Perspective: The challenges confronting the ‘kinless’ are more than semantics
February 22, 2025
America is losing the links that bind communities together. As Alysse ElHage and Brad Wilcox previously highlighted, prime-age adults are becoming more atomized. Over the past decade, for the first time, the share of adults ages 18-55 who are neither married nor have children exceeds the number of adults in the same range who are married with kids. ElHage and Wilcox called the adults with neither spouses nor children “kinless adults.” Even though many young Americans hope for marriage and children, the number of these adults is projected to keep rising.
The “kinless” coinage sparked a good-faith critique from Elliot Haspel, who raised two concerns, one about accuracy, the other about charity. Many of the so-called “kinless” are, of course, not completely bereft of family. A person who is “never married and [has] no children in the home” may live with her aging mother. He could live in an apartment a short train ride from his nieces and nephews in the suburbs.
