Down an otherwise empty corridor in the old municipal hospital building which is now the University of Copenhagen, a team of researchers are engaged in thought.<\/p>\n
The four bioethicists – from Italy, South Korea and Denmark – are in the process of rethinking one of the social institutions we probably take for granted the most: the family.<\/p>\n
Because the idea that a biological family \u2014 with father, mother and children \u2014 is best, is already outdated, they reckon. In fact, the biological family may be harmful.<\/p>\n
And it won\u2019t be long before technology seriously challenges everything we think we know about being a family.<\/p>\n
I meet the four researchers from the Department of Public Health in the garden behind the old municipal hospital. Before that, postdoc Ji-Young Lee sent an email to the newsroom. It sounds like science fiction when she describes one of the sub-projects she is currently working on.<\/p>\n
\u00bbWe are exploring the implications of artificial womb technology, which may one day make it possible to gestate embryos to full term completely outside the human body,\u00ab she writes.
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\n\u00bbWhat kinds of ethical dilemmas will this lead to? Who is to decide whether the foetus should be aborted? How will it, for example, affect maternity or paternity leave if no-one is getting pregnant? Will employers try to convince women to avoid becoming naturally pregnant if it is possible to use an artificial uterus,\u00ab she continues in the email.<\/p>\n
It is questions like this that she will try to answer together with the two PhD students Rikke Friis Bentzon and Andrea Bidoli.<\/p>\n
They all sit down around the picnic table with Ezio Di Nucci. He is in charge of the project The Future of Family Relationships.<\/p>\n
\u00bbIt is a 50 per cent Italian project,\u00ab says Ezio Di Nucci with mock seriousness and laughs. Both he and Andrea Bidoli are Italians.
\nIn the background, a group of scaffolding workers clamber around, and the noise almost drowns out the South Korean Ji-Young Lee as she explains the project.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThe project is about exploring how family structures are shaped by new trends in society. This goes for artificial womb technology and in vitro fertilisation, or about the types of families that are now accepted in society \u2013 like non-heterosexual families, or other family types. How does all this affect what it means to be a family,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n
\u00bbYou are good at making it sound like a neutral project,\u00ab Ezio Di Nucci breaks in.<\/p>\n
\u00bbOur starting point is quite critical. We say that the family may be able to offer some meaningful relationships. But, on the other hand, it can be a repressive system with patriarchal structures.\u00ab<\/p>\n
Try to imagine a family.<\/p>\n
Is there a mum and dad? Maybe she is pregnant? Are there a couple of children who resemble each other and their parents?<\/p>\n
If it looks like this, then there is a reason for it, according to the research group. The biological nuclear family permeates our culture and language. It is everywhere, and it is the ideal.<\/p>\n
\u00bbWe see nuclear families in films, and on reality shows like on the Danish TV show \u2018Sporl\u00f8s\u2019 the whole point is to find your real, biological family. This is the only way in which you can become a whole person,\u00ab says Rikke Friis Bentzon, who, like two of the other researchers, is specialised in philosophy.
\nShe herself grew up in a family with five sisters.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThey are not all biological, but of course they are my sisters. People are always really preoccupied with finding out who are the half-sisters and who are biological sisters. It just doesn’t make sense to only attribute value to the biological relationships. It’s a bit like sexist jokes,\u00ab she says, and switches into Danish.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThey are relics from a bygone age.\u00ab
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\nThe purpose, therefore, of her part of the research project is not only to rethink the words we use about our families. Rikke Friis Bentzon also has a personal project.<\/p>\n
\u00bbMy biggest goal in life is to have my sisters accepted for what they are. My sisters. I want people to accept my family as it is.\u00ab<\/p>\n
But have we not gradually become accustomed to being a family in many different ways, I wonder.<\/p>\n
There is hesitation at the table.<\/p>\n
\u00bbEven though we, as a society, try to be progressive, there is a tendency to see the biological ties as the most natural. This is built into our culture. It is very subtle,\u00ab says Ji-Young Lee.<\/p>\n
Just the fact that we still say \u2018half-sister\u2019 or \u2018stepsister\u2019 about sisters with whom we are not partially or completely blood-related, suggests that you can only have a whole sister if you share a biological background.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThese terms imply that, yes she is my sister, but not fully my sister. This terminology makes us buy into a rather narrow ideal of the family as the default or gold standard. It’s hard to unlearn this habit. I imagine if you google ‘family’, you will get pictures of a heterosexual couple happy married with children. \u00ab says Ji-Young Lee.<\/p>\n
\u00bbUh, that is an interesting claim. Let’s test it,\u00ab says Ezio Di Nucci and pulls up his phone from his pocket.<\/p>\n
\u00bbF. A. M. I. L. Y,\u00ab he says, as he keys in the letters into the search field.
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\nA smiling man and woman look up from the screen while they swing a child between them in what looks to be a summer sundown. In the picture next to it, two chubby children’s hands hold a paper clip with four silhouettes of a girl, a woman, a man and a boy.<\/p>\n
\u00bbI thought so,\u00ab says Ji-Young Lee.<\/p>\n
Technology can turn the family’s roles upside down. Andrea Bidoli is examining how our conception of being a parent will change if we start to bring children to term outside women’s uteri.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThere is so much identity in either bearing a child or not doing so. If you can become pregnant, you must be either a mother or a woman, and these words are very meaningful. People are often very closely tied to these concepts and roles. So I study what could happen if you took pregnancy out of the picture,\u00ab she says.<\/p>\n
But is it really that bad if you want to call yourself a mother or a father?<\/p>\n
\u00bbI try not to take anything from anyone by discussing gendered parenting roles, but there are many who might not see themselves in these roles if society gave them other options.\u00ab<\/p>\n
\u00bbEven today, non-binary people cannot escape from gendered parent categories, and transgender people often get the wrong gender designation as parents. People are, for example, often concerned that children with two fathers are in need of a mother. But it might just as well be said that children in traditional families need an extra father,\u00ab says Andrea Bidoli, who aims for a more inclusive language.<\/p>\n
But new technology can also strengthen the ideal of a family with mother, father and children. The research team believes that the sharp increase in test tube (in vitro fertilization) treatment is an example of this.<\/p>\n
\u00bbThere is the elephant in the room which is that many people still want to have biological children. People go through a lot of effort, financially and emotionally, to get biological children. But we believe that this is due to the way we are brought up socially and culturally,\u00ab says Ezio Di Nucci.
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