Incidence of Infidelity
According to the New York Times, the most consistent data on infidelity comes from the University of Chicago's General Social Survey (GSS). Large-scale interviews conducted since 1972 by the GSS of people in monogamous relationships reveals that the number of men admitting to extra marital affairs is 12 percent and for women, 7 percent. Results, however, can be variable depending on the year data is gathered, and also based on the age groups surveyed. For example, one study conducted by the University of Washington, Seattle found slightly, or significantly higher rates of infidelity for populations under 35, or older than 60. In that study which involved 19,065 people during a 15 year period, rates of infidelity among men were found to have risen from 20 to 28%, and rates for women, 5% to 15%.
Studies suggest around 30–40% of unmarried relationships and 18–20% of marriages are marked by at least one incident of sexual infidelity. Men are more likely than women to have a sexual affair, regardless of whether or not they are in a married or unmarried relationship.
Children can be witnesses to an affair and outcomes of an affair. Between 2–4% of children are conceived as a result of an affair. A 2005 scientific review of international published studies of paternal discrepancy found a range in incidence from 0.8% to 30% (median 3.7%), suggesting that the widely quoted figure of 10% of non-paternal events is an overestimate.
Infidelity which does not involve sex or conception may be referred to as a romantic friendship or an emotional affair. Some people consider virtual sex, which is an on-line relationship, as infidelity.
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Famous quotes containing the words incidence of, incidence and/or infidelity:
“Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspection and interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer, Walther Frank, Julius Streicher and Robert Ley did pass under my inspection and interrogation in 1945 but they only proved that National Socialism was a gangster interlude at a rather low order of mental capacity and with a surprisingly high incidence of alcoholism.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)