Sex in the Future: The Reproductive Revolution and How it Will Change Us [Hardcover]

Robin Baker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 24, 2000 | ISBN-10: 1559705213 | ISBN-13: 978-1559705219 | Edition: 1

Provocative and often shocking, Sex in the Future examines how advances in reproductive technology will change human behavior. In-vitro fertilization and surrogate motherhood could mean the end not only of infertility but also of the need for men and women to form relationships or for women to interrupt careers for pregnancy. Sperm and egg storage mean people can literally shop for genes, while cloning, egg-egg fertilization, and other techniques will lead to fertility on demand in a Reproduction Restaurant. What will all our choices be, and how far down this road do we want to travel?

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robin Baker is one of the people who brought us the notion of kamikaze sperm: valiant but impotent swimmers who sacrifice themselves so that one (or more) of their brethren--as opposed to some other guy's sperm--will secure a man's genetic legacy. In Sperm Wars, Baker told us that the evolutionary drive of our biology determined with whom we mated. In Sex in the Future, he speculates on how. Using the same format of fictionalized scenarios followed by more factual discussion, Baker peers into his sociobiological crystal ball to forecast how we might reproduce in the future, and what it will do to our society. Baker sees the multiplication of assisted reproductive technologies as a social revolution. Sex, love, and reproduction will be divorced. The concept of heterosexuality will be practically meaningless. Children will be commissioned in a much more precise way than can now be done either through mate selection or gamete selection. Sex in the Future is certainly provocative. Some of the content is factual, some is plausible speculation, and some is fantastical. This is not a book full of useful information for people trying to conceive. The bibliography is slight, and Baker is something of a black sheep in the scientific community, the martial nature of sperm having been largely discredited (New Scientist described him as "a sociobiology zealot"). But it certainly is a brave new world of baby-making out there. Might Baker's "Contraceptive Café" and "Reproductive Restaurant" be part of it? You be the judge. --J.R.

From Publishers Weekly

"The demise of the nuclear family is an inevitable step in social evolution," argues Baker (Sperm Wars; Baby Wars) in this analysis of the possible effects of new reproductive technologies. Baker, a former reader in zoology at the University of Manchester, sees in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, cloning and other procedures as logical and practical ways for human beings to maximize reproductive success. Such technologies, Baker writes, can certify paternity, making it impossible for men to reject responsibility for the children they father. With legal mechanisms in place to require fair child support from men and women regardless of marital status, individuals will naturally gravitate toward single-parent families--which are already on the increase and, in Baker's view, a completely satisfactory system for raising children. Reproductive innovations can also end male and female infertility. The possibilities seem outlandish at first, but even a procedure as shocking as the transplantation of human testes into rats as a potential treatment for male infertility appears more reasonable as the analysis proceeds. Baker explains the science behind the new techniques with clarity and precision, and constructs fictional scenarios that serve as entertaining, if not wholly plausible, illustrations of possible post-reproductive revolution behavior: a typical sketch involves a middle-aged man lusting after a daughter cloned from his wife (it's not really incest, Baker points out, since the young woman is not genetically related to her "father"--as if DNA were all there is to parenthood). Baker tends to see utopia ahead; many readers may see his future as a dystopia to be avoided. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; 1 edition (May 24, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559705213
• ISBN-13: 978-1559705219
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,192,005 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For video interviews and a wider-ranging biography, to read both praise for and criticism of his books, and to see the controversies they have triggered, visit www.robin-baker.com.

Dr Robin Baker was born in Wiltshire, England in 1944, and grew up in the small village of Manningford Bruce in the Vale of Pewsey. The tiny 2-room school he attended had fewer than 30 pupils, with all the under 7s taught in one room and all the 7-11 year olds in the other. Between the ages of 11 and 18 he attended the nearby Marlborough Grammar School where coincidentally, 30 years earlier, the author William Golding had also been educated; all later pupils were expected to be very familiar with Golding's classic book LORD OF THE FLIES.

After obtaining a First Class Honours degree in Zoology, then a PhD, at the University of Bristol, Robin Baker lectured in Zoology at the Universities of first Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then Manchester where, in 1981, he became Reader in Zoology in the School of Biological Sciences. In 1996 he left academic life to concentrate on his career in writing and broadcasting.

He has published over one hundred scientific papers and many books. These include the international bestseller SPERM WARS which was based on his own lab's original research on human sexuality and which has so far been translated into 23 languages. His work and ideas on the evolution of human behaviour have been featured in many television programmes around the world.

His first novel PRIMAL - described by many as an adult LORD OF THE FLIES - was published in the UK and USA in 2009. In 2010-11 it will also be published in translation in Holland, Israel, France, Brazil and the Czech Republic.

