BY LETTER
Childrearing
 Image from Bernd Helfert |
Impulses to reproduce vary from clade to clade. For instance, many human nearbaselines get broody in their thirties or in the last years of their second century.
The various cultures around the galaxy tend to discourage having more children than needed for replacement of population (to migration, virtualisation or ascension or merging, or irrecoverable loss or suicide). Heavily centralised cultures like the Solar Dominion, the Negentropists, or the Objectivists tend to have control directly over fertility by nanomedicine. On the other hand, the libertarians of the NoCoZo would not ever restrict the right to breed, though neither would they provide support those who might suffer from overpopulation, which is regarded as self-inflicted poverty. The Genen are structured like a big family and do not breed unless the matriarch or patriarch assents. Every society is different and has it's own checks and balances, except in the early years of some frontier worlds or newly created megahabs or computronium banks.
Among high toposophic societies like the TRHN, the Cyberians and so on, virtual children modelled on a virtual act of genetic and memetic cross fertilisation are a common option- an individual might have thousands or millions of virtual offspring in various cybercosms, each with one, two, or many parents.
Articles
- Hybrid - Text by Steve Bowers
The (usually infertile) off-spring that results from the mating of two distinct species. Interbreeding between two distinct species or clades may result in a hybrid, which may or may not be fertile. Even non-fertile hybrids can be very vigorous, like mules. - Reproductive Technologies - Text by Tony Jones and the AI Vin
- Tachydidaxy and Omniuploading - Text by Steve Bowers and John B
Educational methods used in the Orion's Arm Civilisation
Development Notes
Text by Steve Bowers
Initially published on 23 April 2003.
Initially published on 23 April 2003.
