 I'm Dan Quice. I'm an editor at Slate. I'm the co-host of mom and dad are fighting. Please introduce yourself. I'm the mom of mom and dad are fighting. I'm Alice in Benedict. I'm also an editor at Slate. And so in our parent team podcast, we talk about a lot of issues that are facing parents today. You know, issues of staying at home or working, issues of how you raise or discipline your child, issues of pregnancy and childbirth and family life and work-life balance. But we thought it would be fun to come here today and talk to you guys about the issues that will be facing us as parents in the glorious year 2100. And we are decidedly, we are not experts. We have experts come on our show. What's the opposite of experts? We are inexpert on these scientific issues at hand, but we are experts at shooting our mouths off. So here we go. Do you want to pick the first one? Yes, I will ask the first one. Dan. Yes. Even if it's medically possible, is there an age when it's too late to have a kid? That's a great one that actually does relate to, I guess, parenting today, doesn't it? Hey, my wife is in the back because she can explain to me all the ways that I am getting myself in trouble with the things I'm about to say. So yeah, I have, I'm already, I already feel a certain amount of discomfort at the ability, I mean, the forever ability of men at basically any age to have kids and then to be like too creaky and old to pick them up. But it does seem to me that there's a certain age after which you are sort of condemning your kid to a like inattentive or tired or always exhausted parents. But I don't know, maybe it doesn't matter because parents even 25 year olds are really exhausted when they have kids. I think, yeah, I think that unless the medicine can sort of catch up and let us be 60 and as active as we are when we're 30, I think there is probably an age where it's not so great. I actually, you know, wish now looking back that I had started having kids when I was younger, mostly to have like that third chapter that people talk about, your spouse and your kids out of the house will be that we'll never get right to this stage where our kids are the parent when we were young, there were a couple of kids who had the older parents that were like a little strange. Now we're all those older parents, right? And I don't know if I think that's so great. Alright, so in the year 2100, assuming that that 60 year olds and 2100 are basically the same as 60 year olds today, should we agree that 60 is too old too old 50? Too old. What? To start having kids? Yeah. I'm going to put me at like 48. 48. That's when you should stop. 40. Allison. Yes. If it were possible for you or your partner to give birth naturally, would you still use an exo womb if one were available? Or would you look down on people who use an exo womb electively? I would probably look down on people who use an exo womb electively because I think, and a lot of these things are, you know, we don't have all the factors here, but I'm guessing that people who use the exo womb electively are always going to be rich. So I don't like any sort of, I think probably option that is only available to rich people. And it's another reason for me to... But our whole lives are made up of options that are only available to rich people? Yeah, and that's not so great. This sweater is only available to rich people. What do you think of the exo womb, Dad? The sweater is from old Navy. It's available to everyone. It's a great question. I think I'm going to come down in favor of an exo womb. Actually, it seems to me that if a woman is like, you know what? I don't want to put my body through all this shit. And she has the opportunity to not put her body through all that shit. Maybe if there's a chance to do it another way, shouldn't she have that chance? And is it up to you to look down on her for taking advantage of that opportunity to keep her body younger and suppler than yours? I mean, I'm just spitballing here. It also should be a little more serious. It clearly has a lot of political, you know, issues that go along with it. My, you know, abortion is... abortion politics would be a lot more complicated than walking around with an exo womb. Those arguments are going to get ugly. And it's an assumption also that pregnancy is no as bad, is not fun, is not... I mean, it's not. But I don't necessarily think that we want to to all elect out of it. Okay, how many biological parents are too many? One. Zero. So we got a list of some of the possible questions we might be asked. And that question was the one that made me go, I don't even understand the context under which one would ask this question. But then I heard what was being talked about in some of the previous panels. And I understand now that there are obviously options in gene splicing and gene recombination. But I still think that maybe just two seems like a reasonable number of biological parents, right? It's worked really well for like 20,000 years of human history. Or it hasn't. Or it hasn't. Tell me how it hasn't. My children actually just recently said to me, I wish we had two moms and two dads, one set to do the work and one set to be fun. So I think four sounds good. I wish we had that. That's not an argument for more... that's just an argument for sister wives and sister husbands. This is what you apparently need in your house. It is. Yeah. But I can't see the argument against more... what does the argument against more... I don't know. So the argument for it is that it just allows you to sort of hone and shape the genetic material out of which you're creating your kid. Which is sort of what at the heart of a lot of these questions that we're arguing and debating here. I think that feels weird and creepy to me. So I'm not into it. But I