Critiquing the Case for Marriage Promotion

This article argues that governmental policies to promote marriage fail to recognize the reality of domestic violence in many families’ lives. By minimizing and misrepresenting the role of domestic violence, these policies ultimately are self-defeating. After describing the recent history of welfare reform and marriage promotion policies, we briefly review the arguments advanced in favor of such policies. We then offer a critique of marriage promotion through the prism of social science research on domestic violence and explain how advocates largely ignore or misrepresent this research. Finally, we discuss the need to ground policy formation in the voices of those women whose lives such policies ultimately will affect.