This article explains why these statistics and claims about domestic violence are deceiving and suggests alternative understandings of violence against women.
Does getting married protect a woman from violence and rape? That's what Brad Wilcox and Robin Wilson say in their recent article, which was originally headlined "The best way to end violence against women? Stop taking lovers and get married." They support this claim using data from recent studies of violence against women. But the data don't show that marriage makes women safer. And even if they did, that would be of little use to individual women thinking about marriage.
Marriage may be many wonderful things, but the article seems to suggest that women should get married for their own protection. Aside from insulting both women who do want to get married (should they just try harder?) and women who don't want to get married (I assume they have their reasons) the data don't support this claim. Violence within marriages is known to be significantly under-reported, and it's not possible to determine the causal relationship between marriage and safety using the data we have.
The best available data on the relationship between violence and marriage comes from the National Crime Victimization Survey.
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