An abbreviation for gainfully employed American couples whose only day job was for themselves, the acronym DINK (dual income, no youth) coined to reflect the blatant materialism of the 1980s.
Four decades later, the term has made a comeback, and millennials are adopting it on social media to flaunt their free time, generous spending habits, and other benefits of opting out of having children.
It has taken off far beyond the United States, adding a country that would have been hard to believe in just a decade ago: China.
China once restricted couples to one child each due to population growth. This led to a shortage of young people, and in 2016, the government increased the limit to two children. In 2021, they will become three.
Against a backdrop of deep economic uncertainty, an increasing number of Chinese are opting for the number: zero.
Many proudly refer to themselves as DINKs or dingke, the phonetic translation in Mandarin.
Xu Kaikai, 29, said being DINK provides her and her 36-year-old boyfriend with a greater sense of control over their lives.
“It reduces some of the age-like anxieties,” she said.
She works in advertising in Shanghai, where her boyfriend is an assignment manager for a structures company. “I mean having a lovely baby,” Xu said.
Nowadays, it’s considered a “floating leaf” and so strange that other people talk about children on social media that it only follows other people who don’t have children.
A recent study by the Luoyang Institute of Science and Technology estimates that DINKs accounted for about 38% of Chinese families in 2020, up from 28% a decade earlier, but those figures included a large number of people living alone and studies did not. It does not take into account whether the couples had dual incomes.
It’s not that all Chinese people adhere to a strict definition of the acronym. Some come without children, while others don’t take into account other people who still have the possibility of replacing their minds: women of childbearing age or men without vasectomy.
It is also unclear how many DINKs there are in the United States. About 44% of couples ages 18 to 49 surveyed through Pew Research in 2021 said they were going to have children, up from 37% in 2018.
The term DINK is not entirely new in China, but in the past it referred to couples who were looking for children but couldn’t, which is not the childless philosophy of child-selection that couples adopt today.
“It’s just an upper-class phenomenon,” said Yuying Tong, a sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies family life.
He said the number of DINKs is expanding in large part because more people are delaying marriage.
The rejection of social norms comes at an inopportune time for the Communist Party, which is suffering from a demographic crisis in which there are not enough young people to care for the elderly.
The country’s population declined for the second year in a row in 2023 (India overtook it as the world’s most populous country) and the birth rate fell 5. 6% to a record high of 6. 39 births compared with another 1,000, slightly more than the U. S. share. rate. which has also declined in recent years.
Today, the Chinese government seeks to motivate other people to have children, subsidies, and even matching services.
In March, the Chinese government announced plans to provide more resources for child-rearing and “work towards a birth-friendly society,” adding that they would improve parental leave policies and childcare options.
It turns out that the government is also looking to scare DINKs into changing their thinking.
Last month, the Chinese platform Weibo posted an article on Twitter about DINK couples in China who regretted not having children because it had led to loneliness, marital conflicts or inheritance problems.
“Being DINK is a bet on the future,” reads the post, which is not yet signed and has been viewed more than 8 million times. “It’s about whether you can keep your original intention, whether your partners can accept it as true. each other, and most importantly, if one takes into account the complex changes in human nature. “
The DINKs questioned this characterization.
“Are all those examples mentioned to inspire other people to have children?A popular entertainment blogger known by the nickname Jing Zhao Cha Mi responded on social media. There are probably more people who regret their way of life with children.
Hu Huiwen, a 38-year-old monetary representative who lives in the eastern city of Hangzhou, has heard all the warnings: her husband will leave her. He will need children when he is older and will be too old to have them. You won’t take care of it in your old age.
But in the five years since she promised to have more children, none of this has happened.
“It may be a lesser penalty, but not so much that you regret it,” Hu said. “Even if I regret it, I can only bear it myself. What else can you do?”
Participate in three other organizational discussions for DINKs, where participants advise others on how to spend their free time. In video journals, he is shown reading or walking through the parks admiring the foliage.
These announcements of a life without young people facilitate the government’s crusade for motherhood. Neither is the stagnation of the economy.
A recent study by the Beijing-based Yuwa Demographic Research Institute found that the average cost of raising a child in China is $74,600, or 6. 3 times GDP per capita.
Of the 14 countries included in the study, the only position where prices are higher relative to the source of income is South Korea, which has the lowest birth rate in the world.
“At the end of the day, it’s the pressures and this very competitive environment that makes marriage and motherhood unsustainable,” said Mu Zheng, an assistant professor of sociology at the National University of Singapore.
When Zheng Yu, a 47-year-old fashion representative who lives in Shanghai and is in her 20s, her friends and family saw her decision not to have children as a symptom of her rebellious nature.
Now, with the source of income inequality on the rise and her niece under pressure to excel, she said she and her husband would make the same resolution again.
“Only if I don’t have children will I be able to live as I do now,” said Zheng, who has visited more than 50 countries. “I just have to think about myself, that’s the component I enjoy the most. “
“Given global political and economic trends, if you don’t have a strong maternal instinct, you shouldn’t have a child just for fun,” she said.
Vable Liu, a 29-year-old English teacher in Jinan, the capital of China’s Shandong province, said about a third of her friends are DINK.
Liu and her husband posted a short video protecting their choice.
“Will the DINKs miss the children’s lives?” he asks in the clip.
They answer together: “Surely other people with children are happy?People with children are not necessarily happy, they will miss the joy of being DINK. “
They mock your interview.
“What if your circle of family puts pressure on you?”Stay away from them. “
“To whom will you give your goods when you die?” Waste everything first. “
Special envoy Xin-yun Wu in Taipei contributed to this report.
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