ADULTERY AND THE MEDIA Introduction This rese

The National Opinion Research Center reports that 20 percent of American men and 10 percent of American women are not faithful in their marriages and gender is the most constant predictor of marital infidelity. Media reports cite higher percentages. Alfred Kinsey stated that around half of the men and a quarter of the women in his samples had committed adultery. Playboy asserted that 42 percent of the white middle class men and 25 percent of the white middle class women had participated in adultery. Cosmopolitan stated that 54 percent of married women have had at least one affair. The Hite Report concluded that 72 percent of married men committed adultery. Marriage and Divorce, in 1977, stated that 70 percent of all Americans are involved in an extramarital affair sometime during their marriage. The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior in America reports that a third of married American men and a quarter of married women have participated in marital infidelity. These statistics are not based on national probability samples and several are based on self-selected samples (Greeley 9-13).

Adultery is not associated with education, religious affiliation, o

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used to explain why famous, powerful men such as Jack Kennedy or Dick Morris may be prone to affairs (Adler 54-59). Different kinds of infidelity are named: those seeking better sex or feelings of being desirable and respected; those angry at their spouses; those who habitually end up in a stranger's bed with a hangover and lack of memory; and those who attach to another in a nonsexual affair. Some believe that prostitution may offer positive alternatives for the wife. In this case the wife is unlikely to run into her husband's hooker. It is believed that if a man is with a prostitute, there is something wrong with him, and if he is having an affair, there may be something wrong with the wife. Current attitudes are that the deepest betrayal is of the heart rather than the flesh (Adler 54-59). Magazines report that scientists are skeptical about the evolutionary explanation for adultery. Psychologists state that men think women only have sex when they are in love, and if they have sex with another man, they love him as well. They therefore assume that sexual infidelity means emotional infidelity as well. They also know that a woman can be emotionally intimate with a man without having sex; they therefore view sexual be
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Approximate Word count = 2801
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)