Mailbag: RESPONDING to Viewer Comments on Our ‘DINK’ Segment

DINK here meaning childless couples: Dual Income, No Kids

I never had kids and I never really wanted to, and here at the far end of life I don’t regret that–not very much, anyway, and not often.

I’ve been in the habit of listening politely when the other side gushes rhapsodic about how breeding was a life-changing experience, unlike any other; how they’d never go back to not having the responsibility, Et Cetera …

Down here, I’m still nominally coupled. But I am not dual income, and that is even more true now that she pays no share of the utilities and is driving my second car around. Pretty much all my life I’ve been on the hook for generating any income, and on the hook for responsibly allocating it too, as best I can. Which is all fine–the point is, I am not a member of the DINK class, even though I qualify for the -NK part.

(Parenthetically: bless you, my few and precious Patrons, and bless you, my few and precious customers … and as for those of you that are neither, well, I doubt you’re reading here in the first place unless you have a fetish for getting yourself pissed off by farfetched political stances and worldviews of questionable provenance, in which case: enjoy).

As for the video, I’m in agreement with most of the first part. If you’re going to go full DINK, I would sure as hell hope that you have a better reason than not having to care about what your kids want when you go to Costco, or the freedom to jet yourself around the world for pleasure–some more arguably virtuous cause than what amounts to the liberation of pure consuming selfishness.

In the second part, I was struck by Keaton the Breeder’s rationale for having kids. It was unusually honest, I thought.

He basically says that breeding brought an automatic undeniable sense of purpose to his life, and caring for his spawn gives that purpose legs–it is perpetual purpose (that while sometimes terrifying, also inspires a sense of a greater liberation of sorts).

I believe him.

But I already have purpose, and it already feels perpetual enough. So, for me, that is not a selling point for the breeder lifestyle. While by his own account, it was and is the central selling point for him.

Russell, the non-breeder half of DueDissidence, more or less speaks my case for me toward the end.

I claim no special integrity based on any of it. I don’t know who is right or what is wrong.

I do what I know how to do, for reasons both vaguely altruistic and concretely narcissistic.

I do what I can and I want to do better.

We’ll see how that turns out.