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Ep.120 - The Worst Day of Their Lives Was Not the Abuse. It Was the Divorce. | Marriage | Family | Parenting |No-Fault Divorce

Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

Ask people what broke the family and you get a familiar list of villains. My guest points somewhere almost no one is looking. One quiet change to the law. I treat trauma for a living. People who have survived violence and abuse, some of the worst things a person can endure. I ask them to name the worst day of their life. Again and again, they do not name the violence. They name the day their parents divorced. That is where this conversation starts, and it does not let up. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse has a doctorate in economics. She taught at Yale, then George Mason, then walked away from academic life to raise her kids. She founded the Ruth Institute to defend the family. And she reasons about marriage the way economists reason about everything. Change the law, you change the incentives, and the fallout reaches places nobody bothered to imagine. The law she keeps circling back to is no-fault divorce. Her argument is simple and unsettling. Erase the idea of marital fault and you do not just make marriage easier to walk out of. You rewrite what adults owe their children. And it is the children who pay. What you’ll hear: * Why Dr. Morse names no-fault divorce the most overlooked threat to marriage * What erasing marital fault quietly set loose * The great abdication, how parents lost their authority, and who moved in to claim it * What divorce and repartnering can do to a child, from my years in the room * Why some windows in a child’s development do not reopen once they close * How she holds on to hope after decades in this fight This one is not comfortable. It is honest. And the people Dr. Morse and I keep coming back to are the kids who never got a vote. Follow Virtuous Leaders and leave a rating so the next person finds it too. More from Dr. Johann D’Souza: johanndsouza.com drjohanndsouza.substack.com linkedin.com/in/johanndsouza Book Dr. Johann D'Souza to speak: johanndsouza.com/speaking Guest resource: ruthinstitute.org #JenniferRobackMorse #DrJohannDSouza #VirtuousLeaders #Marriage #Family