Blog Post

AEIdeas

AEI’s Brad Wilcox has a new piece that looks at the connection between the safety of women and children and family structure. For instance, Wilcox points out, one study by the Department of Justice suggests “married women are markedly less likely to be the victims of intimate partner violence than are single women and women living in ‘other household’ arrangements.” While another DOJ study found “that never-married women are almost four times more likely to be victims of violent crime, compared to married women.” So both inside and outside the home, married women appear to be generally safer.

Wilcox also looks at data from Nicholas Zill (originally gathered from the 2011-12 National Survey of Children’s Health),which shows domestic violence is a great deal lower in families “headed by intact, married parents.” Below is a chart that shows, by family structure, the differences in “the odds that parents reported that their child had ever seen or heard ‘any parents, guardians, or any other adults in the home slap, hit, kick, punch, or beat each other up.’” This is after adjusting for “differences in the sex, age, and race or ethnicity of the child, as well as family income, poverty status, and parent education.”

Zill finds that homes headed by never-married, separated, or divorced mothers are about five times more likely to expose children to domestic violence, compared to homes headed by married, biological parents. What’s more: family structure outweighs education, income, and race in predicting the odds that children witness domestic violence in the home.

Of course the DOJ studies and 2011-12 National Survey of Children’s Health are not completely comparable, as one focuses on women and one on children, and the survey data controls for the variables of education, income, race, and so forth. However, both indicate that there is a relationship between marital status and violence.

Wilcox concludes:

We can speculate about the precise mechanisms—is it the commitment, the stability, the mutual support, the kinship ties, or the sexual fidelity marriage fosters more than its alternatives?—that accounts for this empirical link. But what should be clear to analysts willing to follow the data wherever it leads is this: a healthy marriage seems to matter more than money when it comes to minimizing the scourge of domestic violence in American families.

Follow AEIdeas on Twitter at @AEIdeas, and Natalie Scholl at @Natalie_Scholl.