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Imagine being born with the weight of your parents’ version of perfection on your shoulders.
For the select few dubbed “designer babies,” life begins as a genetic promise: handpicked embryos meant to embody their parent’s idea of ideal traits, free of disease and disorders, and destined for greatness.
Or so the marketing claimed.
Fast-forward to the teenage years, and the narrative grows darker. According to a therapist who spoke to Wired, these kids often struggle under crushing expectations, with outcomes that can be, in their words, “devastating.”
“In these homes, a high value gets placed on achievement. I think the way these kids are created sends the message: ‘You’re not good enough. You need to achieve. You’re not accepted,'” the psychologist based in California, who chose to remain unnamed, told Wired in an interview.
It’s a message that cuts deep. These teens grow up acutely aware of their origins, knowing they were “an experiment” but left without the emotional support needed to navigate the unique weight of their existence.
The therapist, who has worked extensively with families using in vitro fertilisation (IVF) – where prospective parents conceive a child by fertilising mature eggs with sperm in a lab – paints a picture of a particular kind of parent: Silicon Valley types obsessed with control, treating parenthood like a startup pitch. Some of them didn’t even have fertility issues.
For them, engineering a child’s genes isn’t about nurturing; it’s about optimising. And when the “product” doesn’t perform to spec, the fallout can be catastrophic.
“People who have children this way often place too much importance on genes while ignoring the environment,” the therapist told Wired. “It’s like a project or building a company. People don’t always realize they are creating a human being and not a piece of furniture.”
The reality? Genetically engineering humans won’t deliver the flawless perfection promised in the 1997 film Gattaca—a cautionary tale, it’s worth noting, that warned against the dangers of eugenics and the perils of using such technology to predetermine every aspect of a person’s life.
According to the therapist, IVF can lead to a range of complications, including disabilities and premature births. Some children develop learning differences or autism, but parents who placed their faith in science to deliver the perfect, problem-free child often struggle to accept these unexpected realities.
Some families face even harsher realities when they discover the donors they handpicked had psychiatric issues.
“Then the kid gets viewed through that lens,” the therapist said, “which can be pretty devastating and traumatic: ‘Your donor is nuts, so you must be, too.'”
And this is just the fallout from embryo screening. With the advent of gene editing, the stakes are only set to climb higher. As the world’s first gene-edited children grow up, one can only wonder how their parents’ sky-high expectations—and inevitable disappointments—will shape their lives.
The experiment continues, but the human cost is already evident.
[source:futurism]
