So, there is so much that can be said about this new trend of DINKs celebrating their DINKhood. But I want to begin with a bit of a clarificatory about what I’m going to say. First, I am not criticizing people who choose to stay single and celibate so they can dedicate themselves to a higher calling. Second, I am not criticizing people who desire to have children but are unable. When I’m referring to DINKs today, I’m referring to people who are choosing to live with another person (whether in marriage or in sin) and not have children. I’m talking about people who are sharing a roof and a bed with another person and making a conscious and deliberate choice to not have babies.
And what I’m going to say is that it’s tragic.
Listen, I could dunk on these people all day long. I could criticize their incredible selfishness. I could point out that they are shirking their duties to their families, their nations, their races, and their God. I could just spend the next 10 minutes slamming these people. But a) I don’t think that it really helpful and b) I really don’t want to. And I don’t want to just slam these people’s selfishness because I feel sorry for them. I pity them.
And I pity them because when I watched the videos of DINKs bragging about their childless lifestyle I was not in the tiniest bit tempted. There was nothing in those videos that came remotely close to making me wish I didn’t have children. NOT ONE THING. The so-called perks of being a DINK were shallow, vapid, vacuous, banal, and insipid. These people are living an ersatz life.
And that’s the realization that I find so tragic. It’s that what these people are doing is living an imitation of life. Or perhaps it’s better to say that they’re living in a paltry imitation of a meaningful life. What they have is all ephemeral and fleeting and vanity.
And what’s fascinating is that while the DINKs aren’t the only ones in our society who are living such a life, they may be the par excellence version of it. The DINKs are the final form of narcissistic, atomistic, individualistic, Western Christlessness. Take all the worst traits of the modern, Western, people without God and this is what you get. This is the pinnacle of Godless, capitalist, enlightenment, neo-liberalism.
No conception of duty, no conception of personal honor, no conception of morality—only hedonic consumption. And it is enough to break my heart. To see people, people made in the image of God living in such emptiness is frightening and heartbreaking.
One of my favorite lines of poetry comes from The Inferno by Dante. And the Italian is so beautiful I have to read it, “Oh lasso, quanti dolci pensier, quanto disio menò costoro al doloroso passo?”[1] And what that means in English is “Alas, how many gentle thoughts, how deep a longing has led them to this agonizing pass?” Dante asks this as he sees the souls in Hell who were being tormented for their…shall we call it romantical sins. What Dante is asking isn’t really a question, Dante is marveling that emotions as tender and passionate as love had led these lost souls to such misery. What Dante has yet to learn and what he will come to learn is that all the souls in Hell are there because their loves were disordered. They didn’t love as they should have loved. They loved what was bad for them instead of what was good. And Dante pities them.
Now, again, Dante learns and eventually he learns that everyone in Hell is a liar. They all paint themselves in the most flattering colors and ignore the fact that they knew better. Dante pities the lovers doomed to destruction, but he has to learn that they chose this. They chose to love what was evil and hate what is good and they did so knowingly.
And for many that takes away the pity. People lose their pity for people who caused their own problems. But friends, it’s just the opposite. Those we pity most should be those who destroy themselves.
Graham Greene in his brilliant book The End of the Affair records the diary of a woman who was committing adultery, but prayed for a miracle and got it. Unfortunately for her, getting the miracle meant that there was a God and she had to keep her promise to God—a God she wasn’t sure she believed in. She promised she would give up the affair. Give up the man she loved. And she was keeping the promise—who knows why! And there is a scene where she tells God that she is going to destroy herself out of spite. God wanted her to give up the affair. God wanted her to turn her life around. But she would spite him. She writes in her diary,
“I said to God, I’ve kept my promise for six weeks. I can’t believe in you, I can’t love you, but I’ve kept my promise. If I don’t come alive again, I’m going to be a slut, just a slut. I’m going to destroy myself quite deliberately. Every year I’ll be more used. Will you like that any better than if I break my promise? I’ll be like those women in bars who laugh too much and have three men with them, touching them without intimacy. I’m falling to pieces already.”[2]
What Dante and Greene are pointing out is how incredibly tragic and painful and self-destructive disordered love is. And they are also pointing out that pity is the right, or among the right, emotional response to this behavior.
