The stats are in: Marriage is safest for… everyone!
For years a ‘gendered narrative’ has heavily shaped the official debate on domestic violence, painting the traditional family as dangerous and ‘patriarchy’ as the root of abuse. That dogma is not just misleading, it is dangerous. The official figures tell a very different story, one that points back to real marriage.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics, released last week, estimates that around 3.8 million adults in England and Wales – roughly one in 13 – experienced domestic abuse in the year to March 2025. Yet when the numbers are broken down by family structure, one fact stands out: married adults face about half the risk of domestic abuse compared with those who are simply living together, and even lower risk than those who are single, divorced or separated. In single‑parent households, nearly one in four adults reports abuse, around three times the rate in two‑adult homes.
When an unrelated adult moves into a vulnerable home the danger can escalate sharply. A classic study published in Pediatrics found that young children living with an unrelated adult in the home were nearly 50 times as likely to die from inflicted injuries as those living with both biological parents, with most of those homes consisting of a mother and her boyfriend.
The data also underline how much fathers matter. Long‑term Australian research from the ‘Ten to Men’ study shows that men who strongly remember an affectionate relationship with a father or father figure in childhood are about 48 per cent less likely ever to report using intimate partner violence.
In more ordinary language, good fathers are not decorative. They are one of the most powerful long‑term protections against violence we know about. Boys and girls watch how a father speaks to and treats their mother, and what their mother will and will not tolerate. Marriage between one man and one woman, lived out in faithfulness, quietly teaches sons how to be men and daughters what to expect from men.
None of this excuses cruelty in marriage or reduces the need for support and refuge when things go badly wrong. Domestic abuse also harms many men, often in silence, and the same stable marriages that protect women protect them too. But the hard numbers are pushing back towards a very old truth. On average, the safest place for women is a stable marriage to a man who keeps his promises. The safest place for men and for children is the same.