What If We Put The Childless Into Bucket Categories?

Would this potentially offend less people?

A lot of the hand-wringing about “the child-less” comes because we (and in this case, “we” mostly means “people like J.D. Vance”) put all child-less people into one bucket, I.e. “the selfish.” This is a common approach, but in reality there are multiple buckets of child-less people. Here’s what I’d do:

• Child-free: This is child-less by choice and mutual discourse among the partners.
• DINK: This is a younger version of child-free, often cosplaying for social media about how awesome their trip to Mykonos was. They may end up having children or may not.
• Child-less: These are people who wanted children but didn’t get there, either via biology or whatever else. These are the women you see on social media and CBS News reports with special pineapple socks for their seventh round of IVF, which — by the way, for those for whom “I looked at her and knocked her up” — would cost someone about $140,000.
• “Postmenopausal ladies:” These are older women who don’t have active young children, but are expected to now be a primary caregiver for their grandchildren. If you think the expression is a little raw, well, it is — and it’s also something Vance has said about women. Ha.