Watch: Soldier Back From Afghanistan Early Surprises Wife in Scuba Gear

A stock photo of a scuba diver (Be My Travel Muse)

Bethany Bronson was enjoying the water with her daughter when they were shocked by who appeared behind them.

Bronson is oblivious to the fact her husband has emerged out of the water in full scuba gear right behind her and her daughter, until the daughter sees him.

“Are you freaking kidding me?!” Bethany exclaims.

“After being in Afghanistan for 6 months and 3 months of training in the States before that with only a short month home in between, he is finally home!” Bethany wrote on Facebook.

“We thought he was coming home 3 weeks from now, but he is sneaky. We can’t believe he is finally back home with us!”

Military Couples Marry Younger

A study from a few years ago noted that military service members get married earlier than those who aren’t in the military.

The study noted “that financial considerations and structural conditions of modern military service such as deployment to war and the military’s demand for frequent geographic relocation leads to personnel policies that rely on families to make these conditions more bearable for service members,” says Science Daily of the findings. “These policies are part of a larger institutional culture that directly and indirectly encourages marriage among its recruits.”

Jennifer Lundquist, a researcher, noted that the rates are akin to the rates of non-military families 60 years ago.

“When you look at marriage rates in the military it’s like going back in time to the 1950s,” Lundquist said, reported Science Daily. She works as an associate dean and associate professor of sociology at UMass Amherst.

She added, “Marriage is deliberately made to be compatible with military life because this is an important way to retain personnel. The conditions of military employment also lead naturally to marriage. There’s stable employment, comprehensive family benefits, and economic mobility in an entry-level job. That’s not a common job market condition encountered by most high school graduates. I would argue that military service offers a path to class mobility that most working class youth lack.”

A psychologist, meanwhile, noted that parents who are left in the states while their military spouses are deployed to another country have a unique set of challenges.

“Parents left stateside develop their own ways of operating as they are forced to take on responsibilities that were previously shared,” wrote Ellen Weber Libby Ph.D., for Psychology Today.

“Some spouses enthusiastically take on the challenges while others do so with resentment. As the family adapts to daily life without one parent, children may become more independent because the at-home parent has less time and has to be more discriminating about tending to their children’s need,” Libby wrote.

As a result, older children might start helping raise younger children.