I think the future good society will look back on the idea of leaving parenthood to just the random choice of people, any people any time to procreate, to have been ridiculous. That future society will look back in disbelief that such a thing actually happened. Evaluating the past, it will consider how deficient the systems for procreation had been historically, that this very important job of parenting was given to anyone who wanted it, anyone with the impulse, in short anyone with genitals! It will think this a kind of freedom verging on anarchy. It will be able to trace the horrendous consequences down the centuries and might wonder why it took such a long while to analyse and rectify.

I predict that people will finally face up to the virtual impossibility of being a good parent and stop being lead quite so much in their lives by pure biological drives. They will overcome their reluctance to admit that their experience of parenthood was far less fulfilling and uplifting than they would have liked. When this taboo is lifted and it becomes acceptable to put voice to such negative feelings then the floodgates will open I believe. Most will understand this and will subscribe to the idea that parenthood should be taken more seriously than in general it tends to be.

What might replace it? I suggest an institutional process, one that takes place within a society that has come to understand the supreme importance of psychological well-being in life, and a value system that supports that. This would be a world which appreciates relationships above things, processes over products, and adopts that as the core of its belief. Here, it is the experience of things which takes precedence, not what they are but how they feel.

A society like this would not only educate its citizens to the fullest but also nurture their emotional development, and with sufficient knowledge of what impairs and damages that development, be able to minimise the deficiencies. A truly caring community would be able to rear children to something that much more approaches the best of their potential; at the very least do so in a manner that doesn’t waste them in some deep-seated way as tends nearly always to be the case currently.