Knee Deep in the Hooah!

Posted at You Served. Stop by, take a read and comment. I love to hear the feedback and the opinions!

January 16, 2009 By Claire
Posted in Spouse and Family

Last week I wrote about a strength’s based view of military marriages. I did a pretty extensive search on research around marriage and the military, and of course there was not much that was documented on the characteristics of strong military marriages. One article I came across piqued my interest though, and I set it aside to write about this week.

The article I came across was about a specific intervention used on a small number of military couples who sought counseling after reintegration stress was causing their marriage to suffer. These couples were seen by therapists who used the “Role-Exit” theory to counsel them. The article does not give specifics about the approach, nor does it say exactly how the model was implemented (so to control for variables in the approach). There was definitely not enough participants for any conclusions to be drawn, and the article’s authors never try and say that their work is generalizable outside of the couples who actually participated. I found it interesting because of the model used, and the couples who did participate seemed to find it helpful.

The theory has an interesting background with a very rich history and a good longitudinal follow-up (which is the best in social research, but rare). The article’s authors explain:

Role-exit theory was initially designed and explored by Helen Ebaugh (1977). Role-exit is defined as the “departure from any role that is central to one’s self-identity” (Ebaugh, 1988, p. 149). Ebaugh initially formulated her theory following research done with 57 former nuns who left convent life following Vatican II (Ebaugh, 1977). She followed up this initial research through the study of groups of retirees, recovering addicts, parents who gave up custody of children, and others (Ebaugh, 1988).

Ebaugh was able to categorize the actual stages that a person goes through when they are leaving a particular role they once held. This is very common in a lot of social theories. It is a method of explaining the progression of adjustment and adaptation when people are faced with changes. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross was a pioneer in naming stages of human grief. The US Army has also released developed a similar stage-progression theory around deployment. It can be a very effective tool for understanding where support may be most needed. Usually these stages are not mutually exclusive of one another. Sometimes they can happen simultaneously, and sometimes they can happen in regression as well. I am just clarifying that a theory that uses stages is not arguing that the process for human adjustment is not a linear process that happens in single momentary events. These stages are normally cumulative and may recur in various stages or adjustment (maybe same issue with a new level of understanding). Continue reading this post…