I pity the people who are deliberately choosing to not have kids so that they can live a life of responsibility free consumerism who talk about their pets as their “fur babies.” If ever there was a term I hated it’s “fur baby.”
We live in a society that murders and celebrates the murder of actual babies and pampers dogs and cats to idolatrous and blasphemous levels.
Let me say this plainly—dogs are great. They are a wonderful gift from God. The bonding that humans and dogs can have, and horses, and maybe a few other creatures, is a great and good thing. These higher beasts teach us how to be like God and teach us how to be better humans. But a dog is a dog and will never be a baby—and I wouldn’t trade one actual human baby for all the dogs in the world. A human being is made in the image of God and has infinite value. A dog has finite value. Therefore, by mathematical necessity a human has infinitely more value than a dog or any number of dogs.
There is nothing wrong with loving your dog or you horse…we will not speak of cats…loving your puppies is great. But they aren’t babies.
Similarly, these DINKs talk about the “DINK community” and I hear a lot of people talking about “community” latterly and they simply mean people who look like them or who make similar choices to them. That’s not a community. That’s a club. Or perhaps a race. That’s not a community. But because people have no conception of moral duty or personal honor they don’t understand what a community is, but they know they should have it, so they apply the word to things that aren’t communities.
A community is a group of people who live together and owe mutual obligations to one another. A community is a town. A community is a city. A community is not a bunch of consumerist childless people who affirm eachother’s selfishness. That’s a fanclub. That’s the basis for a low-sales volume magazine you’ll find at a Dentist’s office. That’s not a community.
And it’s this use of words that are inherently false that is indicative of a deeper self-deception. Calling a bunch of people who encourage each other to stay strong and resist the urge to live an honorable life and pass on their genetic material and insodoing fulfill God’s mandate to fill the earth a community is utter self-deception. Our society does a lot of this. Calling your pets your babies is a lie. They aren’t babies. They’re beasts. They can be quite lovely beasts. But beasts all the same.
It's a lie.
It’s all a lie.
This idea that consumption will bring meaning is a lie.
It’s an ersatz life. It’s a life imitating the actions and values that bring real meaning. But only imitating. Two people living in sin are imitating marriage. People talking about their affinity groups as communities are imitating real and necessary social structures. Having pets and calling them babies is an imitation of actual child rearing.
But calling it an imitation is too kind and gentle, because it’s in reality a cruel mockery. Of course, it’s imitative inasmuch as hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue. It’s imitative inasmuch as ersatz bread imitates the real, nourishing, farinaceous product. But genuine imitations are trying to be the real thing. These are mockeries. An unmarried couple, with fur-babies, who are part of an online DINK community are mockeries of genuine society-building marriages. They are not more the thing they pretend to be than masturbation is marriage.
But the really tragic thing is that people are engaged in this charade because they know they’re missing out. They know that they are living wrong. They know that they are depriving themselves of what is good, true, noble, and beautiful. So they’re imitating. But the imitation has nothing to do with the reality. Because the reality requires a rejection of the godless, atomistic individualism. But instead they’ve found a way to be godless, consumerist, neo-liberals and still pretend to be living the life of the virtuous that built the West.
DINKhood is the vicious, mocking simulacrum that Consumerism has foisted upon the unwitting—and the witting—to pretend at living a meaningful life. It’s the last, desperate, gasp of a broken and impossible worldview doomed to hedonic, decadent, self-annihilation. It is a worldview of societal suicide in the name of individual pleasure.
DINKery is the end, necessarily, the end of the Enlightenment project. And a paltry, pitiable, and pitiful end it is. Brothers and sisters, this is why the Gospel matters. This is why Christlikeness matters. This is why virtue matters. This is why flourishing matters. Because apart from Christ and godly values, this is what we’re left with.
I’ve used a lot of words to describe the godless, consumerist DINKs. But in the end I think there’s not clearer way to put it than this. These people are desperate to convince themselves that their lives are not really empty. Some probably have. But I think many if not most will never get rid of the lingering doubt and fear of regret that gnaws at them. Don’t hate these people—they probably hate themselves. Let’s instead show them the love of Christ, and try to guide them into lives of virtue. Into lives of meaning.
As the whole world celebrates the birth of the Christ child, let’s encourage people to have children of their own.
[1] Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy: Inferno 5.122–24
[2] Graham Green, The End of the Affair (New York: Pocket Books, 1951), 122–23.