Sara Butler (who nowadays blogs at the Family Scholars Blog) criticizes a Washington Post article about intimate violence:
Sara seems to be saying that in order to help “women avoid becoming victims of domestic violence,” we should publicize that “most domestic violence happens in households where the couple is not married.” That’s oversimplifying matters.
It’s true that live-in boyfriends are statistically more likely to abuse their partners than husbands are. However, the differences between the two are often exaggerated – many Christian websites claim that live-in boyfriends are 60 times as likely as husbands to commit intimate violence, which is ridiculous.
Responsible studies have found that live-in boyfriends are about twice as likely as husbands to commit intimate violence, and even this might be an overstatement. Most of the relevant studies in this area have a sample size of fewer than 50 cohabitating couples, which would make it easy for the frequency of abuse to be overestimated. Significantly, the one study I know of to use a solid sample size of over a thousand cohabiting couples (“Understanding Male Partner Violence Against Cohabiting and Married Women” in Journal of Family Violence Dec 2002 – pdf file) found that boyfriends are about 11% more likely to be abusers than husbands – a significant difference, but not as enormous a difference as some folks suggest.
It’s also important that we not mix up causation and correlation. Just because husbands are less likely to abuse, doesn’t mean that a woman is less likely to be abused if she marries Bob rather than just moving in with Bob. Marriage itself probably doesn’t provide any protection against abuse.
When the previously-mentioned study took into account non-marriage factors such as age (the average cohabitor is 32, the average married person 44), boyfriends were no longer more likely to be abusers than husbands.
One of the non-marriage factors that made a large difference is if either the woman or the man had a violent father. Women are apparently less likely to marry men who they believe had violent fathers; and also less likely to get married themselves if their own father was violent.
There are other factors to be considered. It’s possible, for example, that women who are married have more invested in the relationship than women who are cohabiting, and are therefore less willing to admit problems (such as abuse) to an interviewer. It also seems possible that abusive boyfriends are simply less likely to get married, because some proportion of women actively avoid marrying men they suspect might be abusive (but might be willing to do a “try-out” live-in relationship).
Perhaps the oddest finding is that it makes a difference – even after accounting for non-marriage factors like age and abusive fathers – if the woman has ever cohabited with a man other than her husband. Husbands of women who cohabited with other men before the marriage are more likely abusers than either live-in boyfriends or than the husbands of women who have never cohabited. (I suspect this could indicate some sort of jelousy or possessiveness.)
In any case, to help women “avoid becoming victims of domestic violence,” I don’t think it’s useful to tell them to avoid live-in boyfriends and shack up only with husbands. What seems more important, from the research I’ve read, is to look at how one’s potential partner managers anger; how egalitarian they are; if they drink to unhealthy extremes; if there’s a problematic age difference; if they (or you) have unresolved issues with an abusive father, if they’re controlling; and so forth. (Not living in or marrying until one is older is good advice, as well.) A wedding ring won’t make an abuser decent; and lack of a wedding ring won’t make a decent guy abusive.
(Thanks to Bean for suggestions she made regarding this post.)
UPDATE: Amanda at Mouse Words comments.
Full disclosure: The authors of the study I cited – who are strongly committed to the “boyfriends and husbands are very different things” thesis – might disagree with me that it’s significant that their study found a smaller difference between live-in boyfriends and husbands than other, smaller-scale studies have. They write:
The authors seem to be assuming that abuse is even distributed throughout the life of a marriage, but this isn’t always true. Studies have shown that in many abusive marriages, a large portion of abuse occurs near the end of a marriage (perhaps because the abuser, sensing the approaching end of the marriage, feels the need to violently reassert control). If so, then this study’s methodology – which measured violence only in current relationships, ignoring separated and divorced couples – may have had the effect of underestimating the violence of husbands.
In any case, the authors would certainly agree with me that the link between marriage and reduced intimate violence is a matter of correlation and not causation.
I’m curious about a cause and effect aspect. Is it possible women are reluctant to marry men if they see signs of potential abuse, but instead cohabit as a sort of trial to see it things will be ok? It’s not as though people just randomly end up married or cohabiting.
I was thinking the same thing as Lucia when I read this.
If I suspected a man (or woman) of being an abuser, I wouldn’t get married to him or her before I knew for sure. It’s much easier for a person to control or hide their anger problems from people they aren’t around 24/7; therefore, it seems the logical way to find out if they have a serious anger/abuse problem is to live with them. A “trial period,” if you will.
Did they account for whether or not the couple was engaged or had any plans for marriage in this study?
Thank. you.
