Voices: The real ‘contagion’ isn’t divorce. It’s anxiety about women’s autonomy.

Maybe you’ve heard it at a family dinner, in a church hallway or while scrolling through social media:

“This generation is in real trouble.”

“The family is under attack.”

These kinds of concerns have a long history, and they tend to resurface during times of social change. Narratives like these can spread quickly through a community and take on a life of their own. As someone who studies and cares deeply about the systems and social factors that shape individual wellbeing and relationship outcomes in Utah, I pay close attention to the stories we tell about families, marriage and responsibility. And I’ve learned that even well-intended discussions can drift, allowing familiar social scripts to overshadow what truly strengthens relationships.

One theme that resurfaces again and again is a subtle but persistent anxiety about women’s autonomy.

Several recent articles have revived the idea of “divorce contagion.”

One article frames itself as an exploration of how social networks influence divorce, but its core premise warrants scrutiny. The article briefly acknowledges that correlation does not equal causation, then builds its entire argument as though it does. This moment of performative scientific caution seems disingenuous, because the data do not show that divorce spreads like a virus. Instead, they show correlation that could be attributed to many other factors. Labeling it “contagion” lends a scientific sheen to a familiar cultural script that casts women’s peer networks as corrosive, destabilizing, even dangerous. Brad Wilcox and Maria Baer go even further, describing feminist voices as promoting “divorce porn.” The comparison is strikingly tone-deaf. Equating women seeking support in troubled marriages with men consuming women through pornography collapses two fundamentally different realities. One reflects women trying to survive or exit painful marriages. The other involves the commodification and exploitation of women’s bodies. Conflating them misidentifies the source of harm and misdirects moral scrutiny.

Some of the most common reasons women cite for pursuing divorce include infidelity, abuse and substance misuse. Yet rather than examining these substantive issues, the narrative recasts women’s peer networks as the real threat — not marital inequality, not the uneven burden of domestic and caregiving labor, and not emotional neglect and abuse.

Suspicion of women talking together is not new. Across eras, cultures and institutions, women’s support systems have been treated as potentially threatening to the social order. The details change, but the underlying anxiety is consistent.

Consider the Salem Witch Trials, when women simply gathering together sparked fear that they were casting spells.

Victorian women were routinely cautioned about their social circles, lest improper female companions disturb their purity or domestic focus.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, sewing and knitting circles offered women one of the few socially acceptable spaces to exchange ideas. Because these groups had the potential to nurture political awareness and solidarity, they often drew suspicion from those invested in maintaining the status quo.

The suffrage movement was treated like a contagious moral disease that might “infect” wives with dangerous ideas.

In the 1950s, casual gatherings among housewives created anxiety that women would exchange stories and grow discontent with domestic life.

After the introduction of no-fault divorce in the 1970s, politicians, pastors and sociologists warned of the spread of divorce.

More recently, when a Julia Roberts–narrated voting ad reminded women that their ballot is private, the fury from conservative commentators followed the same script: Women who encourage other women to make independent decisions are dangerous and deceitful.

Whether the topic is voting, marriage or divorce, the underlying anxiety about women’s autonomy is the same.

Why is the fear of women talking to women so durable? Because women’s shared experiences can expose inequitable systems. What feels like a personal failing becomes recognizable as something many women face: unequal domestic labor, imbalanced childcare, emotional neglect, exhaustion and abuse.

I once interviewed an elderly woman who described what wives of her generation endured.

“I thought I was crazy,” she told me.

That is what happens when women are discouraged from sharing experiences with one another. Silence keeps the problem invisible. Connection makes it visible.

And so, in times of social change when gender hierarchies feel threatened, predictable warnings resurface: Women’s friends can “put ideas in their head,” divorced women are dangerous influences and feminism fuels discontent.

Understanding this pattern helps explain why narratives about “divorce contagion” gain traction.

Once again, the concern is not that a woman might be experiencing harm, pain or exhaustion; the worry is that women might talk to other women and discover they are not alone. These conversations do not create marital problems; they reveal them. Calling it “contagion” redirects attention away from the structural conditions and behaviors that genuinely undermine relationships and back toward controlling women’s autonomy.

The suspicion of women’s support systems is not unique to any moment. The same old fear resurfaces again and again: witchcraft, hysteria, gossip, negativity — and now, “divorce contagion.” The form changes, but the function is consistent. When women compare notes, the silence that sustains inequity loses its power. And that exposes the real fear: women’s clarity. And clarity, it turns out, is contagious indeed.

If we care about the health of marriage, the answer isn’t to discourage women from connecting. It is to invest in what we know actually works: teaching relationship skills, encouraging equitable partnership and creating support systems that help couples thrive.

Lisa Stoddard-Reeves lives in Orem and is pursuing graduate studies at Harvard Extension School and has a certificate in religion and society. She writes about culture and social systems, drawing on historical context and contemporary research to challenge narratives that overlook structural imbalances.

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