The Joy of the Childless Man

America's Sweetheart J. D. Vance thinks I'm making myself and my country miserable. Then why am I having such a good time?

- DAVE HOLMES

NO IS MY FIRST WORD WHEN PEOPLE ASK if my partner, Ben, and I are planning to have children. "But," I will continue, and Ben will steel himself for what he knows is coming, "we're not ruling out a Punky Brewster situation." We do not want a baby. But if a sassy preteen with her own unique fashion sense were to be abandoned in a grocery-store parking lot, as on the '80s NBC sitcom? We'll take that kid in, teach her some important life lessons-and along the way, maybe learn some, too. If it happens, it happens.

I don't want kids of my own. For a long time, I assumed the desire to be a father would just blink on after a certain number of years, like a check-engine light on my emotional dashboard. But it never did. Not enough to get the wheels turning on it, to make me spend the fortune surrogacy costs or the time adoption does. Ben and I can't accidentally have a baby, so the decision would need to be made with a high degree of intention. That intention was never there, and the only thing a kid needs less than an ambivalent father is two of them. So now we're hovering around either end of 50, the ship long having sailed.

We're probably never going to have children.

And I'm fine with that.

So why did I add a probably to that sentence two sentences ago?