprehensive and asked questions about how our life would
These constraints lead some cohabiting couples to marry, even though they would not have married under other circumstances. On the basis of this framework, Stanley, Rhoades, et al. (2006) argued that couples who are engaged prior to cohabitation, compared with those who are not, should report fewer problems and greater relationship stability following marriage, given that they already have made a major commitment to their partners. Several studies have provided evidence consistent with this hypothesis (Brown, 2004; Rhoades, Stanley, & Markman, 2009).