Say Hi to Your Dog For Me
Don’t be such a DINK WAD
In typical wizard fashion, I have arrived “late” to this discussion, or at least to the discussion of the “ordo amoris.” However, the order of charity is more of a side topic, an analogous case to that which I really wish to discuss. There is something odd in modern America that I believe is changing with the rise of my generation. Yet it is only beginning to be stamped out, like a weed ripped out halfway, if it is not fully exorcized, it will grow back more vicious than ever; and it all began when I saw a bumper sticker driving home that said “Tell your dog I said hi.”
Generation Z, by polling, is more pro-family than millennials; they are more interested in marriage and have more conservative views on one-night stands.1 While the actual marriage rates are still not the best, and though there are many other problems with Gen-Z, I am optimistic. An example of some of the issues within the generation is the continued decline in marriage; despite the lack of laissez-faire sex. It seems to me that Gen-Z, along with Millennials, are still interested in saying hello to the dogs rather than to spouses and children.
There is a term “DINK,” which means Dual Income No Kids, and it refers to a married couple that decides not to have kids. Further, there is a “DINK WAD,” - which sounds like something I’d call my brother when I was eight - and this term means Dual Income No Kids With A Dog. This seems to me a very deeply wrong idea, which is still on the rise. Moreover, something that with continuously declining marriage rates and a lack of romantic relationships among young people will not go away any time soon.2 Marriage rates are still down, and it seems that many of my generation do not see marriage as a sacramental union between man and woman but rather as an economic union of convenience.3 As such, weddings that do happen, happen when the couples are older, and with the continued proliferation of contraception, children are not being born, and when couples do have kids they have fewer children.4 All of this leads us to a bumper sticker that says ,“Tell your dog I said hi,” but the question many might ask is, who cares?
Closer still is the tie of kindred; for by this from the vast society of the human race one is shut up into a small and narrow circle. Indeed, since the desire of producing offspring is common by nature to all living creatures, the nearest association consists in the union of the sexes;1 the next, in the relation with children; then, that of a common home and a community of such goods as appertain to the home. Then the home is the germ of the city, and, so to speak, the nursery of the state.
Cicero, De Officiis I.17
The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas ‘companions of the cupboard,’ and by Epimenides the Cretan, ‘companions of the manger.’ But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village
Aristotle, Politics Book 1
Therefore the first natural bond of human society is man and wife. Nor did God create these each by himself, and join them together as alien by birth: but He created the one out of the other, setting a sign also of the power of the union in the side, whence she was drawn, was formed. For they are joined one to another side by side, who walk together, and look together whither they walk. Then follows the connection of fellowship in children…
St. Augustine of Hippo, Of the Good of Marriage Chapter 1
Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame, when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Psalm 127: 3-5
There are many other quotes I could bring forward, but as it is I already feel an obligatory apology for the mass quotations. However, I wanted to make a point, that family AND children were always considered to be crucially important. Moreover, St. Augustine makes my point for me elsewhere in his work that there is something unnatural and even wrong about the desire NOT to have children.5 Which is different from being unable to have children. To be a DINKWAD is to have something wrong with your appetite and desire. Let alone the fact that when this happens, there is an abandonment of a duty, the duty to build a polity, to be “fruitful and multiply.”
Many of the ancients, yea, even ALL the ancients, believed the family to be fundamental to society. From that flows logically an order: the love of family before society, the love of your town before the state, the love of your state before another state, and your own country before another. Perhaps an apt metaphor is “root root root for the home team.” One ought to love the home team above the away team. In the Christian worldview, there comes first an ultimate good and an ultimate love, that of God. Before we can love anything, we must love God; it is what we owe him, it is, in fact, a duty. In its proper sense, religion gives God what he is owed, and he is owed our love and adoration. Like with many traditional views we moderns do not like that sort of language, the language of a “duty.” This is because we fundamentally believe that we belong to ourselves, which is a mistake. The Psalmist tells us, “Know that the Lord is God! It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” St. Paul tells us likewise in his letter to the Romans: “So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.”
So, what is my point here? My point is that we do not belong to ourselves but that we belong to God, and after we belong to God, we belong to a family; those children who remain unmarried and under the shelter of their parent’s homes, in some sense, “belong” to their parents. It is the parent’s duty (yes, that nasty word) to steward them - steward being key as the children also belong to God first. As a married man, I belong to my wife, and she also belongs to me, just as we both belong to God. From there, I belong to the church and to the community, and logically, those things to which I belong, I owe a duty to. That is the nature of belonging, at least in this sense, to say that a husband and wife belong together but then owe each other nothing makes no sense, indeed Scripture contradicts that. St. Paul says that a wife owes her husband respect, and the husband owes the wife love. These are obligations that are owed as people who belong to each other; likewise, when we belong to a community, what do we owe to it? The Bible is replete with examples of our obligations to neighbors, namely that we are to love them as we love ourselves, that we shan’t “covet their oxen” and such.
However, another very contentious point flows from this discussion: do we owe it to others to have children?
To be frank, I don’t know, but it certainly is an interesting question; I am neither sufficiently educated nor have I spent enough time pondering the question. However, what I can say is that the inverse of this, that we have an obligation NOT to have children, is clearly satanic. It is that attitude that I found on the bumper sticker that disrupts the order of love so profoundly. Yes, the bumper sticker is tongue-in-cheek, however, it is hard to believe it is totally a joke; especially with newspapers discussing the rise of DINKWADs as well as the large anti-natalist movement. I find the trend of not having children - and often the reasons for why - to be a strong polemic for having children. I believe people should be having children in the context of lifelong monogamy between man and woman, and I am keeping up my end of the bargain. Especially young Christians, because we are supposed to be the change agents, the preserving agents in the community, and the best way of doing that is by having children and stewarding them for God, to whom they truly belong - and to whom we will be accountable. Perhaps we do owe it to our communities as Christians to bear children and rear them according to God’s plans; we are certainly commanded to be fruitful and multiply and told our Children will be as arrows sent against the enemy. In my eyes, that is sufficient, certainly sufficient, to say hello to the children before the dog.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/society/article/gen-z-marriage-sex-relationships-survey-27s7n5297
https://washingtonstand.com/news/study-finds-gen-z-has-more-traditional-views-of-marriage-amid-declining-marriage-birth-rates
Id.
Id. & https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/12/rural-women-marriage-kids-trump-transportation/
St. Augustine of Hippo, Of the Good of Marriage Chapter 5-6
Some blamed govt policy which shrink the middle class (esp in developing world)
Have you heard about "Henry," the "High-Earner-Not-Rich-Yet" fellow? Reading your post brought to mind a new member of our society, Henry Dinkwad.