Military divorce rates on the rise

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SALT LAKE CITY -- When Maria Braman's marriage ended shortly after she joined the Army, she had trouble finding anyone to whom she could relate. That was in 1989. There were only two women in her unit. "And the other girl was single," Braman recalled, "so there was nobody really to talk to." The Army's a different place now. And Braman said younger female soldiers often come to her to talk when their marriages are in crisis. "Now it's different," said Braman, a senior sergeant in the 96th Regional Readiness Command headquarters at Salt Lake City's Fort Douglas. "In my unit, there are a lot of females. And I think the majority of us have been divorced." About one in every five married service members has filed for divorce since September 2001, a period of time during which military divorce has trended upward, even as researchers say that divorce nationwide is slowly decreasing. It's no secret that the current, frenetic pace of extended duty and war-related deployments have been tough on military members and their families. But an analysis of Pentagon data shows the suffering has not been shared equally. Female troops divorce at rates several times higher than their male counterparts. And enlisted service members end their marriages substantially more often than officers. The gaps are significant. And growing. When Joe Lappi's marriage fell apart during his tour of duty in Iraq, he didn't need to look far to find an empathetic ear: His roommate was also going through a divorce, as were many other soldiers from the young officer's Utah National Guard unit. The marital problems faced by Lappi and other Army officers in the immediate aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq were a wake-up call for military officials. More than 27,000 service members filed for divorce in 2004 -- a 44 percent increase over 2001. The 2004 spike was startling to those who monitor the well-being of U.S. troops. "That's when we really started paying attention to divorce rates as an indicator of the overall health of the Army," said Peter Frederich, the family ministries officer at the Army's Chief of Chaplains Office. While the data showed increases in divorce in nearly all segments of the military that year, the spike was led by a threefold rise in the number of Army officers whose marriages had come to an end. The Army quickly responded with a barrage of new resources and programs, and. since then, the number of divorces among Army officers has averaged about 1,200 a year. Officials now call the 2004 spike an anomaly, since divorces among Army officers have been relatively unchanged since 2001 if that year is omitted. Even before the post-2001 increase in divorces, Pentagon statistics show, female service members were twice as likely to divorce as their male counterparts. But while the rate of divorce among males has increased gradually in the past six years, the rate among women has skyrocketed. By September of 2007, female soldiers were filing for divorce at a rate three times greater than the Army's men. Although married women make up about 6 percent of the military, "we still don't have a really good image of what a military husband is," Frederich said. "There's a definite narrative to the Army wife: She's Meg Ryan with three kids, watching her man go off to war. She's pretty tough herself -- independent -- but she loves him. That's a nice image." But husbands of military wives, Frederich said, have a very vague social image. He noted that support groups for military spouses are dominated by civilian women, who often choose to get together over activities more geared toward their gender. He said men tend to see their careers as less mobile than women do -- a major obstacle for nomadic military families. And when female soldiers go off to war, "their husbands know they're going to be immersed in this testosterone-filled environment . . . and that's a breeding ground for resentment," Frederich said. Harking on her conversations with younger female soldiers, Braman added some other common problems. She said civilian husbands often don't understand why their military wives have to work long hours at odd times -- sometimes for months at a time and often on a moment's notice. And female soldiers married to male soldiers often complain that their spouses are jealous -- not of their relationships with other soldiers, but of their rank. Braman said. Although less pronounced, the gap in the divorce rates of enlisted service members and commissioned officers also is widening. While the number of divorcing officers fell drastically following the 2004 spike, the number of divorcing enlisted soldiers has continued to rise. More noncommissioned soldiers ended their marriages last year than at any time since 2001. But while the average level of education among Americans has been on the rise for decades -- pulling with it the rate of successful marriages, demographers say -- the past six years have seen a precipitous drop in the level of education among newly enlisted military personnel, as military officials have lowered educational standards to counter recruitment problems. The Army's goal is for 90 percent of its new recruits to have high school diplomas, but it hasn't met that mark since 2004. Last year, just 73 percent of its recruits were high school graduates. Matthew LaPlante can be reached at mlaplante(at)sltrib.com (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)