We need deeper look at support needs of male military spouses

"War has a gender  - and it is male," wrote author and essayist Virginia Woolf in 1938. 

Eh, I don't think that is so true today.

In fact, enough has changed among warfighters that Woolf might be astounded to find that "A Room of One's Own" for modern women would include working at war - destroying toxic chemicals, rigging cargo, commanding the fleet. I think Woolf might be equally surprised that the husbands of those working women are the ones we now perceive as being in need of support.

For example, 8 percent of female service members divorce each year compared with 3 percent of male service members. Research from the Rand Corp. concluded that the reason for the discrepancy was because there are no support structures for male spouses.

Which is silly if you ask me. For one, it presupposes that most female spouses get their support from support networks provided by the installation. That isn't true.

For two, it assumes men would attend a support group, sit in a circle, join hands and sing old Mark Jacobs tunes. I just can't see it, can you?

Instead, I see the real problem of supporting male spouses as this: Support has a gender - and it is female. Women are the ones who tend and befriend.

Research published by Shelley Taylor and her group at UCLA in 2000 showed that men and women respond physiologically to stress with the ol' "fight or flight" response. Our heart rates pump. We get all aggressive. We run away, zone out, drink up. Got that.

Yet this research showed that women are far more likely to respond to stress in the "tend and befriend" pattern. The research suggests that as a biological response to stress, women create and maintain social networks. Men just don't do that as much.

That makes me think that the skills that are part and parcel of a successful military marriage come harder to men. Does that mean the government needs to pop in there and create a bunch of programs designed specifically for the 7 percent of military spouses who are male?

I don't think so. In fact, I'm kind of worried that this focusing on supporting male spouses is a smokescreen keeping us from looking at the deep structures in our society that are clearly interfering with females in uniform and their male civilian spouses.

A divorce rate that is more than twice as high for females in uniform than it is for their male counterparts is a burden on our females in uniform.

I don't want to be the only one who is interested in knowing what really stands between them and the happily-ever-after they deserve.