{"id":102482,"date":"2015-06-01T09:45:25","date_gmt":"2015-06-01T13:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=102482"},"modified":"2015-12-30T14:58:30","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T19:58:30","slug":"study-economically-dependent-spouses-more-likely-to-cheat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2015\/06\/study-economically-dependent-spouses-more-likely-to-cheat\/","title":{"rendered":"Study: Economically Dependent Spouses More Likely to Cheat"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a><\/div>\n

Both men and women are more likely to cheat on their spouses the more economically dependent they are on them, according to a new study<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou would think that people would not want to \u2018bite the hand that feeds them\u2019 so to speak, but that is not what my research shows,\u201d says study author Christin L. Munsch, a UConn assistant professor of sociology. \u201cInstead, the findings indicate that people like feeling relatively equal in their relationships. People don\u2019t like to feel dependent on another person.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Munsch, in an average year, there is about a 5 percent chance that women who are completely economically dependent on their husbands will cheat, whereas there is about a 15 percent chance that men who are entirely economically dependent on their wives will have an affair.<\/p>\n

\"Christin<\/a>
Christin Munsch, assistant professor of sociology.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although Munsch found that economic dependency increases the likelihood of engaging in infidelity for both men and women, there appears to be something that makes men who are not primary breadwinners even more prone to cheating compared to women who are not primary breadwinners.<\/p>\n

\u201cExtramarital sex allows men undergoing a masculinity threat \u2013 that is, not being primary breadwinners, as is culturally expected \u2013 to engage in behavior culturally associated with masculinity,\u201d Munsch says. \u201cFor men, especially young men, the dominant definition of masculinity is scripted in terms of sexual virility and conquest, particularly with respect to multiple sex partners. Thus, engaging in infidelity may be a way of reestablishing threatened masculinity. Simultaneously, infidelity allows threatened men to distance themselves from, and perhaps punish, their higher-earning spouses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titled, \u201cHer Support, His Support: Money, Masculinity, and Marital Infidelity,\u201d the study, which appears in the June issue of the American Sociological Review<\/em>, relies on data from the 2001 through 2011 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and considers more than 2,750 married people who range in age from 18 to 32 years old.<\/p>\n

While Munsch found similarities in the way that men and women respond to being economically dependent, she discovered that men and women who are primary breadwinners in their marriages behave very differently. For women, the more they \u201cbreadwin\u201d \u2013 that is, the larger their percentage of the combined marital income \u2013 the less likely they are to cheat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen who out-earn their husbands challenge the status quo,\u201d says Munsch, who noted that women are least likely to engage in infidelity when they make 100 percent of a couple\u2019s total income. \u201cPrevious research finds that women who are primary breadwinners are acutely aware of the ways in which they deviate from the cultural expectation that equates men with breadwinning. Consequently, previous research finds these women suffer from increased anxiety and insomnia and engage in what sociologists call \u2018deviance neutralization behaviors.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, she said, women who are the primary breadwinners in their marriages often minimize their achievements, defer to their spouses, and increase their housework. \u201cThis emotional and physical work is designed to decrease interpersonal conflict and shore up their husband\u2019s masculinity,\u201d Munsch says. \u201cIt is also aimed at keeping potentially strained relationships intact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among men, those who are completely economically dependent on their spouses are the most likely to cheat. As the money men make relative to their spouses increases, their odds of committing adultery decrease until their total contribution to the pooled income reaches 70 percent. Men are least likely to cheat when they bring home 70 percent of a couple\u2019s total income. After 70 percent, however, men become increasingly more likely to stray.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese men are aware that their wives are truly dependent and may think that, as a result, their wives will not leave them even if they cheat,\u201d Munsch says. \u201cThey also might be cheating in search of a partner who will contribute more economically to the relationship. A husband who earns significantly more than his wife and has an affair \u2013 think celebrities, athletes, and politicians \u2013 is the type of infidelity that regularly makes front-page news, so I wasn\u2019t surprised to find that men who make a lot more than their wives are more likely to cheat than men in equal-earning relationships or relationships where they make a little bit more than their wives.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is surprising, though, is that the increase in the likelihood of men engaging in infidelity that occurs as they make significantly more than their wives is relatively small compared to the increase in the likelihood of cheating that takes place among men as they become more economically dependent. But the affairs of economically dependent men simply don\u2019t garner media attention, so we hear about this kind of infidelity far less often.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A UConn sociologist found economic dependency increases the likelihood of infidelity for both men and women, but especially for men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":102547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2076,2227,1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[55],"class_list":["post-102482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-research","category-uconn-edu-homepage","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-28 13:36:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102482"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107908,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102482\/revisions\/107908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/102547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102482"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=102482"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=102482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}