In search of the perfect match

France, lunch time

The other day I was having a coffee with some girls who work with me and we got to talk about age and time to have kids. I know, this is the scary age in which women think too often about time going by.
Anyway, there was this girl who said that she strongly would like to have a kid as soon as possible. She even would have wanted it with her previous boyfriend if he was in agreement with that and then she concluded saying "it was good that I didn't have kids with him, he was not that good looking"....thinking that if the kids would have looked like him, they would have been not very nice looking kids and then adults.

So I got to wonder, how many women do think this way? that the father of your children should be a lot of good things among which also objectively good looking to pass the "right genes" to the kids. And then, while some women select for a good looking man to have kids with, do other select for intelligence? sense of humor? health? beside all this sounding quite unromantic, I guess it is not a totally wrong way of thinking. I mean, a lot of animals behave this way all the time when looking for a partner from which to have babies...just think of how anonymous are often female birds and how beautiful and colorful are males of the same species. But I mean, in the animal kingdom, humans are the ones who can fake things better.

I have to admit that the only person with whom so far I considered that in the future (far future) I could have children with is a person that I consider incredibly attractive for the way he looks and I always thought of how cute his kids would be. So, yes, I guess that in the rare occasions in which I think about the possibility of one day having a kid, I think about how they would look too. But not only. I more often think that it would be much more important to find the best match in terms of having the healthiest kid as possible.

If it would exist the possibility to get a genetic screen (they exist, but of course only for some well known disease) for a couple considering to have children, would you take it? would you like to know if you and your partner would be a good combination in terms of having "good kids"? and then if they would tell you that if you have kids they would have the 50% chance of having some health problem, even if not a very impeding one, just annoying for the kid, what would you do? still go on and have kids with this person?

I like to know things, to understand more about life, this is why I am a scientist. But sometimes I think that we go a bit too far, that we feel a bit too powerful, that we think that one day we can get to control the nature. Don't take me wrong, I think that genetic screening and checks to make sure that the kid is healthy are important and necessary.
But when we go on and we plan to have the "perfect kid"....well that is going a bit too far....isn't it? on the other hand...life is hard enough, and if you could do something to make the life of your kid easier (because they are extremely healthy, because they look good, because they are very smart), wouldn't you do it???

I think it is just all about where to set the limit...and limit sometimes can be very very flexible...but for what it concerns me, if one day I would decide to have a kid, I would just like to know that he/she is healthy and then leave to nature the power to do the rest!