September 26, 2026

As a journalist who has covered parenting my whole career, I’ve seen many a momfluencer make a divorce announcement and, over the next months and years, follow it up with empowering posts about the independence and happiness they have reclaimed. This content is intended to be inspirational and encouraging — and it is. But I’ve also noticed it rarely gets into the aspect of divorce I hear about most from mom friends in the throes of it: the financial challenges. Melinda Wenner Moyer is a longtime parenting journalist with a great Substack in which she delivers research-backed insight into raising kind, responsible humans. But over the past two years, she has also weighed in on a topic few other substackers have: the financial reality of divorcing as a mom. When I read her newsletter on her first year of separation and its economic toll, I knew she would be the perfect writer to investigate the dissonance I was seeing and what exactly might be causing it. Melinda interviewed 20 divorcées and many divorce experts to produce this chilling and pivotal story.
—Julia Edelstein, features editor, New York 

By Melinda Wenner Moyer

Illustration: Benny Douet

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