The DINK family

Children of the 50's all had their Dinky toys. After Dinky toys came Match Box toys, a toy for the next generation. At least with Match Box toys you couldn't pull the tires off and eat them - an early example of Health and Safety.

When I was a kid, we would tie a string around our Dinky toy and negotiate it over a predetermined obstacle course. Just imagine, a dozen or so kids pulling Dinky toys around the playground; it must have looked a sight. The fads in those simple days worked in a regular cycle - Dinky toys, cigarette cards, bottle tops and marbles. The kids today miss out on all the good things in life, don't they?

Today a DINK is not a model car of the 1950's. A "dink" is a Double Income No Kids family. This was once a rare species and given that it doesn't breed, you would assume that its present aberration would quickly die out, but not so. It is on the increase, and we might well ask why?

It may simply be that female "dinks" are products of the Women's Liberation Movement; the idea that freedom for women is best gained by taking on the male curse of work. Actually, we blokes have missed out on a great chance here, we should have let the girls have our jobs and we could have stayed at home, getting together at lunchtime for a Bar-B-Q with all the mates. What's happened is we have all ended up as little cogs in the wheels of production.

Strangely enough, a "dink" family is not the norm, but it is on the increase. Some 80% of people in the developed world live in a traditional family environment. The majority of people still believe in the family unit - mum, dad and the kids. We see it as the basis of society. Most political parties are "for the family." A politician would never dream of doing or saying anything to alienate such a massive slice of the electorate, so governments are "pro-family." None-the-less, "dinks" are on the increase and to a great extent governments are to blame. Even the taxation system favors "dinks". If governments really favored the family, they would allow income splitting for taxation purposes.

The truth is mum, dad and the kids is a dying model. Both partners in a marriage have to work to survive these days, and that makes raising children a chore. If we have children, we have them late and increasingly we only have one, because the financial burden is becoming too much to bear. The loss of a second income can easily bankrupt many a family. So, to become a "dink", or at least a one-child family, is the only way to survive.

One suspects that this is not God's plan for a happy society.

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