by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright July 2014
Raising enough children to sustain the human population is going to be a big challenge in the Post-Snap environment. Most humans will be living in a prosperous urban environment, and for centuries this environment has been a population sink, not a population source. An example of shrinking population due to prosperity is Japan in the 2010's. The people living in prosperous urban environments have lots of distractions that reduce their time and interest in child raising. The classic example of this is the "career or family?" question, but that is just one of dozens of distractions.
For this reason finding ways of doing sufficient child raising to sustain the population is going to take some hard thinking and hard choices for Post-Snap people. Some of the options, such as letting the cybers do cloning and child raising, are going to scare a lot of humans. But if the cybers aren't doing it, who is?
This business of child raising in the future is at the core of my science fiction book Child Champs. It is something I have given a lot of thought to.
One of the realities is that there will be lots and lots of choices available as to how to create the child as well as how to raise it. But the hard, hard question is going to be magnitude: how to do enough of it? There will be a strong tendency for humans to take a "gourmet attitude" towards child raising -- they will want to do a fine job on just one, maybe two, kids. This will then leave as a chronic question: How to fill "The Baby Gap"? -- the difference between the number of kids humans want to raise and what is needed to sustain the population.
This Baby Gap is not a new problem. Cities have been population sinks ever since there have been cities. But when the human population in cities is a fraction of the total, it doesn't matter. But times are changing. In 2012 about half the world's population became urban and the percentage is continuing to rise steadily. This means that this Baby Gap problem is going transforming from a curiosity into an issue. If the population becomes 90% urban, which is likely Post-Snap, it becomes a high priority issue. This is not pie in the sky speculation. The current UN population projections call for a peak around the year 2050.
This problem is not due to advances in birth control technology. As I pointed out, it dates back centuries. It is due to distraction. There are so many things for urban dwellers to do besides raising babies that it get pushed far down the priority list, and few babies get born and raised. Example: In Europe of the 2010's the fertility rate is 1.59 children per woman -- a rate of 2.1 is needed to maintain a stable population. Places such as Europe maintain their population through immigration from rural areas in other parts of the world. When those rural areas depopulate -- because all the young people have moved to the cities -- the crisis hits full force. It has hit in Japan already because Japan has long discouraged immigration.
Who will make babies Post-Snap? Here are some baby sources I envision being active in the Post-Snap environment.
o Gourmet Babies -- Many women will produce children in conventional arrangements such as marriage. Many couples in alternative marriage arrangements will also do a bit of child raising through adoption and buying designer children. What these have in common is people ready willing and able to commit a lot of resource and attention to the child raising process. These kids will have the best their parents can afford. This is why I call them gourmet babies. There will be a lot of these, but not enough to sustain the population.
o Baby Crazy women -- A growing source of kids will be women who have an instinct to have lots of children, and they let that instinct flower. In the 2010's environment these are the single moms. In the Post-Snap environment single moms will be getting a lot more social attention. They will rarely go it alone as many do today. Single mom clubs for raising children will become common and they will have a lot of social influence.
o "Be Fertile" cults -- How humans gather into groups will be diverse. Some of those groups will be devoted to spawning and raising children. A 2010's example is the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) groups. These are fundamentalist religious groups which are also polygamist and big family-oriented. In Post-Snap, as with single mom clubs, these groups will get more government support for their child raising activities.
o "My little tax deduction" -- Communities are going to recognize this Baby Gap problem and ask their governments to do something about it. One of the quick and easy ways is to offer tax breaks. With time, and the crisis growing, more will be offered. Those who take up these offers fall in this My Little Tax Deduction category. They are having kids because the government is paying them in various ways to do so. Many of these are going to be single moms, as mentioned above, and one of the new social structures we will see emerging in the Post-Snap environment is singles moms clubs of various sorts. Some of these styles will be spontaneous, and others will be government-sponsored groups, who get more benefits, in return for following government-recommended ways of child raising. Done well, these single mom clubs can produce good results. This style can be built upon instincts which support a "sea" of child raisers raising a "sea" of children.
o Genetic engineering to produce specialty people -- As humanity and the cyber community master the skills of genetic engineering, new species of humans can be created that will thrive in conditions too extreme for regular humans. An example is weightless conditions. Long term this environment is hard on human health. It causes problems such as calcium loss in bones. If genetic engineering can overcome these problems, then space-faring people who are not bothered by years of weightlessness can thrive. These engineered kinds of beings will be human-like, but not fully human.
These people will be different. This brings up questions like: Will humans raise them, or will creations raise them? Will they be conceived in normal human mothers? Or will other conception and fetus raising tools be used? As these engineered styles of people get built for more extreme environments, such as living on Mars or the moons of gas giants, humans can do less and cyber and creations will have to do more.
o "Vat babies" and cloning to produce regular people -- Those people on earth who get into "extreme gourmet", will want to use all the tools available. This is the "Tiger Mom" feeling on steroids. These people use more fetus growing environments that are not a human uterus, and child raising that employs a lot more creation assistance.
The parents who are trying hardest, and most successfully, to have their children make meaningful contributions to society will keep in mind the prime human virtue: adaptability. (This thought is inspired by an 11 Dec 14 WSJ article Artificial Intelligence Isn’t a Threat—Yet by Gary Marcus.) Cyber will excell at handling routine and switching between various routine activities, while properly trained humans will excell at handling surprises and things that are beyond routine.
For the humans to be good at this virtue, they must be well trained. They must excersize it long and hard. This means that the good child raising practices for enhancing innovation and adaptability are not going to be the ones that "tender snowflake" child raising support. This means there will be a culture clash. How this clash is handled could be an interesting story within the TES environment.
All of these children, spawned in different ways and raised in different ways, are going to fit into the Post-Snap lifestyle. Post-Snap is going to support a lot of diversity, but the foundation will the various TES lifestyles, and most people will be in urban lifestyles.
First, let me say there are going to be lots of surprises. These are all new ways of doing things so the results will be surprising. That said, here are my speculations.
Those who are gourmet children will aspire to meaningful lives that involve being more tangible. What tangible will mean will depend on the tools available to them in the Post-Snap environment. They will be analytic thinkers. Those who are raised for other environments, such as space travel, will be analytic thinkers as well, and serious about their tool use as well.
Those who are raised as tax deductions and fertility cult members are more likely to be instinctive thinkers. Their reality is not going to be manipulating harsh reality in serious ways, so they can let their hearts be their guides. Entertainment, as both performers and spectators, will be the center of their lives. Supporting causes de jour will also be a common activity. And for these people wild mind altering will not cause much harm or disadvantage. In fact, it may cause advantage if compatriots start admiring them.
These are some thoughts about child raising in the Post-Snap environment. There will be many ways to do this. The instinct to give children the best is strong, so all kids will get the best their parents can come up with. One of the big differences will be just that: What the parents can come up with.
Raising styles will also be diverse. There will be parents in the traditional sense, parents in alternative senses, single mom baby clubs, and fertility cults to name a few styles.
The adults that grow out of these styles will be different in their outlooks and thinking styles. As a result, the diversity in lifestyles will grow with time, not shrink.