Is adultery really quite high in Denmark and Norway?
Adultery
In modern sociology one of the most considerable topics is adultery or infidelity. This concept means a violation of a couple’s assumed or stated contract regarding emotional and/or sexual exclusivity (Weeks et al., 2003). Simultaneously with interest there are a number of problems connected to research of adultery; the main is the lack of statistical information about cross-cultural levels of infidelity. Nowadays in media a question of its degree in the Scandinavian countries is increasingly raised, especially the one about Denmark and Norway. My answer is – yes, the level of adultery is quite high in Denmark and Norway.
The first evidence is sex-ratio theory, which is based on two main indicators: the sex-ratio and the divorce rate. The first measurement based on the ratio of the number of marriage-aged women to marriage-aged men. According to this theory, in the area, which has a high sex-ratio (the index value is more than 1); men are more likely to commit betrayal because the demand for them is higher (Schmitt, 2005). As well as these areas has a high sex-ratio, they are they are characterized by quite high numbers of divorces, which can be direct reflection of adultery. According to statistical data the sex-ratio coefficients are 1,02 for both countries (“List of countries by sex ratio”, 2015), while the crude divorce rates per 1,000 population is set as 2,6 for Denmark and 2,1 in Norway (“Divorce demography”, 2015). As it can be seen, the results argue in favor of quite high level of adultery in these countries.
The second argument in favor of high level of adultery in Denmark and Norway is rather cultural, than statistical. According to some researchers the growing involvement of women in the labor force is considered to be a cause of marital infidelity (Nwadiaro, 2012). The growing economic equality between the sexes leads the situation when spouses often spend more time with co-workers in the office than each other, so the chances to cheat are increasing as well. Since Denmark and Norway are societies of gender equality, especially in the economic sphere, it is possible to state that the level of marital infidelity is quite high in these countries.
Even though the interest to the topic of adultery is high, we still do not have significant statistics. Nevertheless we can answer the question of this work about quite high numbers of cases of adultery in Denmark and Norway. Available statistics and sex-ratio theory give a positive answer. Taking into account some cultural aspects of explanation the concept of infidelity I believe that adultery is quite high in Denmark and Norway.
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