Faith is a global force for good in producing positive outcomes for family life according to a new report released Monday by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institution.

The 2019 World Family Map looked how religion is linked, on average, to four key family outcomes —relationship quality, fertility, domestic violence, and infidelity— in 11 countries across the globe: Argentina, Australia, Chile, Canada, Colombia, France, Ireland, Mexico, Peru, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Drawing on data from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the Global Family and Gender Survey (GFGS), the report found that faith is indeed a force for good in contemporary family life globally. Men and women who share an active religious life, for instance, enjoy higher levels of relationship quality and sexual satisfaction compared to their peers in secular or less/mixed religious relationships. They also have more children and are more likely to marry. At the same time, the researchers not find that faith protects women from domestic violence in married and cohabiting relationships. Overall, this report suggests the family-friendly norms and networks associated with religious communities reinforce the ties that bind. According to the authors of the report, the challenge facing those communities, however, is to build on these strengths to address families who are struggling—including the approximately one-in-five of their adherents who experience intimate partner violence.