I was really impressed with Butler’s individual blog, but that Family Scholars blog is infuriating – I’m not sure if they’re aware how poorly it reflects on IAV. Certainly someone should sit down the bloggers and explain that correlation != causation, because that mistake is made at least once a week.
I’m also wondering if married women are less likely to *report* abuse. That old “in for a penny, in for a pound” kind of thinking could be in play here. Also, if a couple is married, chances are greater that the woman may be financially dependent and more inclined to “try to work things out” than would be someone who is just co-habiting.
Lucia and Pseu, Bean made the same suggestions to me (verbally) when she read this post, and so I edited the post and added those suggestions. Great minds think alike, clearly. :-)
I don’t think it’s the case that women are reluctant to marry men when they see signs of potential abuse. Abusive behavior comes about gradually. At first it’s flattering to know a man pays so much attention to you, wants to know where you are all the time, etc. It could just be that someone wants to spend time with you when the relationship is new. The signs of abuse don’t materialize right away. They may not seriously show up until after the marriage, but in hindsight the woman may recognize signs of abuse she didn’t take as abuse when she first ran across them. There’s a gradation between wanting to know where she was when he called and she didn’t answer and possessiveness.
I also think that married women are more likely to have children than women who cohabit. A lot of mothers, especially in this climate that is fast turning against custodial mothers, are afraid of leaving an abusive marriage because he may threaten to take the kids. He stands a good chance of getting them, too – at the very least joint custody. Protections for women in abused marriages are being taken away. For instance, in California, a report recently came out where abused women are being told by domestic violence workers not to mention abuse to mediators because they do better in mediation if they don’t bring it up. That’s not good.
David Blankenhorn mentioned this difference between abused women who cohabit and abused women in marriages in “Fatherless America.” He wrote something to the effect that marriage acts as a buffer against domestic violence – as if marriage can prevent it. It’s a neo-conservative view that a social construct like marriage channels male aggression and wanderlust into more “civilized” behaviors – focusing the guy’s attention and energy on one woman and the children he has with her. He used statistics similar to the ones Sara cited to “prove” his point. I very much disagreed with him. I’m sorry but marriage does not “cure” domestic violence.
I can’t speak to the Candian statistics, but the argument that married women are less likely to experience domestic violence is getting thrown around a lot in the debates over marriage promotion initiatives in TANF in the US. The problem is that that’s not what the Bureau of Justice Statistics statistics on domestic violence show – BJS does not define women who are separated or divorced because of “marital discord” as “married.” It’s my understanding that when you include divorced and separated women in the “married” category, married women are actually much more likely to experience domestic violence. There are also some issues around whether married women are less likely to report abuse.
Using the NSFH, a study I did with a colleague found that there was NO significant difference in domestic violence between married and cohabiting couples among those who were in relationships of under one years’ duration (essentially, those in the “entering” populations in each state). Over time, violent married couples are more likely to split up than nonviolent couples, so nonviolent couples accumulate in the married population. Nonviolent cohabiting couples tend to get married to each other relatively quickly, while more violent cohabiting couples stay cohabiting longer.
I also think pseu may be right about the reporting issues. We’ve seen in a longitudinal study I work on that women report that there WAS abuse in the relationship after it’s over, even though when we asked the question when they were still together, they said there was no violence. violence.
What are the statistics about living with a man who is someone else’s husband? ;)
On a more serious note, good article and links. Thank you.
I have a stupid question, but do these studies include violent psychological/verbal abuse as well as physical? Just wondering. Are there statistics on the differences between these? There should be, in my humble opinion. But then again, abuse is abuse, and the tolerance of any abuse, physical or mental is totally unacceptable in any society.
spot
lucia, my first thought was actually the flip of yours: that boyfriends who ARE abusive feel they have enough control in the relationship, and are hesitant to persue marriage.
your point is perfectly good, but I imagine my thought has at least something to do with it.
and spot does raise a point: I’d like to know that the perceived difference (accurate or not) is any different when redefined in terms of verbal and physical abuse, rather than lumping both.
all in all, I think we’ve established that concluding that “married women are safer” is flawwed. it really seems obvious. if Dick is an abusive boyfriend, there’s no real reason for him to STOP abusing because Jane married him.
lucia, my first thought was actually the flip of yours: that boyfriends who ARE abusive feel they have enough control in the relationship, and are hesitant to persue marriage.
your point is perfectly good, but I imagine my thought has at least something to do with it.
and spot does raise a point: I’d like to know that the perceived difference (accurate or not) is any different when redefined in terms of verbal and physical abuse, rather than lumping both.
all in all, I think we’ve established that concluding that “married women are safer” is flawwed. it really seems obvious. if Dick is an abusive boyfriend, there’s no real reason for him to STOP abusing because Jane married him.
damn it. scripts are messing with me… sorry about doublepost.
yes, I know it’s silly to post a third time to apologize for a doublepost.
