Through just one click of a button on Facebook, I was able to launch my research survey to my personal network of hundreds of people. Word of my research spread outward from there from computer to computer through an invisible web of social networks. This online snowballing approach broadened the pool of participants into a more diverse group of people than I would have been able to recruit on my own, admittedly there is still a skew to my own affiliations which I mentioned previously. Of those surveyed, approximately 50 percent were between the ages of 25-29; about 38 percent were 30-34; only seven percent were 35-40; and just fewer than four percent were between the ages of 40-50 (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
This skew towards younger DINKs could have been influenced by the use of Facebook as a recruiting tool, but is more likely indicative of the fact that most Americans choose to be only short-term DINKs. One survey participant speaks to this sentiment: “I definitely see the attraction of having children and that is something I want one day. I just feel like my husband and I are too young and unprepared.” The sentiment of this participant captures what the majority of the DINKs in the research project assume—one day, they would try to start a family.
DINK (Double Income No Kids) Survey
25-29 30-34 35-40 40-50
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The geographical span of this survey reached across all four designated regions of the United States: Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. Survey participants responded from 25 different states and 55 different cities, with the majority of these individuals living in either a city or suburban environment. Only two participants claimed to live in a rural setting. This statistical leaning towards city living could be caused by outreach bias, but is more likely due to the fact that according to the United States Census Bureau’s most recent findings, 82.6% of all Americans live in metropolitan, or city, environments. In other words, the general population of the United States, like the survey, is skewed towards urban and suburban populations. Additionally, rather than renting, over 70 percent of the individuals surveyed owned their own house, despite living in a more costly city environment. This would suggest that they have a higher socioeconomic status in that they can afford to own property,
something I will discuss in a moment.
Education is critical to this group of individuals. Although part of the research criteria required that the DINKs have a minimum of their Bachelor’s degree (current statistical data demonstrates that college-educated adults marry at older ages), introducing some bias, many of their academic pursuits did not end there. Over 39 percent of the survey participants earned their Master’s degree. An additional 14 percent achieved their doctorate or
professional degrees. One participant commented, “Everyone has their own priorities and makes their own choices (about children) according to those priorities. Up until this point, I have valued my education.” This individual was not alone in this prioritization, at least in temporal terms, of education before children.
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Figure 2
Education often leads to a successful and thriving career for many DINKs. As a possible correlate, the majority of the individuals surveyed were financially secure. Over 62 percent of the individuals surveyed made over $50,000 a year. The next highest group made between $26,000 and $50,000 a year, leaning more heavily to the latter. Additionally, there were a few individuals who were currently in graduate school with limited income.
Most of the participants had only been married for a handful of years at the time of survey. While about 43 percent had been married between zero to two years (a relatively short period of time to try to have children), another 47 percent had been married from three to five years—giving them a longer amount of time to start considering the possibility of children. Only three percent had been married for over ten years. These percentages most likely correlate with the age of the participants surveyed and might suggest that by the time these couples are older, they will actually have kids, or at least might hope to.
This implies that it might be harder to research older DINKs because there actually are not as many of them as the existing stereotypes would lead one to assume or because using the general inclusion criteria of “Double Income No Kids,” one will catch many individuals who only very temporarily fit into this category.. A quote from a survey participant explains, “We really wanted to spend the first years of marriage as a couple,
DINK (Double Income No Kids) Survey Undergraduate degree Masters degree Doctoral degree Professional Degree
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learning more about each other and spending quality time together. We didn't want to rush into having a baby which would take up all of our free time.” It appears that the older individuals become the more likely that they will forgo being DINK. I discuss the specific reasons for this in greater depth in later chapters.
Another interesting feature of the survey data was that without premeditated design, the survey responses were heavily skewed to the female perspective. Women represented almost 84 percent of the respondents. This could again be due to the built-in bias of my personal network, but it could also be connected to the findings from a Pew Research Center survey which found that “women tend to treat information gathering online as a more
textured and interactive process – one that includes gathering and exchanging information through support groups and personal exchanges” (Fallows: 2005). So it may be that women felt more comfortable in sharing the intimate details of their life virtually, while their male counterparts did not. Or even possibly that people interpreted the topic –childbearing – as a “woman’s” issue and so the men did not feel compelled to participate. Even though slanted towards women, many participants provided details from both their own and their spouse’s perspective in the comment portion of the survey. This provided a somewhat more balanced understanding of the situation.
Lastly, because of using a convenience sample, I was unable to target any specific ethnicity or race. As such, I did not include an ethnicity metric in the survey. Although I believe that it would be interesting to see if DINK was experienced differently across ethnic boundaries, this was not the main purpose of my research. Rather, I was more interested in investigating how general outlooks appeared to influence decisions about the timing of childbearing.
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