may just be like a biological reproductive blood. Maybe that's what I am. I think as long as everyone's under 40, it's fine. All right. Allison, if the gender of your future child was just a box to tick on a clip or at the doctor's office, would you do it? I would. Yes. For sure. Yes. I have three boys. So if... I mean, we're done. But if there were ever to be the option for another one, I would tick that box for a girl. Yep. Yes. So would I. I have two girls and that was by accident. But if I could have made it be on purpose, I would have made it be on purpose. I really wanted girls. And so I would have done almost anything to ensure that. Oh, your turn. Here it goes. Dan, what choices, if any, would you make about your future children's appearance or intelligence, if you could? I would want them to be intelligent and to look like their mom. So hooray, I won. I wouldn't make any choices. Alia, I didn't just say that because you were here. You wouldn't make any choices. No. So you liked the genetic crap shoot, basically. Yes. But you're still willing to recombine four people's DNA to make a baby. Correct. All right. This is a hard question, because you want what is best for your kids. You want what is best for their future. And you want to optimize that in any way that you can. But you also feel like, as you have said, at some point, the ability to give your kid, to amp your kid's intelligence up in the year 2100 is going to be presumably something that is only available to a very select portion of the world's population. And then what kind of world are we living in and contributing to if we seize that option? And the people who get to make those decisions probably will be people who are already in a good position in the world. And those people, I think, don't need to live in a family with perfect children. That having children with maybe challenges that are ugly really makes you more empathetic. Not that we wouldn't. Our kids are all beautiful. Yeah. Although, I don't know, maybe in the year 2100, we'll have just worked out inequality completely. Alison, would you freeze your eggs for your employer? Slate.com, Alison, would like you to freeze your eggs, please. And just hold off on having kids tell your, well, 39, let's say. So I assume this question comes because Google and Facebook recently said that they would start giving benefits for women who want to freeze their eggs. I would not. I mean, I am fine with the concept of freezing eggs. I think that news was met with a variety of reactions, one of which was that, oh, that's like a really interesting corporate decision that they want to get the most out of their female employees in their 30s and 40s. But it's not like a perk, but in fact, like a subtle reminder to all female employees that you better just keep on working because now you have no excuse. So for a company to ask that of you directly, I mean, I definitely would say no. Would I maybe use that option if it were there? Perhaps. What would you do? What would I do if they asked to freeze my eggs? Yes, I would remind them of some facts. No, well, like if that had been an option for our family, for example, I guess it's not really my call to make. But I think in general, having the option available seems great. But I do also agree that there's no way to present that option without making it seem to some of your employees like you are basically telling them, this is what we want you to do. And if you're going to present an option like that, you would better also present a lot of sort of stuff that should go hand in hand with that, like better family leave, better paternity and maternity leave, better support for working parents. You'd better make it clear that you also welcome parents in the workplace because otherwise every employee who works for you is going to get the notion that they'd rather you just freeze up, you know, freeze those eggs up. Right, it should be part of a family-friendly right approach. Okay, Dan, would you support a law that would criminalize not screening your unborn child and using genetic selection to reverse preventable birth defects? No, no, is that a thing that people actually do people want to criminalize that? Do people in this room want to criminalize that? Where'd you guys come up with that? No, that seems, no, I mean that's A, it seems like horrible to enforce and B, it seems like patently immoral. Like it seems to me that giving people options and things to do with their kids is probably a net gain for humanity, but mandating those things in order to create a more perfect American, you know, box popular. It seems like not the greatest idea. Completely agree. I mean the fewer laws we have for what women have to do with their pregnancies, the better. Yeah, I guess that's a generally fine way to go. If you could make your child, I didn't know about this one, if you could make your child a Democrat or Republican using genetic engineering, would you? This is the hardest one yet. If you, if we could pass a law that every child had to be a Democrat by genetic engineering, what would you say? I'm going to go for no, because I come from a family with diverse political opinions, which makes for really interesting Thanksgiving dinners, which I would like to preserve. I would also say no. I just want to make it happen the old-fashioned way through endless pressuring of them until they rebel. Well then you would have to do the flip. Yeah, well, yeah, you have to quickly turn into Republican right now if you want your children to be a Democrat. That's right. That's what I'm in the process of doing with these sweaters. Okay, you're up. Okay. Okay, if you have one leave it to nature kid, but then have the choice to genetically engineer a perfect second child, is that unfair to the first? Yes. Oh