Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
Is there a positive correlation between U.S. military deployment rate and U.S. military divorce rate?
a good hook/intro paragraph 2 (Context) needs definitions of “deployments” and “divorce”
Quandre Berryman
WRI 1200
January 2, 2016
“Paper 1”
Is there a positive correlation between U.S. military deployment rate and U.S. military divorce rate?
World has entered into a phase of civilized and modern era in the start of the 20th century, since then, the nature of the basic needs of a human being have advanced from food, shelter and society, thus resulting in extensive attempts in finding ways to live a pleasant and peaceful life.
In the contemporary world as mentioned by Amy, the means of earning bread and butter have become specialized and complicated in which being separated from the family has been an integral part of a common or a special man or woman. In doing so, human nature becomes sad, frustrated and emotional and sometimes tried to find alternatives when circumstances are reach at a stage where compromise is not the best way out. (Amy 2015)
According to Kumagai, out of the thousands of the professions in today’s world, being a military personnel is a matter of patriotism and pride for anyone who loves her country but it is not just a profession but a trade with the military organization of selling oneself at a price of national pride and great professionalism. Taking on this national responsibility comes with some challenges as well for which anyone must be ready and high level of temperament and strong sense of decision making is required. This is the occasional social isolation from the immediate family, relatives, friends and the circle of acquaintances where this person formerly lived. The immediate family, if married, is the wife/husband of the military personnel. (Kumagai, 2014)
Interestingly, United States of America is a country where people from all ages get divorced from a 10 year old girl to a 77 years old married couple with ages of 99 years and 96 years for husband and wife respectively and the reasons in most of the cases are minor misunderstandings. A divorce takes almost a period of one and a half year to get separated from a status of husband and wife. Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
The study of Mary, Ann, Agnes, Susan, makes it evident that divorce rate in the military continues to climb which is another dimension of the sacrifices which are being made by the servicemen and women and their families related to the defence of the American borders and national interests. Many of these personnel are married less than a year and they are deployed in the warzones like Afghanistan, Iraq and other strategically important military bases. After these couples are at a distance of thousands of kilometres, they try their best to keep their relationship strong is the top priority of the family. (Mary, Ann, Agnes, Susan 2014)
The spouses working away from home relate that they try to communicate with their spouses back home but due to the professional responsibilities and the nature of the operations being carried out, only twice or thrice a week is the time that they can talk with their husband/wife back home in USA. Even though technology has helped a lot in keeping these communications far easier and convenient than two decades ago which was only the letters or a telephone call in a blue moon.
Nowadays, smartphones, laptops and other gadgets have made it an easy job to see each other over the internet or video calling but this e-relationship is not enough all the times to keep the emotional affiliation with the spouses alive from where the problem starts because the spouses who are in the warzones are busy with day-to-day operations and new professional challenges allow them to spend their time without thinking much about their families when they are busy but the other spouse at home who are mostly the mothers of young children or wives get frustrated from the loneliness. Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
Molly and Segal confer that Long separations of these couples and mostly the families are the facts of the military life and according to the new statistics, the numbers have been shown from the defence department that these long durations in which the husband and wife relationship is put on a trial can strain the social stability with the eventual outcome of divorce. (Molly, Segal 2013)
According to defence department, the US military divorce rate increased from 3.4% (2008) to 3.6% (2009) which was actually 2.6% in 2001 which is an alarming situation for the families associated with the military service. It is not an easy job to say good-bye to a spouse standing on the airport when one spouse knows that his/her better half is going in the jaws of death and their return is a fifty-fifty situation so right from there the mental stress and emotional distress starts which leads to the complications of the relationship.
Once the deployment is over and the servicemen/women return to their families, the gap which has been created in their absence is not ignorable because the wife has learned to live alone and the children have also adopted to a situation of a minus-father setting so it takes time to get adjusted with the father or the mother. The construction of the family is mostly changed when the servicemen are away from home to serve their country and on their return, it becomes a big challenge to compensate their absence of last several months.
A detailed study done by Melissa, Dominic, Simon, and Nicola explains that Spouses who are left behind at home, with their husbands/wives deployed in the warzones, have very limited options so they have to stand up to take care of their families or themselves and they have to do it continuously with an ongoing absence of the person who could share these responsibilities, stress and tiring days and nights, if they could be with them but they have to do it all alone which causes to make them think about the lives they are spending and sometimes they become frustrated and agitated from this lifestyle and from the spouse who is away because of the psychological, biological and behavioural needs they want to fulfil and they keep themselves contended for the sake of the pride that their spouses are serving the country but most of the people give up at this point which leads to the permanent separation of the relationship. (Melissa, Dominic, Simon, Nicola 2013)
As per the research of Jennifer, Jeanne, Deborah, military divorce attorneys who are the experts of this matter suggest that the communication is the most important thing in the situation of deployment and after the deployment because it helps to re-understand the relationship to resume their social lives. Because, if this issues is not remedied, the motivation level among the military servicemen and women will certainly fall which is not a good indicator for you.( Jennifer, Jeanne, Deborah 2015)
Marriages and the unfortunate outcome of these marriages, divorce is becoming more common not only in the military related families but also in the civilians as well and specifically the spouses who are married to the military servicemen and woman are also civilians from one dimension so the discussing the divorce as a general problem of America cannot be ruled out. Going into the depths of the geographic classification of United States, more number of divorces occurring in the southern part of the country which shows the numbers as follows:
Southern: 10.2/1000 Men 11.1/1000 Women
North-Eastern: 7.2/1000 Men 7.5/1000 Women
Overall 9.2/1000 Men 9.7/1000 Women
The reason to mention these numbers here is to find out the similarity of a factor in more number of divorces between the military marriages and the southern part of the country and that is getting married at an early stage of life. In southern part, it is due to relatively less trend of education in depth in comparison to the north-eastern part.
