Washington Post Column Says Women Should 'Stop Taking Lovers' To Prevent Violence

[ismnotwasm]

The bottom line is this: Married women are notably safer than their unmarried peers, and girls raised in a home with their married father are markedly less likely to be abused or assaulted than children living without their own father.

The original headline of the piece placed the onus on women and mothers in domestic violence situations, calling for them to "stop taking lovers" and marry their "baby daddies":

The authors claim that marriage "tames" men, the implication being that because men are less likely to abuse their biological children, women should lock down that engagement ring. "Marriage seems to cause men to behave better," Wilcox and Fretwell Wilson write. "That’s because men tend to settle down after they marry, to be more attentive to the expectations of friends and kin, to be more faithful, and to be more committed to their partners -- factors that minimize the risk of violence." Apparently, the responsibility rests on women to marry men and prevent them from becoming violent.

The piece acknowledges that there are married men and biological fathers who do abuse their wives and children, but focuses on how unmarried women can -- and should -- take themselves out of danger by getting hitched. The authors do not investigate other factors that may make never-married women more likely to be victims of domestic violence, like poverty and fear of homelessness. Instead, they tie women's safety to marriage without mentioning other economic or social factors.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/10/washington-post-stop-taking-lovers_n_5481121.html