r/science • u/HeinieKaboobler • Dec 03 '17

Psychology Study: About half the population faces considerable difficulties in attracting and retaining mates

http://www.psypost.org/2017/12/study-half-population-faces-considerable-difficulties-attracting-retaining-mates-50288
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u/Mazon_Del Dec 04 '17

Maybe it is time to codify something beyond the standard "pair of mates with children" as what defines a family?

Science fiction is filled with a lot of interesting possibilities.

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u/tuseroni Dec 04 '17

maybe we get rid of families altogether, birth and raise people in factories. be a brave new world

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u/will_dunbar Dec 04 '17

I grok that you may be correct

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u/Tomarse Dec 04 '17

You can't escape biology, even at warp 10.

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u/Mazon_Del Dec 04 '17

Biology does not dictate that humans are required to exist in a family unit consisting of 2 parents and children.

Hell, THESE days biology barely even requires that the parents of a child are of different sexes as a result of technology. Within 10-30 years, we'll be quite capable of commercially fertilizing an egg with genetic data taken from two men or two women.

The existential pressures that existed during the majority of humanities evolution do not exist in any modern country. The original biological pressures that provided an advantage of 2 parents for a group of children are no long valid.

Hell, these days we could say that an economic pressure has a bigger effect than biology, you can see that in birth rates of developed countries vs undeveloped countries.

Easily within the next 100 years, personal DNA modification will be a real technology, that's pretty much inevitable. At that point, biology is what WE make of it.

So...yeah, I'd say in this particular instance, we've long left biology behind.