Husbands of female breadwinners are more likely to cheat, according to a new study
published in this month's issue of the American Sociological Review.
The study discovered that men who are 100 percent economically reliant on their spouses are
more at risk of cheating, according to CNN. In fact, those men are three times more likely to cheat than women married to male breadwinners.
"I think it has to do with our cultural notions of what it means to be a man and what . . . the social expectations are for masculinity," study author Christin Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, told CNN.
On average, there is about a 5-percent chance that husbands who support their wives entirely will cheat, while men who are not the primary breadwinners stray 15 percent of the time, the study found.
It's estimated that 20 to 25 percent of married men cheat — regardless of breadwinner status — and 10 to 15 percent of married women, though those figures are likely skewed because not everyone is honest in surveys, CNN noted.
Being fiscally dependent on their wives could intimidate a guy's manhood, Munsch said. Having an affair might be a method to re-establish their masculinity.
“There's plenty of great literature showing how when men in particular undergo gender identity threats, they engage in hypermasculine behaviors," she said. "Sex is one of the most sort of gender-typed behaviors. You think of men as . . . (having) sex on the brain. They can engage in a behavior associated with masculinity."
Women who bring in more than their men might subconsciously feel guilty about it, and look to other ways to let the men in their lives establish masculinity.
"He already might feel threatened that I'm the breadwinner, I'm certainly not going to make him clean the toilet, too," Munsch said, giving opinion to the imaginable thought process of a female breadwinner.
Remarkably, female breadwinners whose husbands are 100-percent financially dependent on them are less likely to engage in extramarital affairs, the study said.
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