Divorce Breeds Divorce

OK, surely this is a man bites dog story. A new study shows that if a close friend gets divorced, then you’re more likely to get divorced .

Gee, who would have imagined that we’re influence by other people’s behavior. We’re, er, social animals?

Long ago Aristotle recognized that our moral character is shaped by the company we keep.

But I wonder about the premise of the study. Is this post hoc ergo propter hoc (because x occurred after y, therefore y caused x)? We tend to choose close friends who share out outlook on life. If so, then perhaps learning that an old friend is divorcing doesn’t cause you to change your mind about the moral legitimacy of divorce as trigger you to think about an option you’ve always kept in the back of your mind.

Though maybe I’m wrong. The sanctity of marriage and the wrong of divorce functions more along the lines of holiness and taboo than reasoned right and wrong. As a consequence, when we know someone who breaks a taboo, unless we’re willing to condemn him, we tend to participate, pyschologically, in the breaking of the taboo, thus weaking its hold on our moral imaginations.

In that sense, there is an influence that flows from transgression into a close community, weakening power of norms. That’s the moral purpose of transgressive art—to weaking the power of norms.

Well, I’m not quite sure, but that’s also not surprising. The sudden and widespread emergence of a culture of divorce in the 1970s has many, many different sources—the legal change to no-fault divorce, for example. And these sources intertwine in complex ways.