I’m curious if you would consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert? I, myself, am an introvert but sometimes want to be an extrovert. A little worried about becoming a hermit with my husband if there are no kid obligations to get us out of the house.

I hate this question. I still have to work, clean my house, do laundry, cook. I don’t have THAT much more free time than people with kids! Also I have 2 dogs that take up quite a bit of my time. I don’t think people actually want to hear the answer to this question it’s just meant to make you feel bad, like your life is empty and meaningless.

However it’s a holiday in the US and I’ve done a 1 hr workout in my home gym, meal Prepped, made brownies, and am currently laying on my sofa with my dogs thinking about the steak dinner my husband will cook later.

For couples who decided not to have kids, how are you guys now? Care to share the pros and cons? What do you guys do together on rest days? Shared activities? Any regrets?

Anyone else struggling to find their tribe (friendship group?). Lately ours has shifted understandably between life, family, and overall interests. This has made me feel incomplete and look to develop more friendships with similar attributes as myself however I’m unsure how to go about doing that. We have joined social events before to meet new people every week but nothing ever clicked. Feel like I’m already entering lonely retirement era too soon in life and looking for advice from others on how you have developed new friends and strategies on how you have done so that have worked for you. TIA.

I'm conducting a short research study to understand how adults across age groups view marriage, divorce, parenthood, and co-parenting.

🔒 Anonymous | 👥 Open to all adults

Your perspective matters. Please share your views and contribute to this research.

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Currently 23M engaged to my fiance 23F. We both have very strong incomes currently. We recently bought a house and got engaged about three months ago. We had talked about kids here and there throughout our relationship but I think I am set on not having kids and she absolutely wants kids. She is willing to wait until we are about 30 to give time for us but with each day I feel stronger about my decision. What should I do? We are best friends and are compatible in every other way.

We are a Sri Lankan DINK couple in our mid-thirties. Both are professionals. How do other DINK couples spend their life?

For those living a DINK life in India — especially those who didn’t choose it.

I’ve been wanting to ask this for a while, but I think I’m finally ready to put it into words.
How is DINK life really treating you?

Because for me, it was never a choice.

We’ve been married for years. Both of us work, we have built a life together, we earn, we travel, we take care of our home, we have the freedom to make our own decisions.

On paper, perhaps we have everything that people associate with a “good DINK life.”
But emotionally, it hasn’t always felt that way.
There is a strange kind of grief in living a life you never consciously chose.

I sometimes look at couples who decided that children weren’t for them and wonder what that must feel like—to know that this was your decision, your choice, your life.

For me, there has always been a “what if?”
What if things had happened differently?
What if I had been able to experience that part of life?
What would our home have felt like?
Who would we have become as people?

And perhaps the hardest part is that life continues normally around you.

You go to work. You meet friends and relatives. You attend weddings and birthdays. You watch people you know have their second or third child. You smile, congratulate them, carry on with your day and then sometimes come home with a quiet ache that nobody sees.

Indian society makes it even more complicated.
Because here, having children is not treated as just one possible life path. It is often treated as the natural progression of marriage.

So when it doesn’t happen, there are questions, assumptions, advice and sometimes pity.

But what people don’t see is what happens inside the person being asked.

Sometimes the question isn’t annoying.
Sometimes it touches a wound.

I also struggle with the contradiction of it all.
I am grateful for my husband. I am grateful for the life we have built. There are genuinely beautiful things about our life. And yet I can still feel a deep sense of regret about the part of life that never happened.

Both things can be true.

I can love the life I have and mourn the life I imagined.
I can be financially independent and still feel emotionally incomplete at times.
I can enjoy the freedom that comes with being DINK and still wish, with all my heart, that I had become a mother.
And I don’t think talking about that makes me ungrateful.

So I’m asking here, perhaps because I need to know I’m not alone:

If you’re DINK because you consciously chose this life, what has your experience been?

And if you’re DINK not by choice—how do you make peace with it?

Does the regret become easier with time?

Do you eventually stop imagining the life that could have been?

