Exploring Love and Family Dynamics

The podcasters privilege, I apologize for this,

but I'm going to read you a piece of a poem.

It's by a poet named Galway Cannell.

And the poem is called, after making love, we hear footsteps.

And the idea is sort of contained in the title

that the husband and wife make love,

and it wakes up their child and

the child comes and gets in bed with them.

And Cannell writes,

in the half-darkness we look at each other

and smile and touch arms across this little startlingly muscled body,

this one whom habit of memory propels to the ground of his making.

Sleeper only the mortal sounds can sing awake.

This blessing love gives again into our arms.

Sorry.

Do you worry about removing or diminishing from human experience

that aspect of being a husband and a wife

in a relationship with a child?

What do you mean?

I mean in your future,

the feeling,

in a future where orchid technology becomes a norm,

the feeling that that poet is expressing,

where a man and a woman make love,

and by making love they bring a new life into the world

that they haven't sculpted or engineered in any way,

that is given to them out of the self-giving from each other,

that that forms this profound connection between sex,

the way you love your partner,

and the family that you brought into being.

And again, this, you know,

allowing that we're in a world where people have genetic disorders

and there are all kinds of reasons

that people would consider other ways of having children,

you're imagining a future where that just sort of goes away.

And I'm wondering if you think anything would actually be lost

if that goes away,

if 90% of babies are born through IVF

and having sex and having a baby out of that

becomes this weird thing that the Amish do.