On Gabrielle Petito’s Tragic Death: An Important Lesson

In our culture where “live your own truth” is the worldview of a seemingly ever-increasing number of Americans, women and children in the U.S. are especially in danger. This is because, as pop-culture “philosopher” Cameron Diaz put in 2013, on marriage and sex, tens of millions of Americans have decided it’s best to “make our own rules.” As Americans have shunned marriage at a record pace, co-habitation among U.S. couples has exploded.

In 2019, Pew Research reported that in the U.S., among people age 18 to 44, a significantly larger share “have cohabitated at some point than have been married (59% to 50%).” Feminism and family expert Suzanne Venker notes that, “cohabitation, or ‘shacking up,’ has skyrocketed in the U.S. Specifically, it has increased over the past half-century by more than 1,500 percent. ‘Living in sin’ is in vogue.” 

Tragically, this is the situation in which Gabrielle Petito found herself just prior to her widely publicized death. As Fox News reported in early September,

Gabby Petito, 22, set out on a road trip with her boyfriend in a converted camper van in early July to tour National Parks, according to her family, but she disappeared in late August and they haven’t heard from her in more than two weeks…Nicole Schmidt, Petito's mother, told Fox News that the last conversation she had with her daughter was on Aug. 25…

Schmidt said that Petito and her boyfriend started their road trip in early July, traveling first from Florida to New York. They then left New York and eventually got to Salt Lake City, Utah, in August, but were leaving the city amid heavy wildfire smoke.

As mountains of data have long revealed, one of the most dangerous places in the world for a woman is in a cohabitating (unmarried) relationship. In addition to its emotional, financial, and sexual disadvantages, cohabitating women are far more likely to suffer domestic violence than are married women. Research by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite in the late 1990s and early 2000s found that cohabitating women were more than three times more likely to suffer domestic violence than were married women.

Additionally, Waite reported that those in cohabitating relationships were much more likely to be unfaithful (despite the expectation of faithfulness) than those in marital relationships. Cohabitating women were five times more likely to report “secondary sex partners” than were married women. No doubt this contributes to more conflict in cohabitating relationships.

In 2006, researchers Catherine T. Kenney and Sara S. McLanahan noted that,

One of the more consistent (and potentially alarming) findings in the emerging literature is the higher rate of intimate-partner violence and intimate-partner homicide among cohabitating couples than among married couples (Anderson 1997; Brownridge and Halli 2002; Stets 1991; Stets and Straus 1989; Wilson, Daly, and Wright 1993; Wilson, Johnson, and Daly 1995; Yllo and Straus 1981).

In 2016, researchers Wendy D. Manning, Monica A. Longmore, and Peggy C. Giordano reported:

In recent years, a majority of young adults experience cohabitation. Nevertheless, cohabitation is a risk factor for intimate partner violence (IPV)…Serial cohabitors along with cohabitors who experienced both low commitment and high relational constraints experienced the greatest risk of IPV.

In 2017, research professors Scott M. Stanley (Univ. of Denver) and Galena K. Rhodes (Univ. of Denver) noted that “asymmetrical commitment”—where one member of a couple is significantly less committed “to the future” of “being a couple” than the other member—“is more likely to exist in cohabiting than dating relationships, and, among marrieds, to be more likely to exist when couples lived together prior to engagement or marriage.”

Additionally, Stanley and Rhodes reported,

Asymmetrical commitment may turn out to be one ingredient in the way cohabitation and aggression are linked. We have found that asymmetrically committed relationships are more prone to aggression and generally have low relationship quality. Many asymmetrically committed relationships contain one partner who is not committed enough to inhibit negative behaviors and another who, while relatively highly committed, will be massively frustrated by a growing awareness of their partner’s lower commitment. That sounds like a recipe for highly destructive conflict.

On violence during cohabitation, Marripedia reveals, “Women in cohabiting relationships are more likely than married or dating women to be the victims of violence or to perpetrate violence. Domestic violence in cohabiting unions tends to increase as the duration of the union increases.”

Of course, all of this research only reaffirms what Christianity has long taught: the only time men and women should be living together, the only rightful place for sex, is within a marital relationship. When men and women ignore this, they are ignoring one of the oldest and most important truths revealed by God. Thus, it should come as little surprise that those who rebel against the truths of marriage and sex place themselves in great danger.

Additionally, cohabitation, and other such rebellion, often results in children. As dangerous as cohabitation is for women, it is even more dangerous for children. This is especially the case when women with children live with men who are not the father of their children. According to Marripedia,

Children raised in cohabiting families are particularly vulnerable to abuse. According to the Fourth Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, children raised by their cohabiting biological parents are 4.3 times more likely to suffer from physical abuse and 5 times more likely to experience sexual abuse as compared to children raised by their married, biological parents.

