An Exploratory Study of Marital and Quality of Life Ratings Among Male Spouses of Military Members

The purpose of this article is to present the current demographics and both marital and quality of life ratings of a small group of males who are married to current Active Duty service members. Males married to service members make up only 5% of the military spouse population, but numbering close to 100,000, the group is large enough to have specific and significant needs. Gender assumptions play a large role in the experience of male military spouses and should be considered when designing military family programs. Many research studies done on active duty spouses are either done on females specifically, or male responses are too few to be statistically significant. Respondents had been married for an average of 10 years, had been dating their spouses for an average of 2 years prior to marriage, and more than half of the respondents had no prior military history of their own. Results of this study showed that respondents generally had medium to high levels of both marital satisfaction and interpersonal dependency, high levels of life satisfaction, and low levels depressive symptoms including feeling down, depressed or hopeless. This data is likely not representative of the larger male spouse population, as respondents had high levels of education and income, which could lead to fewer stressors. Although this data did not indicate a high level of distress among male military spouses, military family organizations should offer programs specifically aimed at including male spouses in order to increase family cohesion and reduce marital conflict which could result in improved mission readiness.