Lucia, my first thought was actually the flip of yours: that boyfriends who ARE abusive feel they have enough control in the relationship, and are hesitant to persue marriage.
Karpad, since we are discussing stastics, which tally up the behavior of many women and men, it’s quite possible that both the effect that I suggest, the effect you suggest and others effects affect the statistics. The question is “how much”? I think it’s difficult in the social sciences to figure this out.
The sort of larger point is: How do we know it’s not something about a man’s potential to batter that causes the couple to chose to cohabit rather than marry? (As opposed to the choice causing or inhibiting the battery.)
I also have a comment on Trish’s thoughts that women don’t avoid marrying abusers because at first they don’t know they are abusers. My thoughts are, on the one hand, she is right. Obviously, most women don’t know they man is eventually going to abuse them otherwise, they wouldn’t get into this situation.
On the other hand, people do develop some sort of radar or gut feeling about other people as they get to know them. So, it’s possible that someone doesn’t “know” something, yet acts on the “knowledge”. (Yes, this sounds stupid– either you’ll unerstand what I mean or not.) Alternatively, some friends or family might counsel a woman if they have the heebee- jeebees about a guy. Or, something could happen that, on average, causes women (or man) to decide to cohabit instead of marrying men who have a propensity to abuse the woman.
Of course, no social scientiest could ever picks some of these things on any survey! How would you even design the question?
Questions I had in addition to the very good ones discussed above:
1. Did they control for socio-economic differences in the population studied so that results weren’t skewed by the incidence of marriage in the studied population? Among other things, getting a doctor or lawyer’s wife to report abuse is really difficult but there may be other subtle differences as well about the willingness to report — African American women, less likely to be married, may be more willing to report abuse than white women, who are more likely to be married.
2. If you don’t count the divorced and separated as married, well then, that’s game set and match right there. In my brief but intense career as a volunteer counsellor for abused women, most women could not admit that they were being abused until they left, they couldn’t admit it to themselves or anyone else unless it got really out of hand and required ER or police intervention.
3. Anecdotally, almost all of the women who called me on the hotline and needed help were married. There is something skewed about this study.
This reasoning implies that a married man is less likely to hurt his rightful property.
We’re so easily reduced.
Trish writes — “a report recently came out where abused women are being told by domestic violence workers not to mention abuse to mediators because they do better in mediation if they don’t bring it up. That’s not good.”
I heard that also. Although I understand the logic it is unconscionable for it to come to that point. I am the legal representative to a federal family advocacy board, many of the victims who have perps referred to the board are between a rock and a hard place. The mediators, who do not have the resources to investigate abuse will ask, why did you not report the abuse before the divorce proceedings? If the victim reports the abuse before the divorce, there is fodder for the perp to say, they are just doing this to take my kids away from me.
My advice has always been to report it now and get out. If you don’t feel you can or don’t want to report it now — then wait until you are abused again. Then you should have some physical evidence corroborate your story. I really hate to give my advice that way. My hope is the next time it happens they will think that if they don’t report it, the possibilty of them losing their children will increase. CPS here takes children away from the abused parent if they do not report the spousal abuse in time.
I wrote on my blog in June about the new report from California that stated that domestic violence workers were telling abused women not to tell mediators about abuse they were or had suffered. JStevenson, one thing mentioned in the report was that mediators are not sufficiently trained to recognize abuse. I believe there was also mention that mediators also don’t have the resources to investigate abuse – just what you’ve said. There’s also the accusation that the women are lying about abuse.
Here’s the link to the post where I wrote about this. It’s at the end of a post I had written about Jeri Ryan.
Here’s what I wrote:
“Domestic violence workers are telling abused women in California to not mention abuse when they go through mediation. I believe mediation is now required in California. There was a recent study released about mediation in California that had shown that women received worse mediation if they revealed that they were being or had been abused. Even when restraining orders were brought out, they fared worse than if they had not mentioned the abuse at all. This is a very troubling finding. Women get better treatment if they don’t mention abuse. Plus, abusers are gaining unsupervised visitation and sometimes partial custody even when abuse is revealed. The only thing that seems to put a damper on this practice is evidence of documented police presence at any time in the abusive relationship.”
“California’s mediation system is supposedly superior to mediation in other states. This study shows that it isn’t superior in any sense of the word.”
