Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.