DINKs and the American Dream

As I received my undergraduate diploma and turned to face the crowd, I noticed a classmate’s mouth hanging open in disbelief. I suspected the cause of his astonishment was not my recognition as an alumnus; rather, his eyes were fixed on the drooly, googly-eyed three-month-old pulling my tassel. 

I wondered what he was thinking. Undoubtedly, he thought the same about me.

The idea of being a married father at age 22 is quite jarring to my generation. A few decades ago, it would not have been so incredible. The story of a classmate falling in love and marrying his high school sweetheart was not out of the norm for many Americans. Now, it certainly raises eyebrows, with fewer young Americans choosing to gettg married and having kids, as illustrated by the following figure from Pew Research Center.

The Modern American Family

Pew Research Center, September 2023

I get a lot of feedback on my decision to start a family young, including: “Don’t you want to become more established in your career?” or “Have you thought about moving in together first?” or, my favorite, “Just wait until…” Peers are quick to point out the risks incurred. Increasingly, they choose to shrug off the benefits of family life altogether.

The term DINK – short for Dual Income, No Kids – has become a trending label on social media where couples share the high-end experiences afforded by being "childfree." Influencers distinguish between being childfree and childless to denote their active participation.

As Dr. Amy Blackstone, a sociologist studying the childfree movement, explained on The Dr. Phil Show: "I study people who make the intentional choice to not have kids. In one case, a person is living a life they have chosen for themself and in another case, they are not."

When Pew Research Center asked childfree adults why they are unlikely to have children, the top answers were “they just don’t want to” (57%), followed by “they want to focus on other things” (44%). The share of U.S. adults younger than 50 without children who say they are unlikely to ever have them rose 10 percentage points over five years, from 37% in 2018 to 47% in 2023.

It’s becoming much more common to see young couples delay parenthood. The U.S. Census Bureau reported a 43% decline in births for women aged 20-24 since 1990. During the same years, there was a 67% increase in births for women aged 35-39. Gen Z is the most likely generation to want to be in a DINK relationship, a whopping 32% of women, according to a Credit Karma survey of more than 2,000 adult women.

The conundrum is well articulated by Perri Blumberg in an article for the Today Show: “For a certain sector of Millennials and Gen Zers, the dream isn’t family, but freedom.”

To me, the good life is found in the mystery of my little family.

The DINK lifestyle champions the values of personal freedom and autonomy. It prioritizes discretionary money, free time, and career opportunities. Kids are viewed as restrictive, preventing couples from living life to its fullest. If DINKs do choose to have children, they are seen as a capstone to their success; as a result, starting a family becomes an afterthought. 

When we make freedom our highest good, the DINK lifestyle becomes the logical conclusion to the American Dream. For the Founders, our human liberties embedded in the Constitution were buttressed by a belief in natural law. Americans originally saw liberty as beneficial only so far as individual choices help build a habit of virtue. The great jurist William Blackstone’s seminal work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, was antecedent to American legal thought. He wrote: 

For as God, […] created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained. 

About 4 in 10 parents (41%) say being a parent is tiring, and 29% say it is stressful all or most of the time, according to a recent Pew survey. In fact, children do inherently restrain our abilities and demand a regulated routine of sacrifices. Each day, we as parents are given the opportunity to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and provide financially for someone in need. But these recurrent labors are works of mercy—the love a family is built upon.

Parents choose to take a step into the background, putting their child’s needs above their own, acting as a safe harbor to anchor their child’s life. In turn, the family unit is brought to the forefront. Parenthood is where the individual begins to see the fundamental building block of society as the family. It intimately melds us into the commonwealth in a way that living as DINKs cannot.

To me, the good life is found in the mystery of my little family. Candlelit dinners. Christmas tree shopping. Picking maternity clothes. That first careful drive home from the hospital. A first belly laugh. Rubber-ducky bath time. Mother and child asleep together. These hidden, quiet moments are worth the sacrifice, worth the risk.

To build a family and pursue the American Dream, you always had to be willing to face uncertainty. My family’s ancestors escaped famine in Scotland in the 1750s, traveled from Norway to the Pony Express in the 1880s, and fled antisemitism in Poland in the 1930s. They had to risk far more for their dream.

Our country was founded to protect this understanding of freedom: to provide the opportunity to pursue this dream. Americans dreamed of their descendants taking on the responsibilities of the family, the local polis, and their church; not shying away from a challenge but pioneering into the unknown, headfirst. 

At the present moment, we need not cross the Atlantic, nor the Rocky Mountains. The good life is most accessible within the enclave of our own homes; young Americans need only begin the adventure.

Oliver Olsen is a former research assistant at the Institute for Family Studies and a graduate of the University of Virginia.