^^ I think part of this is that people assume anything said in mediation of divorce proceedings are lies. You mention restraining orders, but in most places I’ve been you really only need to ASK for a restraining order to get one. You do not need to prove abuse or intent to abuse at all. This means they are not REALLY evidence of abuse, but of an accusation of abuse. People are baseically scumbags and they will lie their asses off to keep control of their children. People will, and often do, accuse their former husbands and wives of being abusive, of being drug addicts, or child molestation. If you see that sort of crap every day, and you hear every couple in mediation making these accusations, you really start to doubt everyone and hold to hold it against the party responsible.
As you point out DOCUMENTED evidence of police involvement, or REAL evidence negates this effect. If someone didn’t bother to call the police, they can’t assume to be telling the truth. They have to PROVE that they were abused. There is nothing wrong with that at all. That is how our system is supposed to work. It’s odd that you seem to think that a mere accusation should cause someone to lose all access to their children, and automatically be punished.
“it is true that it does not require a lot of proof to get a Temporary Restraining Order. However, the person who has been served the TRO then has the opportunity to contest it — at which point, more proof of abuse would be necessary”
That’s not necessarily a sound conclusion. If you’ve broken up with somebody, moved out, and have no desire to see them, a restraining order is not something worth a lot of time and energy to contest, even if it’s based on a false accusation. Similarly, a lot of judges don’t want to spend a lot of time, energy and resources resolving nasty “he said, she said” factual disputes if they can avoid them simply by telling the parties to stay away from each other.
This means they are not REALLY evidence of abuse, but of an accusation of abuse.
They are accusations to which you must sign your name under penalty of perjury. (Yes, I know people lie anyay. The point is that you don’t just walk in and say “Judge, he hit me” and get a TRO.)
If someone didn’t bother to call the police, they can’t assume to be telling the truth.
Because the only reason you would not call the cops is that it never happened? There could be plenty of other reasons–such as the abuser ripping the phone out of the wall or physically preventing the victim from using a phone.
You do realize that “didn’t call 911 = liar” is making the same kind of flimsy accusation that you profess to loathe.
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Very interesting elaborations and of course nice essay. I wouldn´t expect a correlation between marriages and violence. In my eyes it´s all about social- and family background whether an individual freaks out or not, isn´t it so?
The answer to your question, Is a live-in boyfriend more dangerous than a husband?, is YES. You may read my ongoing six- (or is it seven-) part series, “Boyfriends and Ex-husbands are Dangerous” at my DC Handgun Info </em>blog.
U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services studies show children in single-parent households are at much higher risk for physical violence and sexual molestation than those living in two-parent homes. (from No Pasaran blog)
The obvious reason for the numbers, to anyone who’s been “in the field” and known/spoken to any significant number of abused women, is not a politically-correct reason.
The kind of men who persue and are excited about marriage and monogamy are less likely to be abusive, verbally or physically. That’s it.
Call it a “conservative” reason (as if realities of sociology have political biases) or attempts to reinforce a mere “construct”, but marriage isn’t just a piece of paper, it’s a representation of a total commitment, and men who don’t want that are going to be, taken all around, less committed and loving towards their others. Hence, far more abusers will come the “let’s shack up” group than the “I want to marry you” group.
The latter group will include more religiously devout/traditional types, and more people from supportive, intact families. These are less likely to be abusive, as religiosity has a negative correlation to virtually all criminal activity/violence. Couples from such people groups (independently of other factors like race/income) report higher levels of relational satisfaction and fewer incidents of abuse or fighting.
It’s counter-feminist to decry the very concept of marriage; it’s also kind of just weird and sad. Pointing out (less numerous and less vetted) studies on the lowest end of the spectrum (maybe the higher rates of violence among cohabitors kinda might not always be that bad!) don’t make any case except that the actual rates might be a tad lower (between the cited studies’alarmingly high rates of violence, and your own preferred low-end but still alarmingly high numbers).
Marriage isn’t a safer scenario for women because signing a marriage document magically improves a relationship (what a cluelessly simple straw-hypothetical anyway, who is even arguing that?) Marriage relationships feature less abuse because marriage minded people are less likely to be abusive people. What’s critically pseudo-feminist is to deny that it is a good and helpful thing to be the kind of person who seeks a lifelong monogamous partner (aka marriage), and to demand same from a partner.
The serial abusers and womanizers of the world have already gotten plenty of mileage out ot the whole “I’m not trying to tie you down with marriage, it’s just a piece of paper, so how about you put out like the liberated woman I know you are” routine. No need to fight on their side.
The kind of men who persue and are excited about marriage and monogamy are less likely to be abusive, verbally or physically. That’s it.
Citation very, very needed.
Citations? We don’t need no stinkin’ citations.