There are two main ways that parents love their children. One is to accept them as they are, and the other is to intervene or design their lives to make them better. Intervention, especially through genetic manipulation, can violate their freedom and dignity. For the happiness of children, it is important to observe their natural growth and support their lives with love.
People often refer to children as a “gift from God”. Gifts are meant to be a celebration and blessing for the giver, and they bring happiness to the recipient. The phrase “God’s gift” implies that children are a source of great joy to their parents. It’s a universal sentiment that most parents can relate to. However, there are two main opposing approaches to parenting. One is to allow their lives to flow as they are, and the other is to control their lives and design them to move toward their goals.
Michael Sandel, author of Bioethics, describes the former as seeing the world as it is, and the latter as manipulating it. He also describes it in terms of the concepts of “cure” and “reinforcement. First, from a therapeutic perspective, treating a child’s illness is not about breaking down their natural strengths, but rather helping them to flourish. Of course, there is room for debate about where the boundaries of treatment lie, but the purpose of medicine is to promote health and cure disease. In other words, it’s not about artificially intervening and controlling your child’s life, but rather restoring and maintaining natural functioning so that their life can flow better naturally.
On the other hand, from an enrichment perspective, parents can go beyond treating a sick child to strengthening even a healthy child for a better and more successful life. You can even “fix” your child genetically. This seems a bit artificial. It seems like you’re using technology to control and, in extreme cases, manipulate your child’s life. This is the opposite of unconditional love.
Theologian May said that there are two aspects to the way parents love their children. One is “accepting love” and the other is “transforming love”. Accepting love is to be satisfied with the child’s existence, while transforming love is to develop the child to a better environment. When these two aspects complement each other and are in balance, it’s ideal. However, if you lean toward transformative love, it can turn into overly reinforcing your child. This bias creates a situation where parents are designing their children’s genes.
Even in the United States, which is often seen as a symbol of independence and freedom, parents are now designing their children’s lives and controlling them for a so-called successful life. Now, like South Korea, parents are overprotective of their children, pushing for early education and elite courses in the name of a better life for their children. They even call the school to monitor their children even after they go to college. Sandel says this approach to parenting is similar to genetic engineering, and that genetic enhancement is not unlike eugenics.
Eugenics is the study of conditions and factors for the purpose of genetically improving the human race, and was first founded in 1883 by Francis Golton in England. The goal is to increase the number of people with good and healthy traits and prevent the increase of people with poor genetic traits. Of course, improving a child’s life through education and training is one thing, but genetic manipulation is quite another. It’s just a matter of timing, whether it’s before or after the child is born, but in the end, it’s essentially the same thing: over-intervention instead of accepting the child as they are.
Consider the example of a parent who wants to make their child a sports star. The father of golfer Tiger Woods reportedly gave his son a golf club when he was in the playroom. Other examples include parents nervously watching their children around soccer fields or baseball fields, and children getting injured in sports at a young age. But is it right? Is it acceptable if the intentions are good? The answer is no. It is unacceptable to design genes, even if it is for the purpose of improving the life of a child. It violates the dignity of every human life.
The French Declaration of Human Rights, issued during the French Revolution in the 18th century, says: “All human beings are born and live with free and equal rights.” The Constitution of Korea also guarantees the right to liberty, which is the right of individuals to be free from interference or infringement by state power. This is derived from the principle that all citizens have dignity and worth as human beings and have the right to pursue happiness. The reason why the law guarantees human freedom is because individual life and freedom are important. This is something that the state cannot violate, and even parents can violate their children’s human rights if they go too far.
But what is the scope of freedom or human liberty guaranteed by the right to freedom? The answer is that, in principle, it is best not to intervene at all, and that intervention should be allowed for therapeutic purposes only when normal life is impossible. The point is to minimize or eliminate human intervention in the creation of life.
Genetic design, no matter how well-intentioned, is artificial and a rejection of natural life. It takes a lot of strength, effort, and money to have and raise a child, but it is wrong to assume that parents have the right to determine the direction of their child’s life, even by designing their genes. Children are not corporations. Just because you’ve invested heavily in your child doesn’t mean he or she should live according to your wishes. They are human beings with a right to freedom, and that freedom is best realized by accepting them for who they are.
Today, we all know that happiness is not proportional to economic wealth and education. Rather, it is more of an inverse relationship, and it is statistically proven that happiness is higher in less developed countries than in developed countries. In less developed countries, people have lower economic, educational, and welfare levels than in developed countries, so their main concern is to make ends meet, and parents don’t overly strive for their children’s success like in the United States or South Korea. And yet, they are happier than we are. The funny thing is that we know all of this, but it seems like we only know it in our heads.
If you ask most people what is the purpose of human life, they will tell you that it is to pursue happiness. If you’re a normal parent, you want not only your own happiness, but also the happiness of your children. But even though they know that happiness is not the same as social success, they want to instill in their children the genes they need to win in a competitive society. It’s a contradiction, and something is terribly wrong. These parents should think hard about how they want their children to be happy before they give them good genes.
When you climb a mountain and see water flowing down a stream, it’s beautiful. While man-made fountains and streams may be more beautiful to look at, there is a naturalness and peacefulness about water flowing in nature that cannot be matched by man-made objects. This is because it was created by nature, and it flows as it is, unimpeded. The same goes for your child’s life. Helping them become happy human beings is not about designing and controlling their lives, it’s about loving them for who they are and letting them flow naturally.
