Divorce is Contagious

Divorce cases seems to cluster but I have never been able to figure it out why. I wondered if it was the weather or when children are in school or something else. I was therefore intrigued to see articles recently about a study by Dr. Rose McDermott of Brown University of 12,000 Americans living in the town of Framingham, Massachusetts. The study found that divorce is contagious and can spread like a virus. The bad feelings and heated emotions that surround a marital split spreads like a disease, infecting couples with up to two degrees of separation from the rift, psychologists and sociologists report. The researchers have called it ‘divorce clustering’ and found that a split up between immediate friends increases a person’s own chances of getting divorced by 75 per cent. I assume this applies as well to high profile divorces reported in the media. This might explain why I see clusters of divorce cases. All of a sudden some celebrity is reported to get a divorce and couples start thinking maybe they should get divorced too. This may also affect how people get divorced. Adversary divorces get lots of publicity and divorce mediation gets very little if any publicity. Adversary divorce maybe contagious but mediated divorces are less so.

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