It's always his fault, never her fault.

"With the work place and the Internet, overscheduled lives and inattentive husbands—it's no wonder more American women are looking for comfort in the arms of another man," says Newsweek magazine, in a just-released cover feature. The cover sports an attractive, smug woman holding the hand of her husband and also of her male paramour, under the headline "The New Infidelity: From Office Affairs to Hook-ups, More Wives are Cheating, Too."

Many popular movies, TV shows and books have celebrated the cheating wife, including the movies The Bridges of Madison County, and The Piano, and Danielle Steele's romance novels To Love Again and Crossings.

When wives cheat on husbands, it's because the wives are overworked and "overscheduled," and their husbands are "inattentive." Yet when the genders are switched, our culture is not nearly so understanding. Witness the unreal amount of vitriol directed at former President Clinton over his affair with Monica Lewinsky, the destruction of Gary Hart's promising political career and presidential aspirations over his affair with Donna Rice, and the widespread public sympathy for Clara Harris, who repeatedly ran over her husband with her Mercedes after catching him having an affair. In the distant past, cheating wives were viewed more harshly than cheating husbands. Today it's the reverse.

Glenn discussed the Newsweek double standard on infidelity on His Side with Glenn Sacks.

To learn more, see Newsweek's The Secret Lives of Wives (7/8/2004). Also:
1) To learn more about the popular illusion that women work harder than men, and that marital gender roles favor men over women, see Glenn's columns Indiana Woman's 'Housework Strike': Maybe It's Husbands Who Should Strike (Gary Post-Tribune, 11/8/02) (coauthored by Dianna Thompson of the National Family Justice Association) and The Price of Fatherhood--a Father's Reply to Ann Crittenden's ‘Mothers' Manifesto' (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 1/10/02).
2) To learn more about the Clara Harris "Murder by Mercedes" case, see Glenn's columns "In Defense of David Harris" (LewRockwell.com, 3/4/03) and "Convicted Murderess Can Get Custody but Decent Fathers Can't" (Houston Chronicle, 9/19/03), and listen to Texas P.I. Reveals Secrets Behind Clara Harris' 'Murder by Mercedes' (9/28/03).
3) For an excellent discussion of the double-standard in the way men's and women's adultery is portrayed in popular culture, see pages 193-195 of Warren Farrell's Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say.

Listen to the show (MP3 format)