Since 2002 he has lived in the foothills of the Spanish Sierras with his partner, the writer Elizabeth Oram, and their family. He has six children.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, December 3, 2000

By 

Jurgen Benning (Granite Bay, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex in the Future: The Reproductive Revolution and How it Will Change Us (Hardcover)

Robin Baker had a true winner with "Sperm Wars" but his more recent book on reproduction and family life in the future is far from convincing. His predictions about sexual behavior in the future are in a nutshell based on a couple of fundamental premises:

1. Those who can afford it (and Baker predicts that most of us in the near future can), will at a young age have either their eggs surgically removed or donate their sperm and have them stored in a "gamete bank". With the help of in vitro fertilization and other methods widely available in the future this will allow the separation of reproduction and sex. A human dream may finally come true, we overcome nature, we will be freed from our animalistic instincts and can enjoy the act without the possible "remorse" 9 months later.

2. DNA testing will make it always possible to determine the biological father of a child. The father will have to pay child support based on his income (and the number of children he already fathered), the mother who will receive the support will be financially secure. Baker predicts that men may actually have the most to lose when a women gives birth to a child, because the man's child support will make it attractive for women to have children. Actually, women may trick wealthy men into unprotected sex to be able to collect child support money from that individual. Baker describes this as a dramatic change to the current situation where it is usually the women who have the burden of raising and supporting a child, while receiving little or no child support from the fathers.

Baker's theories are based on what may be scientifically and biologically possible in the future. With the exception of human cloning, most of the reproductive methods described in his book are already available and may just need slight improvements and cost reduction to become feasible. However, Baker only occasionally admits that our evolutionary heritage may render all his predictions of future reproduction and sex life null and void. Will women really just go to the surgeon and have all their eggs removed to be able to reproduce at a later time with or without a sex-partner or to enjoy unprotected sex? As this is highly questionable and definitely arguable Baker does little to convince the reader that his predictions of future sex and family life are indeed the right ones. Where Baker's predictions really could do with some substantiation is on his assumption that women will easily be able to collect child support from the biological fathers of their children, shifting the burden (at least the financial) of child raising from the mother to the father. Baker does not address how such a system of child support collection would or could work. What makes Baker think that the women in the future would not have the same difficulty that exists today in getting the deadbeat fathers to pay their child support? Would all men upon birth have to submit cell samples to an international agency that creates a DNA footprint of that individual and any woman or child support agency can tap into the database to look for a biological father for a child? Aside from the privacy issues, that could only theoretically work as all nations, all laws and all religions would have to support such an agency and its enforcement actions. Hard to imagine.

Baker's book is thought provoking and some of the methods he describes will likely become part of the future of human reproduction. Unfortunately, Baker does little to convince the reader that it will be as widespread as he predicts. He certainly can do better.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A provocative, informative examincation of choices & trends., August 4, 2000

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex in the Future: The Reproductive Revolution and How it Will Change Us (Hardcover)

How will the new reproductive revolution change society and sexuality in the future? Sex in the Future covers such topics as in-vitro fertilization choices, surrogate motherhood, gamete storage, and the marketing of gene characteristics alike, covering the new choices and ethical concerns brought by the new technologies. A provocative examination of current and future choices.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Culture War is about to get hot!, July 18, 2000

By 

Michael Ben-Zvi - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sex in the Future: The Reproductive Revolution and How it Will Change Us (Hardcover)

Sex in the Future is a provocative survey of the new reproductive technologies coming down the pipeline in the next few decades. The science is straightforward and should be a shock only to the traditional-minded. Where Baker truly pushes the envelope is in his extrapolation of how these technologies will redefine the family in the 21st Century. Baker sees the end of the nuclear family - already fading today - being replaced with widespread single parent families and temporary partnerships. While something like this could happen in Europe, it may have a tougher time gaining popularity in a more religious America. But then, given the impact of thirty years of divorce, feminism, and gay rights, the family has already been radically redefined here. If technology and politics develop as Baker predicts, future families could be stranger than we know. One can only hope that the children will turn out happy.

What's perhaps most unsettling about the book are the vignettes that Baker uses to introduce each chapter. The characters in each of these stories are often selfish, materialistic, and Machiavellian, featuring women trying to trap wealthy men into fathering children, and men trying to avoid responsibility for the children they sire. And rarely do we see anything like affection or love, something you would think as being fundamental to a discussion about families. One could argue that Baker is showing extreme examples of human behavior in order to show the potential consequences of the technologies and institutions he discusses. But even so, the fictional sections are alarming enough to add more fuel to a controversial subject.

In spite of this, Sex in the Future is full of intriguing ideas and radical possibilities. It makes you think about the future, and that's always a good thing.