The Family of the Future (II)
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
‘De facto relationships’ in the future may take the form of a family structure without reproductive obligations or intentions. Perhaps robots will play an unexpected role in family units in a few more years. According to present-day experts on procreation, the optimal age for procreation by women is between 16 and 20 years. So it is not difficult to predict a future where sex has no reproductive purpose, when women could prefer to harvest their eggs to use when they decide. Or it could be a demographic engineering plan of the state for when the world becomes overpopulated.
In 1988, Isaac Asimov made a prediction about the impact of the Internet on the future of education, which will conform to individualization that is not typical of either the traditional family or the educational systems that have existed so far.
We will not stop being human because we live in absolute individualism with an institution that is different from the family which takes care of our emotional health. The human being has been inculcated with values that it will not be easy to change, and the solution for our species has been generational shifts, especially in societies that have abandoned theological dogmas and have made room for skepticism.
Today physical distances have been shortened, so the virtual family would lack only physical contact through a hug, a caress or a handshake. So perhaps we will live in a society in which the family may be just the framework for an emotional identity.
Human society nowadays is changing very quickly and each generation is more distant from the previous one than in the past. Despite being very conservative, the family as an institution cannot survive current technological and socio-political changes.
In this attempt that we’ve made to see into the future, the conclusion is that humans are going through evolutionary and involutionary stages without realizing it, but that does not stop the desire to predict a positive future.
Addendum: There is no doubt that the traditional family will be totally obsolete in a few more years. Or it might even be that it has already happened without us realizing it.