Domestic assault correlated with "community disinvestment",
nonmarriage/divorce, other factors
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Family Research Abstract of the Week: Black Women in Peril
Reprinted from The Howard Center / World Congress of Families Family
Update Online, Volume 5 Issue 20,18 May 2004
When wedding bells stop ringing in urban churches, sirens often start wailing
as ambulances rush to the hospital carrying women-often African American
women-injured by live-in lovers. The role of the national retreat from wedlock
in imperiling black women stands out starkly in a new study recently published
in Criminology by researchers from the University of Cincinnati and Northern
Kentucky University.
Examining court data for Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio, the authors
of the new study trace "intimate assaults" against women back
to social conditions created by "neighborhood disadvantage" and
community "disinvestment." In showing that both "neighborhood
disadvantage" and "disinvestment" predict intimate assault
(p < .001 and p < .01 respectively), the researchers indirectly underscore
the effects of family disintegration, for as statistical social composites
both "neighborhood disadvantage" and "disinvestment"
tap into the effects of wedlock, cohabitation, and divorce. More specifically,
the formula for "neighborhood disadvantage" includes numbers for
the proportion of households with children with no adult male, while the
formula for community "disinvestments" incorporates numbers for
the proportion of private residences without married couples and the ratio
of single adults to married adults.
Although the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky scholars find that "higher
levels of neighborhood disadvantage coincide with significantly higher assault
rates for both whites and African Americans," they conclude that "level
of disinvestments is more important for understanding variation in intimate
assault rates for African Americans." In other words, "neighborhoods
with larger portions of adults who are less 'invested' in marriage and residential
stability are more likely to see higher rates of assault by African-American
males."
Further scrutiny of the data reveals that "the proportion of residents
without married couples... maintains the strongest relationship with intimate
assault rates for African Americans (by far) compared to the other two components
of the disinvestments factor [i.e., ratio of single to married and proportion
of residents with the same residence less than five years]."
Apparently, the researchers write, "the lower prevalence of intact
marriages across neighborhood residences is more important than transiency
of a neighborhood population when predicting African- American assault rates."
Because cohabiting couples are especially numerous in the African-American
neighborhoods with few married couples, the authors of the study suggest
that "neighborhoods with higher proportions of cohabiting intimates
who are not 'invested' in marriage may constitute environments more conducive
to assaults among African Americans (relative to whites)."
At a time when many social scientists are emphasizing the importance of
"social capital" as a predictor of healthy community life, the
authors of the new study warn that "lower levels of marital commitments
and stable residences constitute...significant barriers to the development
of social capital among minorities."
(Source: John Wooldredge and Amy Thistlethwaite, "Neighborhood Structure
and Race-Specific Rates of Intimate Assault," Criminology 41 [2003]:
393- 418.)
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