Playing away from home is a man's game
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Tuesday February 09 2010
Thou shalt not commit adultery, says the seventh commandment. But biblical scholars tell us that the Old Testament concept of adultery is very different to our present day understanding.
Polygamy -- whereby men had several wives -- was common, as was the keeping of concubines. The prohibition on adultery was effectively an extension of the prohibition on theft. A wife was a man's property, so to sleep with another man's wife was stealing from him. According to this understanding, it was perfectly acceptable for a married man to sleep with an unmarried woman.
Female adultery has always been judged more harshly. Evolutionary psychologists suggest that this is because women bear children.
If a wife is unfaithful there was every chance, in the days before contraception, that her husband would raise a child who was not his own. In some cultures women who are believed to have been unfaithful are still punished by death.
Statistics on the incidence of female infidelity versus male vary enormously. But in nearly every survey women claim to stray less than men. Perhaps this is the case but such is the cultural prohibition on female infidelity that it is also likely that women lie even in anonymous surveys.
The advent of paternity testing is another measure of the faithfulness of wives in marriage. Some 30pc of tests carried out in the US reveal that the father of the child is not actually the biological father. However it should be borne in mind that people seek these tests because there is a doubt over paternity in the first place, so the incidence of non-paternity is likely to be significantly higher than in the general population.
Irish Independent
