This article reviews research on uxoricide risk for women with children sired by previous partners.
Daly, Wiseman, and Wilson concluded in 1997 that women with children from previous intimate partners were at significantly higher risk of murder by present partners than women whose children were sired by their current partner. Among Hamilton, Ontario's population of women with male partners and co-resident minor children, 7 percent had children who were not those of the current partner. Yet such women accounted for 50 percent of all victims in wife killings. This study replicated the earlier study for Houston, Texas during 1985 to 1994. Families including minor step-children were less than 20 percent of the city's two-parent households at large; yet 48 percent of all uxoricides were of women with co-resident minor children from previous partners. These studies lend strong support to evolutionary psychological theories of homicide. However, the article suggests that models also be developed and tested representing social-structural theory and contemporary gender theory. Tables, references