my God, yeah. Could you imagine? It's kind of unfair to the second though, because then the second would have a lot of pressure, like we made you perfect. Why are you not perfect? The first one, you can be like, why didn't you clean your room? You're genetically perfect. Right, we engineered you to do this stuff. The first one would always get a pass, like, you know, sorry, we didn't. Well, I guess we can accept your B minus. You weren't genetically engineered. Yes, it seems terrible to both of them. I'm going to go ahead and say it's more terrible to the non-perfect one though, because they're not perfect. It is a good experiment though. It is a great, it's a great thought experiment. Like I'm thinking now, like, would you tell that second kid that they were genetically engineered to be perfect? Would you put that on them, or would you just like, let it go and let the first kid just wonder why it is that they suck at everything? That can happen without genetic engineering. That does happen without genetic engineering. Yes, that's true. All right. All right. Okay, here we go. Allison, should access to new procedures that lessen the length or pain of reproduction be a right? Like a right universally across all peoples? Like a right, like, I mean... So let's say, so in the year 2100, there's a something they've set up that basically it's a pill that you take, and if you take it, you still have a baby, you know, you still create and have a baby in the typical way, which as I understand it involves your uterus. But it only takes three months. Just everything happens three times as fast. And that then should be available to everyone. And should everyone in the world have the right to that procedure? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, given like, if it's a good, if it's, if it's something that we kind of collectively agree is beneficial to women and families, then it's better for it to be something that everyone has a right to than only the few. But like, I guess my question about that question is, is that, is there any universe we can live in in which that could happen? Like we can't, we can't even make like basic healthcare a right for people. It's a hypothetical question. Right. I guess it's a hypothetical question on a piece of paper. I should just deal with it. In the year 2100, we'll have solved all these problems. But I mean, it seems to me that in all, in all cases of genetic tinkering or perfection of humanity, the issue you always run up against is that all everything you can do to make humans better also has the function of making them less equal unless you somehow manage to get it to everyone on the face of the earth, which seems essentially impossible under all the ways that healthcare works in the world right now. And so it's hard to me to, it's hard for me to even imagine any kind of future where that could happen. I'm thinking of, I know he's written for future tense and first late before, but the science fiction author, Kim Stanley Robinson, has this great set of books on Mars about the colonization of Mars, red Mars, green Mars and blue Mars. And one of the big problems that faces earth in that is that a basically a life-lengthening technology has been developed that involves stem cells or something. I can't remember. It seemed very convincing when I was reading it. But it allows people essentially to replicate their body cells at a much slower rate and for cells to die off at a much slower rate so people can live at basically the full bloom of health until like 200. And so that's theoretically a great thing for humanity, right? But of course, when it comes down to it, if actually everyone on earth could live to 200, it would be a gigantic disaster for everyone, but then who decides who gets to do it. So in all of these cases with all of these technologies, the thing that these hypothetical questions doesn't really raise exactly is who decides who has the right to do these things, who decides who pays for them, who decides how this happens. Right. These choices don't exist in a bubble. Right. They exist in a fishbowl. All right. Last one. Last one. This is a good one for you. If technology could speed up and ease your pregnancy, say four months instead of nine months, would the social shame of being seen to take a shortcut keep you from doing it? I feel like the social jealousy and status of doing it would encourage people to do it, wouldn't it? You're like, hey, I've got a super pregnancy. Check me out. It assumes that the social shame would exist. Would the social shame exist? Well, I mean, there's certainly a social shame right now in some sectors attached to, you know, getting medication during childbirth, right? There are people who feel like natural childbirth is the only way to go. And so if you don't do that, you're somehow shortchanging yourself as a woman and future mother. And so sure, I bet that there would be four month pregnancy shamers who are like, I carried, I took a drug to carry my baby 12 months because that's more natural. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. Humans are really good at finding ways to social shame anything, right? Wait, so you would do it though? Yeah. Well, I mean, again, it's not my choice, but I would certainly encourage any, you know, my spouse to do it because it seems great. Yeah, I would also do it. Despite what I said earlier about exo wounds and keeping pregnancy wonderful, a shorter pregnancy seemed good to me. Yeah. All right. So we've gone through all the questions. Thank you guys for hanging out with us today. Please listen to us. Mom and Dad are fighting is available in iTunes. You can just search for Mom and Dad are fighting in the iTunes store. And thank you so much to the New America Foundation for having us. Thank you.