Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This weekend, we talk about the difference between the lives we are sold and the ones that actually create a life worth living.
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By now you must have heard the term “DINK,” which means double income, no kids. Society has done an excellent job marketing it as the smart, liberated choice. You have two careers, bringing income and stability to your home, plus plenty of disposable income to book a last-minute trip to some exotic island whenever the mood strikes. I think y’all already know I find it extremely vapid and lacking any real meaning. So here I am to offer you the opposite of DINK living.
I recently heard a new term floating around called “SILK,” referring to a family with a “single income, lots of kids.” I first saw it in a social media video a couple of days ago where a dad was lovingly joking about how his SILK life was faring in the volatile U.S. economy. Maybe you’d expect him to show some sort of exhaustion or frustration, but really it was just a compilation of happy family moments at home. From a modern perspective, I’m sure it looks a little chaotic, with one breadwinner and a house that never quite goes quiet. But this was the only life I knew for over a decade, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that while those were some exhausted years of mothering, I would switch places to be back there in a second.
My husband and I got married young. We had four girls right away. He made all of the money while I stayed home to raise the girls. This was the situation until I started writing, but even then I wrote around the edges of our lives. In fact, I still consider myself somewhat of a stay-at-home mom. I am nowhere near the breadwinner, and while I write during the day when our girls are in school, it’s mom mode all the time the second that bell rings.
There are weeks when my husband is traveling from one place to another, and I am the only adult in the house; the laundry piles up, and school projects land last minute on my plate. But I have never once looked at a DINK couple on Instagram, sipping cocktails on a balcony somewhere, and thought that their life was more fulfilling than mine.
I’m not here to hate on DINKs. Do I think it’s the better option? No, of course not. Do I think their lives look small in comparison? Yes. However, what I do take issue with is the particular kind of complaint coming from their side of society, often from wealthy, highly educated people who talk about parenting as if it is a near-impossible feat that requires entire teams of support just to survive. Every so-called intellectual magazine has published some form of doomerism essay discussing the “mental load” of parenting. The way they describe motherhood or parenting is as if they are living in constant crisis mode, where one school pickup or sick day threatens the whole operation.
It honestly makes me laugh.