ABSTRACT
Richard J. Gelles and Murray A. Straus coined the term the marriage license as a hitting license in the early 1970's in response to the discovery that the assault rate among married couples was many times greater than the assault rate between strangers. The low rate of violence among dating couples after controlling for age may be due to the fact that they have a higher education than the other marital status groups. The findings on violence between cohabiting couples and between dating couples raise questions about the implication that the status of being married is one of the factors accounting for the high rate of violence among married couples. A similar problem occurs when cohabiting and marital violence is compared because of the neglect in identifying which partner is violent and the severity of the assault. The chapter examines violence by both men and women in dating, cohabiting, and marital relationships.