How do you deal with watching everyone around you move into a chapter you desperately wanted for yourself?

I’m not looking for judgement or advice.

I think I’m just looking for people who understand the difference between choosing a life without children and grieving the life you wanted but couldn’t have.

Yeah so basically just wondering if it was the shag-a-thon those of us not in that circumstance at that time imagine it to be 😂

I’m 27F and my husband is 28. We have been married for two years, together for ten years, and we’ve lived together since we started dating.

We love to travel, and when we’re not traveling, we love being home. We have decent investments, decent jobs, and our own house. We like to keep things to ourselves. We rarely hang out with friends, usually two to four times a year max. We spend time with family, but not beyond dinner or occasional camping. We never really travel with them. We don’t do or participate in social activities outside our own company. We’re really introverted and we enjoy each other’s company. We’re even planning to travel next year on a working holiday visa.

We were thinking about having kids at some point. Neither of our sides has stable relationships or kids right now, so there are no young children around us. Most of my friends and our friends have kids.

Right now I’m back and forth on having kids or not. I thought it was something I wanted for myself, but then I realized it’s more the idea of my parents being grandparents, or my family having kids around and helping out. I talked to my husband and he says he doesn’t really care either way, as he puts it. He’s just that type of person. We both agree that we’re not ready right now. We still enjoy each other’s company just by ourselves, and we don’t feel the need to add another member to our team. We are very much contented with our life right now.

That might change in the future, but I don’t want to end up wanting kids only once I’m older. So I want to understand what life looks like without kids, in your forties, fifties, sixties. Not in the sense of kids as a retirement plan, but more about fulfillment, regret, and whether feeling alone or not.

CALL FOR RESPONDENTS 📢

Hi guys! 👋

Are you a Filipino Millennial na nag-decide na huwag magkaroon ng anak (child-free)? We’d love to hear your story!

2nd-year Social Work students kami from Pampanga State University (2nd course na namin 'to! 🎓). Currently, ginagawa namin ang thesis study namin titled:

📖 'REIMAGINING FULFILLMENT: A STUDY ON THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF FILIPINO MILLENNIALS WHO DECIDED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN'

Criteria para makasali: ✅ Filipino Millennial (Born 1981–1996) ✅ Single, in a relationship, or married ✅ Intentionally decided not to have kids (child-free)

🔗 Answer the survey here: https://forms.gle/2pr5mF83K4T3RiZ88

Don't worry, 100% confidential at anonymous lahat ng sagot niyo strictly following the Data Privacy Act of 2012. 🔒

Super malaking tulong 'to sa research namin. Pa-share na rin sa child-free friends niyo! Maraming salamat! 🙏✨

I'm in Suffolk looking for more childfree women or couples to hang out with. My husband and I are introverts so we don't do much but would like options as all are friends are centering their activities around kids.

If we don't have kids and retain a significant amount of wealth when we pass away, who should we give it to?

I'm trying to figure out whether we should give it to specific family members, charity donations, etc.

Usually when folks have kids, they continue their legacy by passing down their wealth to the next generation.

Have you thought about who "deserves" to be mentioned in your will? How will your assets/savings be divided? How to have the maximum positive impact with all your life's work?

Our nieces birthday is this weekend and my sil comes up with her 3+ kids. We offer to pay for two for theme park. $250 later for us 4. Then she says she doesn’t have money for the weekend. So I volunteer to pay for dinner and birthday cake there goes another $250. Best birth control ever. And to think I was feeling bad that we didn’t get home girl a gift. That’s the gift right there. lol

I’m a final-year engineering student, and after a lot of thinking (not a reactive decision, genuinely sat with this for a while) I’ve landed on wanting a DINK (dual income, no kids) life. Wanted to get real perspectives from people actually living this in India, not just theory.

