The #MeToo Movement Misses a Critical Fact
When news broke of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault scandal, actress Alyssa Milano set the world afire with a single tweet: "Suggested by a friend: If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote 'Me too' as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the -problem."
In a little over a week, the #MeToo movement had spread around the world and garnered over 1.7 million tweets. The movement has had its critics, but for the moment, let's put those criticisms aside, because I think that most of us who have been exposed to this hashtag in one way or another can agree that sexual assault is, in fact, a huge problem in this country and around the world.
But the prevalence of sexual misconduct against women shouldn't be a surprise. In fact, the roots of the problem go much deeper than how short a woman's skirt is or how many drinks a guy has had. It turns out—contrary to what those decrying widespread misogyny might guess—that the safest place for a female when she is a child is with her two married, biological parents. And the safest place for her when she is grown is with a man to whom she is married, i.e., her husband.
What Really Protects
The first of these premises is widely accepted. Children raised in single-parent, cohabiting, or step-parent homes are vastly more likely to suffer physical and sexual abuse than children raised by their two biological parents who are married to each other. Darkness to Light, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping adults counter the sexual abuse of children, identifies family structure as "the most important risk factor in child sexual abuse. Children who live with two married biological parents are at a low risk for abuse. The risk increases where children live with step-parents or a single parent."1 Foster children are more than ten times as likely to be abused as children living with their married biological parents. And this abuse affects girls predominantly—the majority of child victims of sexual assault are female.
Family structure continues to be important into adolescence. One Texas study examining adolescents found that, "compared to children living with both parents, those living with one parent were 2.5 times more likely to report a history of being forced into sexual intercourse."2 Children living with their grandparents were over three times more likely to experience sexual coercion, and those living with someone other than family were more than five times as likely.
In an article for the Washington Post, family scholars Brad Wilcox and Robin Fretwell Wilson highlight that, for the safety of girls, nothing is more important than living with their married dads. Summarizing the relevant research, the scholars conclude that "girls who are victimized are . . . more likely to have lived without their natural fathers."3
The second premise—that married women are safer from assault and abuse than their unmarried peers—is less emphasized but is strongly supported by the data. A 1994 report on violence against women issued by the U.S. Department of Justice found that married women suffer far fewer incidents of violent crime than do other women.4 A Danish study zeroing in on sexual violence in particular found that "compared to those who were married with children at home, being single with children at home significantly increased the likelihood of [a woman's] having visited" a local center for rape victims.5
Reality Rejected
Tragically, the fact of having experienced a sexual assault as a child is actually a risk factor for a woman's experiencing it again in adolescence or adulthood. So the whole sick thing is cyclical: girls who grow up in a home without two married parents are more likely to experience sexual violence, and if they do, they are then more likely to experience such violence again when they are older. (They are also more likely to perpetrate such violence against others.)
So there is something missing from all the talk of blame and misogyny swirling around the #MeToo movement: namely, the identification and encouragement of the things that protect women the most. Being married, it turns out, actually helps make men more civilized and responsible, and men are especially likely to protect and cherish the women they are married to and biologically related to. (For more on this, see the Wilcox and Wilson Washington Post article.)
But instead of accepting this reality, we continue to promote a culture that is fanatically addicted to sex without any limits. Divorce doesn't matter, we say. The children will be fine! They're resilient! Marriage doesn't matter, we say. Sex outside of it does no one any harm—in fact, it's healthy and fun! Experiment! Enjoy!
We have released the genie of free love from his lamp, and we are angry when he refuses to abide by the rules of consent. We are shocked when our new, progressive rules fail to protect us.
As the millions of #MeToo tweets demonstrate so vividly, a wide trail of real human suffering is the result of our defiance.
Nicole M. Kingis the managing editor of The Natural Family, the quarterly publication of the International Organization for the Family.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #44, Spring 2018 Copyright © 2026 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo44/safer-houses
