Marriage is a safer institution for children

REGARDING the newly-published Women’s Aid report (Irish Examiner, November 2), Áine Kerr states: “Overall, half of the abuses reported occurred in current relationships, with marriage remaining the most common context for abuse”.

This claim by Women’s Aid runs contrary to all conventional wisdom.

A recent study by the British Crown Prosecution Service (BCPS) showed that 25% of cases where police act on allegations of domestic violence involved married or divorced couples, while 59% involved unmarried partners, either current or former.

There are approximately twice as many married as unmarried couples under 50 in Britain, so the BCPS research means that domestic violence is more than four times as likely in the latter group.

Robert Whelan, deputy director of the British Institute for the Study of Civil Society, published his Broken Homes and Battered Children report in 1993.

He found that children in households where the biological mother was cohabiting were 33 times more likely to suffer serious abuse and 73 times more likely to be killed than children in families where the biological parents were married.

In their 2004 report, Marriage: Still the Safest Place For Women and Children, the US Heritage Foundation claimed: “The institution that most strongly protects mothers and children from domestic abuse and violent crime is marriage.”

Erin Pizzey, the founder of the domestic violence refuge movement, has strongly defended marriage.

So why are Women’s Aid not promoting what Bob Geldof calls “the most important institution that man has evolved over thousands of years”?

Patrick McGinnity

Derrynoose

Keady

Co Armagh