W. Bradford Wilcox, one of the “marriage advocate” crowd, argues in the New York Post today that the recent spate of high-profile child-abuse cases is evidence that marriage per se is a good thing.

SEVEN shocking child deaths in the last four months: Liyah Atkinson, Quachaun Browne, Nixzmary Brown, Josiah Bunch, Dahquay Gillians, Sierra Roberts, Michael Segarra. This staggering death toll from abuse or neglect has focused justifiable attention on malfeasance at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services. But another thread tragically links these kids: All were living outside of an intact, married family. . . .

Consider the empirical evidence. A recent study in the journal Pediatrics found that preschool children in homes with an unrelated adult were nearly 50 times as likely to die because of physical abuse, compared to children in intact, married homes.

In a recent report, “Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions from the Social Sciences,” an interdisciplinary team of 16 family scholars that I chaired found that children in single-parent homes are almost twice as likely to be sexually abused, compared to children in intact, married families.

We also found that children living with stepparents (usually a stepfather) are more than 40 times as likely to be killed or sexually abused, compared to children living in an intact, married family.

Bottom line: Children are much more likely to be abused or neglected in a single-parent, cohabiting or stepfamily situation than they are in an intact, married family.

Leave aside his use of anecdotal evidence (7 cases in four months - hardly a landslide in a system with close to 30,000 children in foster care alone - and no mention whatsoever of cases of abuse in two-parent families). What these statistics really add up to is a strong prima facie argument for liberalized divorce.

Assume just two things: that it is the most troubled marriages that end in divorce, and that abuse is more likely in troubled homes (regardless of marital status). If this is correct, then in a society with liberal divorce laws (which New York is not, but it’s at least not uncommon here), the population of two-parent families will consist, almost by definition, of those families that are relatively stable and untroubled compared with those who have divorced. And the population of single-parent families will consist in significant part of families whose homes were troubled before divorce separated the parents.

The inevitable result, again assuming that abuse is more likely in tense and difficult family environments, is that abuse will be less likely in two-parent familes, not because having two parents makes abuse less likely, but simply because potentially abusive (i.e., troubled and overwhelmed) parents are less likely to remain in two-parent marriages. In other words, Wilcox’s data equally well support a conclusion that the causative pathway is completely the opposite of the one he assumes: that it is not divorce that causes abuse, but that abuse and divorce are caused by, and thus subsequent to, the same set of difficulties in the marriage. And that conclusion has the advantage of tying abuse to the known prevalance of tension in the marriage (as witnessed by the eventual divorce) rather than some magical property that attaches to saying “I Do”. From this perspective, abuse will be linked with single-parent status, and lower levels of abuse with stable marital status, by the logic of the link between marital discord, abuse, and divorce alone.

From that perspective also, simplistically advocating marriage, in and of itself, without reference to whether the marriage is happy or stable or the partners want to be married, as a way to prevent child abuse, is like advocating wearing a bathing suit to make the sun come out. The fact that most bathing suits are worn on sunny days doesn’t mean they cause the sunny days. Wilcox’s blindly pro-marriage argument, on the basis of such a classically naive statistical mistake, would actually lead to the worst of all possible outcomes: children trapped in unhappy, unstable homes with two incompatible parents - a recipe for abuse that none of them are allowed to escape because Wilcox and his ilk have determined that marriage is so good for them.

What liberal divorce laws do is ensure that those marriages that remain are stable and happy - that the bad ones are ended quickly so the partners can try to find better mates, or at least to reduce the tension in the home and its attendant threat of abuse. Financially, it is well known that most women and children suffer greatly through divorce (while most men benefit), but it is likely that many divorces put women and children in calmer, and likely less-abuse-prone, physical environments. Simply reducing the tensions between parents, and removing an abusive or threatening parent where necessary, is a benefit of divorce additional to its role in ensuring that only inherently stable marriages (not forced unions in which all parties are trapped against their wills) persist.

Wilcox does notice that conditions in the home are relevant to the prevalence of abuse:

Married parents have enduring legal, moral and social ties to each other and to their children. Such ties increase the likelihood that each parent will monitor and support the other’s parenting. So, for instance, when mom is at the end of her rope with her kids, a married dad can step in and take over. A single mother doesn’t have that option, and a mom’s live-in boyfriend isn’t likely to be a conscientious caretaker . . .

(It’s a rare concession from conservatives that single mothers do face difficulties - but, characteristically, that concession comes in the context of an argument that they should not be allowed to be single mothers, not as a reason to make their lot any easier.)

But if it is conditions in the home that contribute to the likelihood of abuse, then it is not the mere state of being married itself. Wilcox falls back on his observation that married couples have it easier (there is less abuse, and a greater investment by fathers in their children), but, again, if it is the case - as it obviously is - that the couples who stay married are the ones who have stable home lives to begin with, then he is saying nothing more than that those couples who have stable home lives have more stable home lives than those couples whose home lives have broken up - and that the former is better for everyone.

It hardly takes much research to know that, and in fact he could have been told that by any advocate of no-fault divorce. But there is no link at all that justifies going from “having a stable marriage brings benefits” to “everyone should be forced into whatever marriage is most convenient to hand, and kept there once married regardless of conditions” - which is his implicit argument, and the explicit argument of advocates of marriage-dependent social benefits and stricter divorce laws. That violates both logic and common sense - a deficit that no amount of anecdotal outrages will overcome.