On any given day it's likely that a scan of news headlines will include at least one story of marital infidelity. On the heels of the scandalous revelation of New York governor's Elliot Spitzer's patronage of high priced call-girls was news of Senator Debbie Stabenow's husband also stepping out. This while Hillary Clinton's presence in campaign news reminds us of her husband's famous dalliance and the raid on a polygamist compound in Texas delineates the farther reaches of unacceptability in America's family values.
But does the news give us a distorted sense of how many people are committing adultery? And to what extent are these scandals strictly American in nature? Was the attendance of French president Mitterrand's funeral by his mistress and illegitimate daughter a sign that the French have greater flexibility between husband and wife?
In her book "Lust in Translation" Pamela Druckerman digs into the statistics on who's cheating and how much of it they're doing, and then travels the world to look at how different cultures regard the bond of marriage and deviations from it. Druckerman joined msnbc.com's Will Femia on the phone from Paris to share some of the insights from the book.
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