Military, student, and other wives from a sample of 212 wives and both spouses from a sample of 79 couples from the Midwest are compared on a variety of self-report measures of marital quality. While few significant differences were found among the three groups, those that were significant favored the military couples. In these samples, the strengths of military families appeared sufficient to offset the stresses peculiar to their family life. The results suggest that not all military families can be fairly characterized as problematic or dysfunctional.
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