It occurred to me that ever since the LUCA , at every step along the way my ancestors have been good… or lucky.
Billions of years ago, my microscopic ancestors made it past all of the dangers and evolved into higher forms. They pulled through the Great Oxidation Event. They crawled out of the ocean and sprouted legs. They dodged the dinosaurs and lived through the Chicxulub asteroid event. They climbed up the trees and climbed back down from trees. They chose an upright stance and built fire. They were part of a migration that eventually covered the globe and brought me to a place we call North America.
In fact, at every point along the way in the last 3.7 billion year, my ancestors were either smart or lucky, culminating in… me. I, in turn, mated and produced an offspring - my daughter.
She is my world. I love her in a way I wouldn’t thought possible. And she is married to another wonderful woman. They will not be having kids so the lineage stops with her.
It doesn’t matter of course. But when put in context of billions of years of past branches in my family tree, it’s a strange thing to ponder.
I have two sons. One will be 18 next spring and he is absolutely adamant he will be getting a vasectomy as soon as he’s an adult – he has a very strong dislike for kids. Him getting baby-proofed is probably a very good thing.
My other son… well, I don’t see him marrying or having kids. I may be wrong but I kind of doubt it.
My brother has no biological children. My father has one brother who did not have kids.
So my patriarchal family lineage will almost certainly end with my two sons. It is a very weird thing to ponder. I have documented my faimily tree with much detail and to think it’ll all end with my offspring… it’s a weird thing to think about.
My son doesn’t plan to have kids either. I’m fine with that … it’s a great life experience he won’t have, but then, none of us have EVERY great experience. I’ll never climb Kilimanjaro, never (I assume) rescue a child from a raging river, publish my first novel to wild acclaim, start a health foundation that ends up saving thousands of lives … life can be full of joy and service, with or without passing on one’s DNA and regardless of what subset of fulfilling experiences we all (hopefully) have.
While it doesn’t resonate with me at all, I understand that for some people it is really sad not to have genetic children/grandchildren. I’m glad the posters above me seem to be handling the disappointment well. Parents should never pressure their grown children to have babies just so they can be grandparents, so kudos to @Lucas_Jackson and @Lancia (and anyone else who slips in with similar thoughts while I’m writing) for accepting their choices/situations.
I was just teaching my students today that the world’s population (of humans) — 8.1 billion now — will surely peak between 9.5 and 11 billion — most likely right around 10 billion — somewhere between the years 2070 and 2095. That’s soon!
Right, I remember Cecil Adams explaining pedigree collapse, in an SD column about “if each generation going back in my family has double the number, why doesn’t global population increase exponentially as you you go back in time?”
IIRC this is the case with almost everyone on earth. If you go far enough into the future you (general “you”) will almost certainly have no descendants that can trace their lineage back to you.
See: mitochondrial Eve and y-chromosome Adam. Looking back into the past these two were the progenitors of every human on the planet. Two people (they almost certainly did not know each other and were separated in time as well by some hundred or few thousand years).
So, don’t feel bad. In 100 thousand years almost all descendant lines will have no path to people living today.
Put another way, almost everyone’s lineage will end in enough time. You would be the father to all or none if we look far enough ahead.
My daughter will not have children, and I am happy for the children she won’t have, for there are no signs at all that we are not heading toward a global hellscape in the near future.
My parents had four children, and each paired, and had either one or two children, making the third generation a total of six, each is coupled, and the youngest are in their early thirties. There are a total of three great grandchildren and there may not be more to come. Three. I don’t think that’s anomalous for our culture and class, either.
Right, but we’re just ahead of the global curve (well, South Korea and some other countries are ahead of us).
Even India is starting to average smaller families (lower fertility rates). The last major region of large average families will be sub-Saharan Africa, but even that will fall below replacement levels eventually (not far in the future, actually).
I was alleged to have been the last male in my family, until I had twin sons. Now, one son has a daughter and will not have any more children, and the other twin is as of this writing childless. So the line would die out with them.
Except that my grandfather’s name got changed when he went through Ellis island, so we don’t actually know if we still have relatives back in the old country. And even if we don’t, my nieces and nephews have as much of my family’s DNA as my own children. The family name may die out but the lineage will continue.
Yes, but it’s possible to go too far the other way. Neither of my parents ever even mentioned the possibility of me having a family of my own. It was just never something that anyone considered could be part of my life.
Last time I visited, my stepmother mentioned that I was the end of the line. No one else in my family has ever brought it up.
They weren’t the only ancestors of everyone, and most of their contemporaries were also ancestors of everyone. Y-guy was the male-line ancestor of everyone today, as in, if you start with any random human, and look at their father’s father’s father’s… father’s father, you’ll eventually get back to him. Similarly, Mit-Eve is everyone’s mother’s mother’s mother’s… mother’s mother. But there are a lot more mixed ancestry lines, and those go to other people.
This wasn’t something you ever thought about yourself? For example, I know I thought about it when I was younger - at some points, I thought I didn’t want children, and at other points, I knew for certain I wanted children. My ex-husband was never presented with the option of having children by his parents. It was assumed their offspring would figure it out for themselves. They never asked the offspring that had no kids when they were going to get on the ball or anything like that.
? But presumably your son’s daughter might have children, which would continue your line?
I can’t quite tell if you’re defining “line” to mean only “male descendants who transmit the patronymic surname”, or using “line” more generally as “genetic descendants of whatever gender”, which ISTM is how the OP was using it.
But, to the OP, their lineage is almost certain to end whether tomorrow or in a thousand years. This will be true of almost everyone living today. Mother/father of all or none given enough time.
For most, it will be none in time. Your (read almost everyone) lineage will most likely end.
I am the last living member of my immediate family. Everyone is gone - son, brother, parents.
However, my mother was born into a family of 15 children. I believe when everyone was living I had 47 maternal first cousins. I am very close with about 10 of them.
I have no doubt that some manner of their DNA will fling itself into the future with me connected in some eternal twisted kinship.
So my immediate my family name will end with my daughters, as I have only daughters and only my sisters have kids not my.brotber. But thats not particularly meaningful as there are other branches, my dad’s brothers have plenty of grandsons and the whole surnames being passed by the male line thing is just a social convention not anything to do with biological inheritance. The family is doing pretty well all things considered, if not keeping up the standards of my grandparents (13 children between them ) it’s not likely to die out in the next couple of generations.
One thing that is very meaningful and poignant me is the end of my paternal grandmother’s family name, Drayson, which was a prominent British military family who had members in the British army (as well as other branches) in every generation since the 1700s, and featured numerous (relatively) well known and interesting characters including the nutter who introduced Arthur Conan Doyle to spiritualism and the guy who introduced gunpowder to the Du Ponts. The last Drayson was my grandmother’s brother who was killed in WW2 at Arnhem. Adding to the tragedy is he and my great grandfather were not on speaking terms when he died, and never had the chance to make up.
