Raising kids is hard. Like having a couple extra full time jobs—if you do it right.
In the old days, parents had help. I remember that a couple doors down in either direction lived my grandma, three aunts, two uncles, someone called Tio Frank who drank a bit and no one knew for sure how he was related but he came to dinner a lot and taught me fishing, and a bunch of cousins of assorted ages with their various dogs and cats. We kids ran back and forth like wild monkeys and went to the wrong house to eat when they had spaghetti. But high-tailed it home when Mom yelled or we got feeling sick
Now, does any kid have enough cousins and uncles? No. That’s because it takes brothers and sisters to make cousins and there are not many of them any more. One spoiled child is all most people get. And a lot of work.
O.K. kids are a joy, too. It’s true. I’ve got to remind you of that because I have a plan for everyone to have lots of kids.
It’s those genetic engineers who can help again. They learned how to chop up DNA and replace lots of chunks. I heard the other day that they put DNA from a firefly into a pig and now he lights up when he grunts. If they can to that, then they can make more uncles and aunts.
The secret is to have more than two bio-parents. I suspect we still want primary parents—those who give more than 50% of the DNA, but why not get 5% here, 10% there, and have a whole collection of people making a baby. I don’t mean the sex in bed babymaking. I mean test-tube sex, and maybe a baby shower party or two.
Low percenters can’t really be called parents, just the 50%ers-plus get that name. I call the others are pair-aunts and pair-uncles. Because they give to that pair of DNA strands.
I hope this helps. Adults just don’t seem to care much about kids unless they have lots of similar DNA chunks (we used to call them blood relations or maybe just people-like-us). But kids need a bunch of love and work from lots of people.
Finally, when they say you have your pair-uncle’s eyes, you know they’re right, because he put in chromosome IV which makes your eyes brown and smiley, just like his.
1 comment:
just saw this:
Embryos created with DNA from 3 people
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer 3 minutes ago
LONDON - British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man . . .
Though the preliminary research has raised concerns about the possibility of genetically modified babies, the scientists say that the embryos are still only primarily the product of one man and one woman.
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