Men who earn less than their female partner are more likely to cheat on her, a study published yesterday found.
Cheating may be a man’s way of trying to restore his gender identity when he feels it is under threat, Christin Munsch, a sociology doctorate candidate at Cornell University, said in the study, which she authored and presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
“Making less money than a female partner may threaten men’s gender identity by calling into question the traditional notion of men as breadwinners,” Munsch said. “This relationship may be particularly strong for certain subgroups of the population that highly value traditional masculinity, like Latino men.”
Indeed, the study found that infidelity dramatically increased when the man earning less than his female partner is Latino, probably because breadwinner status is “one of the defining features of Hispanic masculinity.”
Then again, the same study found that men whose partners were more dependent on them were also more likely to cheat, making it a lose-lose situation for women.
It’s different for girls, though.
If a woman is the main breadwinner in the family, she’s more likely to cheat — it would seem that relationships where women earn more than men really are doomed — and if she depends on her male partner for money, then she is less likely to cheat.
Overall, women are half as likely to cheat as men whatever the circumstances, the study found.
“Women’s femininity is not defined by their breadwinner status, nor is it defined by sexual conquest. Therefore, economic dependency does not serve as a threat to women,” Munsch said. “Rather, given the sexual double standard, it is likely that, for women, economic dependency leads women to be more faithful.”
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