Unconsenting DINKS

I'm not sure which side I belong to

Maybe it’s my algorithm, maybe it’s the vibe shift, but there seems to be, in these polarized times, an increasing divide between the childless and the parents. You are one or the other, and whichever one you are signifies something about you beyond whether or not you have kids.

Now that I’m in my early 30s and in a committed relationship, I notice people are much more comfortable asking if I have children. When I say “no” it’s usually met with “not everyone wants kids and that’s okay!”

But I do want kids. I read Substacks about motherhood and look at photos of other people’s babies and get Instagram ads for strollers and beige baby toys. In some ways, I feel like I am on Team Parent, I belong on Team Parent…and yet circumstances have assigned me to Team Childless, for the time being, anyway.

Which leaves no space for the deep longing I feel. This isn’t really my choice, not my permanent state. I’m tired of people assuming that I’m somehow consciously choosing the DINK life.

Maybe there is nothing insightful to be said here. I am not a mother, but I long to be one, and I want to be seen as in between these two states, rather than a committed member of Team Childless. Why do I need to name this space between childless and parent as if it means something? Why do I need my deep desire to be seen? What do I think being seen in this way will give me? Why do I need someone other than my therapist to understand why Mother’s Day posts on Instagram made me cry? Why do I feel more fealty to mothers than to my own, well, “tribe”? Probably because I don’t want to be in this tribe. I don’t really belong. I’m not choosing to be childless so I can travel or go stay out late or focus on my “career”.

Once I was driving with a friend who lamented reaching their late 30s without owning property or having a family. I said, well, aren’t we all just a product of our historical moment? Is it your fault that you’re a millennial who made it to almost 40 without a family of your own? Maybe. Maybe I was trying to reassure myself more than my friend.

Of course how I’ve gotten here is a combination of life circumstances, personal choices and the tides of history. That’s how many of us have found their way here…because I’m not the only one, right?

I don’t want to be bratty, to demand to be seen in some specific way by acquaintances and older couples at church. I don’t actually need to be seen in some specific way in order to move through the world. But I could do without the assumption that I have gotten here on purpose, that I reject parenthood or children.

I long to enter a new phase of life, which still awaits me (I hope). Wrapped up in that longing is fear and uncertainty and two sides of the political spectrum that can’t decide if a woman in her 30s is an empty egg carton, or an empowered woman with decades of fertility ahead of her.

I stand somewhere in the middle, wondering when I get to declare what team I’m on.