I think the headline of this Washington Post piece is worse than the actual article. The headline suggests that women should stop having premarital sex in order to protect themselves from sexual violence, which isn’t really what the authors of the article are arguing. Their argument is partly backed by objective data that show that married women and children with married biological parents are less likely to be victims of sexual violence. I say that the argument is “partly” backed up by data because there are a lot of socioeconomic reasons why married people are less likely to be victims of crime (of all types) than unmarried people. The primary reason for this is because married people (as a whole) are wealthier and live in safer neighborhoods than unmarried people (as a whole). But, yes, having a man reliably around does protect women from other men. And, yes, biological dad is statistically more protective than part-time non-biological boyfriend.
The problem with the article (in addition to the headline) is that this advice is not particularly helpful. You can’t tell a young girl that she needs her parents to be in a happy marriage because that is not something over which she has any control. And you can’t tell a young woman that she needs to be in a happy marriage because every marriage would be happy if life gave people what they wanted. Picking a husband who will be compatible long-term, attentive and protective, and around all the time for the children is a task much easier said than done.
In any case, when a woman has to walk through a parking garage, you tell her to have her keys ready and some mace in her purse; you don’t tell her to dump her inattentive boyfriend and find a great guy to marry.
If the idea was that this article would be helpful in some way, it really only succeeded in irritating people and arousing a lot of mockery.
