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With women constituting nearly half the work force, the remaining vestiges of gender inequality will gradually disappear, according to most forecasters. Slowly but inexorably, as women continue to move into fields once dominated by men, the gap between male and female wages will close. As it does, power balances will shift not only at the office but also in the kitchen. When both sexes have equivalent jobs and equivalent paychecks, it won't always be the woman who works "the second shift" of housework after hours or who stays home when a child is sick. Nor, for that matter, will it generally be the woman who receives child custody in a divorce.
To help families cope with ever more intricate obligations, the government should allow large, extended families to incorporate themselves as businesses, suggests David Pearce Snyder, a consulting futurist. This would make families more productive and independent by giving them huge tax advantages that corporations enjoy: generous write-offs for helping each other with new business ventures, tuition funds and the ability to transfer wealth among members without being taxed. Such families would then be much better equipped to look after all their members, relieving the government and other institutions of that burden.
On the other hand, an even more radical approach may evolve. It is reasonable to ask whether there will be a family at all. Given the propensity for divorce, the growing number of adults who choose to remain single, the declining popularity of having children and the evaporation of the time families spend together, another way may eventually evolve. It may be quicker and more efficient to dispense with family-based reproduction. Society could then produce its future generations in institutions that might resemble the state-sponsored baby hatcheries in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. People of any age or marital status could submit their genetic material, pay a fee, perhaps apply for a permit and then produce offspring. "Embryos could be brought to fetal and infant stage all in the laboratory, outside the womb," says Cornish. "Once ready, the children could be fed by nurses or even automated machinery."
In any event, as the nuclear family dissolves, what is likely to evolve is a sort of make-your-own-family approach, which Dychtwald calls "the family of choice." Institutions, employers, neighbors and friends will take on roles once dominated by relatives. "The need and craving for family has not diminished," he says. "It's just that people are forming their own little tribes based on choice and affinity and not on blood." These new pseudo- relatives could overcome the one immutable truth about families: you can't pick your parents. Someday, maybe, you will be able to.