My heart sank when I read a recent article in the Gazette about a man who admitted to assaulting his pregnant partner and was given a suspended sentence.

First, it sank because the court record shows it to be another story of a mother from my community living with abuse. Parenting is hard work in the best of circumstances. If you are assaulted by your partner, the demands of parenting don’t get put on hold. The kids still need to be fed. They need to get to school on time with clean clothes. They need their questions answered. How does a mom do all this right after she is assaulted?

My heart sank again because I knew that after reading the article, many of us would wonder, “Why would a woman marry a man who abused her?”

Domestic violence is complex. Maybe, like most abusive men, this one was insanely jealous and she thought that marrying him would end his jealousy and stop the abuse. Maybe her choice was between staying with him and feeding her kids, or leaving him and being homeless with four hungry children.

Maybe she loved the man he was when he was not abusive, and he promised never to hurt her again.

Maybe she thought she had to marry the father of her children because of her religious beliefs.

I could go on. There are rarely good options for women who are abused, especially when they have children and no money of their own.

But the question I want to ask is not which impossible choice my abused neighbor should make. I want to ask: What can we do to prevent domestic violence, a public health crisis that strikes one in four American women and kills nearly 800 American women every year?

The mom in this news story has four children. Statistically, those children are at higher risk of being abused or becoming abusive, in part because experience suggests that it will be harder for them to identify the early warning signs of abuse – like extreme jealousy, controlling behavior, rigid adherence to gender stereotypes and a sense of entitlement.

We need to step up our domestic abuse prevention efforts in schools. Many of us talk to our own children about what makes a relationship healthy. But this is not enough. A public health crisis needs a public response. We invest in public education. We teach children how to read, to write, to analyze, to lead. But all of this effort can end up wasted if their lives are destroyed by domestic violence.

The Northwestern district attorney’s office is holding a Safe and Healthy Schools Summit on Nov. 15 focused on healthy relationships and dating violence. Let’s get our schools to attend. Let’s make sure all our kids are learning about the warning signs of abuse in their health classes and are talking about relationship health at school often enough so that it has an impact. Let’s educate our children, and keep them safe.

Monica Moran is the manager of domestic violence prevention projects at the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. She lives in Amherst.