Life-Course Effects of Vietnam Combat and Abusive Violence: Marital Patterns

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of military service and exposure to war trauma on marital patterns and problems in a stratified, probability sample of 1,259 nonveterans, era veterans, and Vietnam veterans. The intervening role of social support in the relationship between exposure to war trauma and current psychological and behavioral problems also is examined. The literature on the relationship between war and the family is reviewed, and the impact of military service and exposure to war trauma is examined on: rates of marriage, age at first marriage, rates of divorce, and levels of marital satisfaction. Finally, the role offamily status in contributing to current psychological and behavioral problems is examined. The primary findings are: Vietnam veterans are more likely to enter marriage than nonveterans; combat exposure and exposure to abusive violence contribute to higher rates of divorce among Vietnam veterans; participation in abusive violence leads to lower rates of divorce among Vietnam veterans but higher levels of marital dissatisfaction; and, while men in stable family situations report significantly less psychological and behavioral difficulty than those with a history of divorce or those never married, the effect of combat exposure is not primarily channeled through its contribution to greater marital instability. We conclude that familial support does not function to mediate substantially the impact of war stress.