Boys and Girls in Space

Well, list, I enjoyed the Satellite Refueling and Menstruation thread.
It took some interesting turns from the initial statement that a need
for population growth would be one consequence of the first space
colony, and the thread explored what it would take to get women to
want to have babies again, as women go further down the road to
renouncing their femininity.

But some of the later posts revealed that many men on this list want
no part of fatherhood, either. They were most emphatic. So we got a
bunch of boys and girls who would rather not--reproduce, menstruate,
change a diaper, wipe a snotty little nose, pay for college, grow old
together.

The family is a tough little package, and those cultures which foster
the family over the commune have proved to be resilient. Vernor Vinge
in Darkness of the Deep proposed that space would be conquored by
family dynasties operating in an economic system of young, expanding
capitalism where the concept of "return business" is the unifying
secular morality, and like enough to the golden rule to work just
fine. (Free trade among equals is cheaper than enslavement.)

Let's say Vinge and others are right and the family is the unit that
will carry humankind to the stars. I wonder what it will take to get
boys and girls together again in the baby-making business. I wonder if
we're too far down the road already. If so, you can forget the space
colony. All the tech talk is just jerking off, because neither the
government nor business will be able to take over reproduction from
living, breathing men and women, in spite of of those test tube uterus
fantasies.

Jan