In ‘Rental House,’ a childless couple face society’s contempt

The acronym DINK (double income, no kids) has been around since neoliberalism first took root in the United States, during the Reagan years. It resurfaces now and then, as a term for an enviable lifestyle — all that disposable income, so many places to travel to unencumbered, such an array of restaurants to choose from, the endless ways to pamper a pet — or, increasingly, as a pejorative, shorthand for selfish, shallow and materialistic. In Weike Wang’s timely third novel, “Rental House,” childless, mid-30s, dual-income spouses Keru and Nate are knocked for a loop when a couple they meet on vacation call them the “textbook example of a DINK family.”