The most dangerous family structure for a child is a cohabiting family in which one of the partners is not a biological parent. The same survey stated that children raised with one biological parent and their non-biological cohabiting partner are 10.3 times more likely to suffer from physical abuse and 19.8 times more likely to experience sexual abuse, as compared to children raised by their married, biological parents.

Ladies, if he won’t marry you, if he won’t commit to you in the way that God says he should, he is not the man for you! Have nothing to do with him!

(See this column at American Thinker.)

Copyright 2021, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
www.trevorgrantthomas.com
Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com  

How the NFL Should Fight Domestic Violence

I almost feel sorry for the NFL. You know things are not going your way when the Feminazis feel as if they can give advice on how your league should be run, and with the 2014 season barely underway, you’ve already become a topic on The View. I suppose things could get worse: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell could decide to outlaw tackling.

I’ve been a fan of football and the NFL since I was old enough to spell “Cowboys.” I remember once in elementary school, during an art class, we were supposed to draw what we wanted to be when we grew up. My little hands were not skilled enough to draw men in football uniforms, so I had the bright idea of diagramming plays. That’s right, somewhere around the third grade, my idea of high art was a page full of x’s and o’s accompanied by plenty of lines and arrows.

Along with being a fan of the NFL—and football in general—I’m an even bigger fan of the family. After coaching middle school and high school football for five years in the mid-1990s, I met my wife Michelle. I knew then that those long Sunday afternoons and evenings spent cooped up with a bunch of other men trying to decide things like whether our guards were quick enough to pull and pick up the opponent’s defensive end, were not for me.

After nearly 17 years of marriage (as I’ve noted before), Michelle and I are the parents of four children, including three boys. None of my boys yet play football (karate is their current sport of choice—for my girl as well!), and I’m not sure that they ever will. One thing I am sure of, unlike Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, most of Adrian Peterson’s half-dozen children, and far too many others like them, our children are being raised in a home by a mother and father who are married and committed to marriage.

As Jack Cashill has already pointed out, both Rice and Peterson lacked such a home. And as has often been chronicled, they are far from alone. What’s more, to borrow from Mr. Cashill, as most sentient beings are aware, this is especially true among American blacks. If the NFL really wanted to hit hard against domestic violence, it would not seek the advice and counsel of liberals but would look to (biblical) marriage.

When it comes to domestic violence, there is hardly a situation more dangerous for women or children than when mom and dad (or step-dad or boyfriend) are merely “shacking up.” As was noted years ago, and as Forbes Magazine just recently alluded to, it is far more dangerous for a child to be reared in a home without his or her married biological parents than otherwise.

According to a 2010 federal study, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents. Additionally, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents.

In other words, as W. Bradford Wilcox put it, “one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself is in a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend — especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself.”

Likewise, shacking up is much more dangerous for women than is marriage. Compared to married women, women who cohabitate are three times more likely to experience physical aggression and nine times more likely to be murdered. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, never-married mothers are more than twice as likely to suffer domestic violence.

Thus, as anyone who really wants to can see, the real issue when it comes to domestic violence is not the NFL (domestic violence rates are much lower among NFL players than in the general population), but a breakdown of the traditional family. Whether we’re talking about the NFL, kids’ karate, or the myth of man-made global warming, this has been clear for years. Of course the liberal-led media would rather bash the made-for-men-only NFL than surrender one of the tenets of liberalism—that the traditional family doesn’t matter.

I said at the beginning of this that I “almost feel sorry for the NFL.” This is because the NFL is a privately held organization that is responsible for one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the world and can do pretty much whatever it wants when it comes to things like domestic violence among a few of its members. Yet, what does the NFL choose to do? It uses the “playbook” written by the National Organization for Women.

This is in addition to the NFL bending over backwards (sorry!) to accommodate the homosexual agenda. Somebody needs to tell Roger Goodell that liberalism is no friend of football—especially professional football. Like almost everything else concerning liberals, this matter is a means to a political end. Make no mistake about it, the left will attempt to use this moment to increase the power and influence of liberalism.

After a night of heavy drinking by both Ray Rice and his then fiancée Janay Palmer, when Rice later knocked out his soon-to-be-wife in an elevator, reportedly, soon afterward both Rice and Palmer became born-again Christians. The now married couple were both baptized in March and are receiving “religious mentoring” (read: Christian counseling) from other married couples, including NFL players and their wives.

This is the kind of solution to domestic violence that the NFL should openly embrace and support, as it is the only way that real change can occur. There’s no reason that the most popular sport in the country can’t take such steps. In fact, it would probably increase league popularity. Whether owners and league officials decide to take such steps or not, the players and coaches who know the real solutions in such matters (and there are plenty) need to lead the way.

(See this column on American Thinker.)

Copyright 2014, Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.
Trevor and his wife Michelle are the authors of: Debt Free Living in a Debt Filled World
tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com