The Incognition of Begetting

The fact that parents communicate to their children – most of the time themselves actually believing what they here communicate – that the child they wanted was this specific child that they got. In fact, however, parents want “a” child; as a matter of fact, often enough, “a child at any price”. This “incognition of begetting” is, today, on the retreat to the extent that parents are beginning to be able indeed to select specific characteristics for their child and to form and fashion it by means of biotechnology. A truly “wanted child” would be, in fact, a child whose whole nature had been bio-psychologically determined by its parents. At the same time, however, such “wanted children” would be beings instrumentalized and reduced to “means to ends” in a way totally contrary to the idea of human dignity.