Leftists decry domestic violence, yet they are often antagonistic toward the social institution that offers the best protection available against such violence—marriage.  A recently published study provides further evidence for the role of marriage in enhancing women’s safety.

“As might be expected in a sample of households with school-aged children,” the researchers report, “stably married couples . . . have the lowest rates of I[ntimate]P[artner]V[iolence].” For stably married couples, the researchers calculate an incidence of 16.2% for overall IPV and of 3.5% for IPV involving “physical violence with injury.”   In contrast, the researchers find that “cohabiting couples show the highest rates of  IPV.”  Among cohabiting couples the rate of overall IPV runs more than twice as high as that found among stably married couples (37.5% among “stable cohabiting couples”; 33.6% among “new” cohabiting couples).  The rate of physical violence with injury runs four times as high as that found among stably married couples (16.1% among stable cohabiting couples; 14.1% among new cohabiting couples).

The study goes a step further and shows that domestic violence is more likely to occur in some neighbourhoods than others.  Specifically, the higher the proportion of single-parent households in the neighbourhood, the higher the overall prevalence of domestic violence.

Nor is it just a woman’s own marital status that determines her vulnerability to domestic violence.  The authors of the new study establish that “neighborhood context” also helps determine that vulnerability.  And in determining whether a neighborhood is “advantaged” or “disadvantaged” the researchers look at—among other social and economic characteristics—the fraction of households in the neighborhood that are headed by single parents.  When that fraction rises, the neighborhood becomes more disadvantaged.

The researchers note that, compared to violence-free couples, “couples with IPV are more likely . . . to live in neighborhoods of high disadvantage.”  Among couples who reported Intimate Partner Violence, 27.3% lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods; among couples who reported no IPV, only 18.3%.  Among couples who reported severe domestic violence involving injury, more than a third (35.2%) lived in disadvantaged neighborhoods, compared to less than a fifth (19.1%) of those who reported no severe domestic violence.

These results indicate that social and political support for marriage could reduce domestic violence.

Study reference: Greer Litton Fox and Michael L. Benson, “Household and Neighborhood Contexts of Intimate Partner Violence,” Public Health Reports 121 [2006]: 419-427.

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