DINK is short for “Dual Income, No Kids”. It describes those couples who do have double income and do not have children. In China, most people still insist on the tradition of raising children in their early twenties or thirties. However such a DINK trend is becoming much more acceptable in many developed countries. Thus, the motivation of talking about DINK actually is to explore why people come up with such an idea.
Well, apart from feeling raising children like a duty, what else can children bring to parents. Actually I’ve asked my mom about what she feels like while raising me. She said it is kinda sense of achievement , something like , look the thing you bore starts to talk oh it can walk. But the problem is raising children is a technical and time-cost job. Not only do you have to raise him up but also educate him which is full of risk and unhappiness and accompany him which makes you spend less time on yourself. So as those high-educated people become more sophisticated, they starts to think about that, will the incoming sense of achievement enough to cancel out the loss, or rather are there some other ways to achieve happiness with less loss? At that time children become optional, which is why they choose to be DINK
Well, what I’ve talked above may partially account for the DINK trend in developed countries, but how’s it going on in China? According to a research, up to 2012, among the age of 25-30, about 19% the couples choose not to raise children. So the researcher kept track on those couples, 5 years later, which is 2017, only a quarter of them still insist on being DINK. That is to say, there are indeed a number of couples standing on the DINK side in their early years of marriage. But maybe it is too hard to live with it in such a traditional environment since conventional Chinese parents reckon that it is essential for their chid to raise grandchild. So several years later, those young couples who insisted on DINK at the very beginning finally give up and become parents.
Ok, I’m not dissenting being or not being DINK, you know, just for your information. But just think about it, years later, when it comes to your turn, is DINK really ok with you?
