Stay at Home Husbands Not Staying at Home

New research suggest that the bigger the earning gap, the more likely men are to cheat and stay-at-home husbands five times more likely to cheat than those who contribute an equal amount of money to the relationship.

According to the research, which analyzed 18 to 28-year-old married and live in couples who were in the same relationship for more than a year, men who were entirely dependent on their female spouse’s money were five times more likely to cheat than men who contributed an equal amount of money to the partnership. The research was conducted over a six year period and looked at couples who have been together for at least a year.

Being unfaithful could be a man’s way of reestablishing his gender identity when it is under threat, said Christin Munsch, a sociology PhD candidate at Cornell University who presented the report Monday at the annual American Sociological Association meeting. However tipping the financial scales too far in the other direction does not make men more likely to be faithful.

“This relationship may be particularly strong for certain subgroups of the population that highly value traditional masculinity, like Latino men,” Munsch added.

Munsch insists that each relationship is unique, and unfaithfulness remains a comparatively rare occurrence. cheating wasn’t that common, according to Munsch’s research. In the six-year period of her study, she found that less than 7% of men and less than 3% of women cheated on their partner.