Playing Around: Women and Extramarital Sex

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Raising her young daughter in a conventionally middle-class neighborhood, Linda Wolfe was surprised to discover the preoccupation of the other women was not so much in the affairs of their children –but in affairs of their own. Extramarital affairs. Everyone talked about “playing around,” and Ms. Wolfe found herself fascinated by their lives.

We live in a world where adultery is still more difficult and guilt producing for a woman than it is for a man, and yet it is estimated that the number of women engaging in adultery in the post-Kinsey era may be as high as 40 percent. What has accounted for the behavior of these otherwise conventional women here and across the country? What has prompted them to override centuries of proscription?

These questions are answered in this highly readable exploration of female infidelity. Delving into the past, Linda Wolfe surveys the fictional and historical accounts of woman's adultery. The she examines the contemporary women novelists' treatment of the subject. Last, she investigates the adulterous women of today –the young and old, the traditional secret adulterers, and the new breed who with their husbands practice open adultery – recording their thoughts and experiences as they traverse a path of radical social change.

Linda Wolfe. Playing Around: Women and Extramarital Sex. New York, N.Y.: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1975. xi+248pp.