CONTINUED:  Population Management –  The Privilege of Reproduction.  Thinking in terms of the cultural norms of social sustainability is a bit of a challenge to most readers.  It is much like using solid geometry rather than Euclidean Geometry it requires a different inner vision of what it encompasses.  Always, in the terms of social sustainability, our thinking is consistently guided by the three core values that have sustained our species.  We will use them for examining the privilege of reproduction. 

●  Quality of life:  The quality of life and joy that children bring provides the vast majority of reproductive couples with the experience of having their own family.  The decision to bring a child into a family concomitantly takes into consideration the quality of life of the child will experience for its whole lifetime.  When children are born with a DNA related congenital defects, the quality of the child’s life, and their parents, will never be of the quality to grow into their potential with an equal capability as parents with children without that genetic defect.  The family’s quality of life is degraded. 

It seems remarkably primitive to me that a developed society would not automatically provide DNA screening and counseling to every person so they could make an informed decision whether to have children or not.  What procreative couple would willingly bring a child into their lives when they knew that the child may die of a DNA related congenital defect by age 22, for example?  The emotional, social and financial costs are staggering.   Having a child who has a very high probability of life with the best options for its development, then becomes a privilege that every parent would want. 

Voluntary Eugenics.  When most people read or hear the word “eugenics” their usual first thought is of the immensely immoral efforts of Hitler’s Nazi regime to bring a super Aryan race into existence to dominate the world.  But given that social sustainability begins with a personal choice-decision, personal eugenics becomes a highly moral and disciplined social choice.  Voluntary personal eugenic decisions are made by millions of people every day.  Birth control, whether by “the pill,” vasectomy or fallopian tube plugs, is personal eugenics practiced every day by reproductively capable people. 

When a society, the public, has chosen to move toward social sustainability, it has chosen to accept limitations of reproduction; and has chosen to bring the most capable children into that society.  It becomes a privilege, then, to become a parent knowing your child will be accepted by society and empowered to grow into their potential.