Remember the swine-flu scare? Well, that was nothing compared to Divorcitis.
Divorcitis is no trumped-up threat, but a real social virus spreading to a neighborhood, workplace and family near you. At least that's what new findings from a group of researchers at three influential U.S. universities say.
Which explains what many have already witnessed.
"In our family we do divorce," an acquaintance said recently when discussing her own marital split and those of two siblings.
Or, as a married friend of mine reported: "Everyone in my circle of friends is getting a divorce. We're the only ones left who are still together. It makes me a little scared."
Turns out she should be. It's not far-fetched to think of divorce as a social epidemic.
Published earlier this week, the research paper Social Network Effects on Divorce by Rose McDermott, political psychologist at Rhode Island's Brown University, and social scientists James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard University, draws on data from a longitudinal, observational study of thousands of people in Framingham, Mass.
Started in 1948, the continuing study's original purpose was to examine heart disease, but it has also yielded rich information about people's social networks because participants (as well as their offspring and friends) were surveyed at regular intervals. The data have been used to look at how the obesity epidemic has spread in the population, for example.
In 2007, Prof. McDermott, the lead author of the paper, decided to use the information to examine divorce. She, too, had seen the divorce bug spread among her group of friends. "I believed that what we found would be there," she says.
And serious contagion they found. They even identified "divorce clusters."
People with a friend who had divorced were 147 per cent more likely to be divorced themselves by the time of their next examination, four years later.
People with a divorced sibling were 22 per cent more likely to divorce in the same time frame than those without a divorced sibling.
People with a divorced co-worker were 55 per cent more likely to divorce by the next survey than those with a non-divorced co-worker.
Makes you think about who you want sitting on the other side of the cubicle wall, doesn't it?
And get this: Among your network of friends, you don't even have to get divorced to pass along the virus. You can be a carrier.
"If you know someone who gets divorced, it might change your attitude as to whether it's acceptable, which you may then transmit to other friends who may not know the first person," explains Prof. Fowler, who is also co-author with Prof. Christakis of the book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. "This is really about norms. Social networks influence virtually everything about love, sex and relationships."
They have "such a strong effect that not only do we copy our friends, but we end up copying our friends' friends and even our friends' friends' friends," Prof. Fowler explains. "If I don't know anything about you but I know your friend's friend has gotten divorced, I can be good at predicting whether you will get divorced."
The researchers dismissed other possible explanations for the "divorce clusters" such as similarly minded people hanging out together, or some external event that might influence a mass divorce rate.
That the discussion about divorce is no longer taboo, as it was several generations ago, encourages infection rates.
"It gives permission and it's also instructive," Prof. McDermott postulates. "You see that it's socially acceptable for people you know to divorce. And you look at them and think: 'Divorce is hard. But you can survive it. If they can do it, so can I.' "
The knowledge that a community of divorced, single friends awaits can also be encouraging.
"If you get divorced and think you'll be alone, you might be less likely to do it. But if you have divorced, single friends, that makes it easier because you have a network," she adds.
Within families, it's not only siblings' divorces that can spark a breakup. Most potent is the divorce of a parent.
"If a parent gets divorced, it really increases the risk of getting divorced for the child," Prof. McDermott points out. A recent example is the divorce announcement of former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and his wife of 40 years, Tipper. A few weeks later, their daughter's marriage was publicly on the rocks, too.
The parent-child connection is an outcome of modeling behaviour. "We often want to do what our parents do," Prof. McDermott says.
But there's a more subtle issue. "Patterns and dynamics of relationships are often emulated by a child in his or her own relationship," she says. In addition, some social skills - such as knowing how to resolve conflict - are learned (or not) in families, which can influence how relationships are handled by the children.
So do you and your beloved spouse need to decamp to a desert island to avoid exposure to Divorcitis in your various social networks? Panic not. There's a possible antidote - aside from children, that is. (Researchers did find that the more children a couple has, the less susceptible they are to influence infection.) Still, asked if the divorce epidemic is to be feared, Prof. McDermott offers a resounding "No."
"What [the findings]allow us to do is think about what effect the support of our friends' and family's relationships have on our own. Enlightened self-interest is not about self, it's about taking care of our community," she says. "... [To]the extent to which you can [positively]feed your friends' relationships, you can feed your own."
The vaccination, apparently, is all in the generosity of your heart.