Military Divorce

Military divorce rate holds steady

Some veterans questioned the Pentagon figure. Defense officials say they have tried to give couples more support.
By Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The divorce rate in the armed forces held steady last year at 3.3 percent, a surprising finding given the stress that marriages are under during persistent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some veterans questioned whether the figure, reported by the Pentagon, was accurate. But defense officials credited efforts in recent years to support couples enduring uncommonly long separations and other hardships because of those wars.
The divorce rate represented more than 25,000 failed marriages among the nearly 755,000 married active-duty troops in all military branches between Oct. 1, 2006, and Oct. 1, 2007, according to statistics provided to the Associated Press.
The Defense Department data showed that the Army, the service with the most troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, had a rate of 3.2 percent, unchanged from the previous year. That amounted to 8,748 divorces among the approximately 275,000 married soldiers.
Last year was the deadliest yet for U.S. troops in the wars, though deaths in Iraq have fallen sharply. In addition, Army couples had to cope with extended separations because tours of duty were lengthened to 15 months from 12.
Those longer deployments and multiple tours required of many troops have been widely blamed for unprecedented stresses on military couples. Spouses at home must manage families and households without their partners. The strain also has contributed to higher suicide rates and mental-health problems among troops.
"We all agree that there is stress on the families," a Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, said about the divorce statistics. "It's just not manifesting itself in these numbers."
The biggest exception was a rise in divorce rates among military women. For years, their marriages have failed at twice the rate of men in military service.
Although firm numbers were unavailable in the new data, Army divorces in 2007 appeared to occur in about 8 percent of servicewomen's marriages and 2.6 percent of servicemen's.
There is no comparable system for tracking civilian divorces.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the divorce rate for the general population was 3.6 per 1,000 people in 2005, the most recent statistics available; that was the lowest rate since 1970.
Todd Bowers of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America said the wars were producing a rising number of breakups not being tracked because they involved people who have left the service. "When you look at their numbers . . . there's a piece of the puzzle that's missing," Bowers said of the Pentagon statistics.