Surprisingly, another finding by Ambriscoethe tells that most effecting reason recorded for military and non-military divorces in 2011 was the impact of Facebook and other social media platforms which disturbed the relationship of marriage through e-dating services resulting in misunderstandings and find the alternatives when the spouse is away at a deployment or not feeling responsible for the rights of the spouse biologically or psychologically. The situation at the moment in the United States is that every hour, there are 100 divorces are being filed resulting in most of the cases as permanent separation without giving a second thought to the reconciliations. (Ambriscoe 2014)
Similarly, another research conducted by Copen, Daniels, Vespa, Mosher, the military men and women get their jobs at a very early stage of life and the next milestone in their lives is to get marry to start-up a proper family. It is noteworthy that early age marriages itself are not the main cause of the divorce but the circumstances or the series of events which occur after that become the reasons. (Copen, Daniels, Vespa, Mosher 2012) Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
There is another reason mentioned by Robert for the divorce in the US military service that as an American citizen, the sense of Individualism causes it to occur more because according to the most of the researchers, Americans are self-centred in their approach to life whether it is about spending a life at a warzone or taking care the children of the husband who is away at a military deployment, an average US citizen thinks, what it has for me to do this. The military servicemen and women are getting the pride and that is enough for them but when they go back or think about their families, there are other persons involved and brings in nothing personally. Therefore, the military service men and women have to consider that the marriage is a matter of two persons but in one package of husband-wife relationship. (Robert 2014)
As per Hosek, there are several issues which are unique in their nature but related to the military divorces, the most important four are as follows:
1. The career consequences of adultery
2. The command mandated support
3. The impact of deployment and deployable status on child custody
4. Division of the service member’s pension
Adding to these issues, no-show to the court proceeding to resolve the issues due to the deployments is also another issue worsening the situation. (James 2014)
In a nutshell, the marriages are done to start a heathy and happy life which results in the children and these children can receive better upbringing when both the parents are available for these children if they are alive and when it comes to the military servicemen and women, it should be taken as a challenge to continue the relationship of marriage and not to end it up with minor problems like no communication while deployed at a faraway military base and the spouses at home must share the sense of responsibility of being a parent and a better-half of the person who is working for the integrity and defence of a great country and a great nation.
Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
Works Cited
Kumagai, Fumie. Family Issues on Marriage, Divorce, and Older Adults in Japan: With Special Attention to Regional Variations, 2014.
Mary Ann Lamanna , Agnes Riedmann , Susan D Stewart : Marriages, Families, and Relationships: Making Choices in a Diverse Society, 2014, Internet Source
Molly Clever and David R. Segal, The Demographics of Military Children and Families, 2013, available at https://www.princeton.edu/futureofchildren/publications/docs/Chapter%201.pdf
Melissa Rowe, Dominic Murphy, Simon Wessely, and Nicola T. Fear, Exploring the Impact of Deployment to Iraq on Relationships, 2013, available at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr/publications/assetfiles/deployment/Rowe-2013-relationships.pdf
Jennifer Trautmann, Jeanne Alhusen, Deborah Gross : Impact of deployment on military families with young children: A systematic review, 2015, available at http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0029655415001827/1-s2.0-S0029655415001827-main.pdf?_tid=f2fab1d2-ce46-11e5-ae86-00000aacb35e&acdnat=1454924162_3b7471eb57844ac5edf58f72c506b965
E. Copen, Kimberly Daniels, Jonathan Vespa, William D. Mosher: First Marriages in the United States: Data From the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth, 2012, National Center for Health Statistics, available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr049.pdf
Robert L. Mues, Military Divorce Rate Climbs – Are Multiple Deployments at Fault? , 2014, available at http://www.hcmmlaw.com/blog/2014/09/06/military-divorce-rate-multiple-deployments/
James Hosek, Lengthy Military Deployments Increase Divorce Risk for U.S. Enlisted Service Members, 2013, available at http://www.rand.org/news/press/2013/09/03.html
Amy Bushatz, Military Divorce Rate Hits Lowest Level in 10 Years, Military.com magazine, 2015 available at http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/02/25/military-divorce-rate-hits-lowest-level-in-10-years.html
Capt. Jaclyn Ambriscoe ,Calling It Quits: How to file for divorce, www.army.mil 2014 available at http://www.army.mil/article/120076/Calling_It_Quits__How_to_file_for_divorce.
Discussion: “Deployments” and “divorce”
