For a bride, a joint family meant stepping into an unknown country. The temperaments, expectations, the role of a dutiful wife and the husband. One can only imagine the new days of many such brides in the last century. It also meant human resources for activities you would typically do by yourself in a nuclear family – raising your kid, cooking for the family and more.
A nuclear family means answering only to your husband or wife and/or your visiting mother-in-law. And then there are DINKS.
This term recently gained popularity – Double Income No Kids – DINKS. The choice to be DINKS are varied – career ambitions of spouses, freedom, flexibility, fear of raising a kid, lifestyle maintenance, high living costs and its apparently trendy among Gen-Z.
The entrapment, enticement and promoting women to work, provide for the family and follow passions, enabled (1) the government more slices from taxable income; (2) landlords to increase rents; and (3) increased cost of living; and more. This led to nuclear families as a funnel for growing retirement homes, and now to DINKS.
Throughout the three stage process, the family system has been invalidated. The support system of a joint family became daily conflicts, the wisdom of elders became the burden of senior caregiving. Now, the welcoming of a child, a man and woman’s new stage of life has become DINKS.
Selfish is a couple choosing to live free but caged in their version of adulthood. Adulthood for DINKS is the absence of responsibility, forward thinking and appreciation for your ancestors. It takes a lot to raise a kid, especially in Indian households.
Leftists and liberals who advocate for more DINKS and/or normalize the lifestyle, are often well to do with a huge support network. And most rich people have kids, many with large families.
All the top 10 richest (as of April 2025), – Elon Musk, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google; Mark Zuckerberg,; Larry Ellison of Oracle; Michael Dell of Dell; Jensen Huang of NVIDIA; Bernard Arnault of LVMH; and Jim Walton of Walmart have two kids.
Elon Musk has 14 kids, Jeff Bezos has 7, Bernard Arnault has 5; and Michael Dell has 4. The Facebook guy has 3.
Amongst the Indian Rich, Ambani and Adani have three and two kids respectively.
A lot of the promotion also comes from intellectuals, editors and execs wanting lower populations among certain groups. They never advise the poor or certain ethnic or religious populations. A more sinister plan would be actively desiring that middle class people don’t procreate future millionaires or business executives.
The middle class seems to be the most affected by this idea. The middle class pay the most tax, donate more to the smaller temples, churches, other religious places, gofundme type fundraisers, are the biggest market for FMCG goods, and have just about the right amount of money and determination, motivation, and hunger to succeed.
The rich have more access to capital, mentorship, expensive education, risk taking capacity and networking. They often keep wealth and award contracts and work within their circles. Every exclusive membership to a club or organization is a key to more prime work and a wall for the middle class.
And now the middle class are the highest follower of DINKS. This has genuine social, moral, civic and religious implications.
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