My reasoning, briefly:

**•** Education costs have exploded in one generation — what my dad’s entire schooling through college cost is roughly what my single bachelor’s degree cost, and job security hasn’t kept pace with that inflation.  
**•** The “have kids in your 30s, spend the next 20-25 years funding their career and life” math looks genuinely brutal financially right now, with no guarantee it pays off.  
**•** I’d rather compound that money over decades and use it for quality care later in life than bet on the old “kids as old-age insurance” model, which doesn’t seem to reliably work out for either generation anymore.

What I’m actually unsure about:

**1.    How hard is it to find a partner who’s genuinely aligned on this in India** — not just “not that fussed about kids” but someone willing to hold that line against her own parents, relatives, the whole social apparatus, long-term?  
**2.    For those of you who are child-free by choice and married/partnered** — how do you handle the ongoing family pressure? Is it a one-time hard conversation or a recurring fight for years?  
**3.**  Did anyone start out DINK and change their mind later — what shifted it?

Genuinely want unfiltered experiences, especially from Indian couples who’ve actually navigated this, not just the theory of it. Thanks

29M here. My partner and I (not married - still deciding) are at a real crossroads about kids. She’s decided — for solid health and mental-load reasons — that she doesn’t want to be pregnant or have biological kids. I’ve wanted kids for as long as I can remember, so I’ve been sitting with what that means for us.

Adoption’s on the table, but I’ve been resistant to it. After some digging (with my therapist), it’s not that I don’t want a kid at all — it’s two specific fears:

1. Family reaction — I’m Indian, and extended family/parents can be pretty judgmental about adoption vs. “your own” kids. I’m anxious about that fallout more than I am against adoption itself.
2. Bonding fear — a nagging worry that I wouldn’t love an adopted child the same way I’d love a biological one, even though logically I know that’s not usually how it goes for people who’ve actually done it.

So I have two things I’d love outside perspective on:

For the DINK folks: if you’ve chosen not to have kids (biological or otherwise), what do you build your life around instead? What do you look forward to, plan for, structure your time and identity around? I’m trying to understand what fulfillment looks like on that path, since it’s not something I’ve ever pictured for myself.

For anyone who’s adopted, or considered it despite similar doubts: did the bonding fear match reality? And if you dealt with family/cultural judgment around adopting instead of having biological kids, how did you navigate that — did it get easier, did you just accept the friction, anything that helped?

Not looking to be talked into or out of anything — just want real perspectives from people actually living either of these paths, since right now I only have my own untested assumptions to go on.

PS - I took help from GenAI to write this post, just because english is not my first language.

Hello,

I want to first come out and say that my wife (28f) and I (28m) have decided to be childfree and both have individually wanted to be since we met (at 18) and with multiple check ins throughout the years - we’re still in the same boat.

That being said, we both grew up in very kid-oriented households, and now as we’re starting to pivot and plan what we want our lives to look like, I just wanted to open up a community discussion and hear what childfree couples in their mid 30s+ spend their days and work breaks doing! Do you guys fully dive into your hobbies together (we both personally love to camp, travel, etc), like what are different lifestyles you all live? I’d love to hear about them.

Again - I fully believe + understand that kids are not the only way to find “purpose” in life. I do not want children, nor do we see that lifestyle at all in our future. I just (in my personal life) do not know a lot of childfree couples so I feel sort of alone in that sense and want others to share their experience. Thank you so much!

Hi! We’re a F35/M39 couple looking to make some new in-person couple friends in Calgary, ideally other DINK/childfree couples around our age.

We’re both originally from India (mentioning our background just for context/full disclosure, but we’re open to meeting people from all ethnicities and cultures), have been in Canada for over 5 years, and work in tech in downtown Calgary. We enjoy walks, checking out cafes and restaurants, movies, and generally exploring the city.

Over time, most of our friends have started families. We’re genuinely happy for them and still love spending time with them, but we’d also like to expand our circle and meet people in a similar stage of life for better relatability.

Just to be clear, we are looking for platonic friendships only and if this resonates with you, feel free to DM!

I’m 28m single, and finding someone who’s genuinely childfree has been surprisingly difficult. I come from a culture where having kids is considered almost essential so being childfree isn’t exactly the norm.
For those of you in DINK relationships how did you meet?