I was listening to a Tafseer by a very prominent scholar (sunni, hanafi as that is the school of though I follow) who said that unlike normal worldly standard where we save the best for the last, quran talks about the most important stuff first (in an ayat) and then goes down in the order of importance.
In the above quoted ayat, bieng protector and care taker is mentioned first so I beleive that the message Allah swt wants to give us, not the wife beating one.