Unequal access to reprogenetic cognitive enhancement due to consistently high costs

Reducing the costs of such innovative technologies could possibly make larger families more appealing to couples in East Asian Confucian societies such as Singapore. Rather than dedicating extensive time and resources to the education and development of a single child, prospective parents might opt for such innovative technological solutions from the outset. This approach would enable them to confidently beget more offspring with the assurance that they would not need to invest as much time and effort in their upbringing, as these initial enhancements would alleviate uncertainties in child development. While education and training would still be necessary, the overall burden would be reduced, assuming that the cognitively enhanced offspring would already possess certain innate abilities and talents. However, a flaw in this argument is that permitting cognitive enhancement through reprogenetic technologies would only exacerbate the “Red Queen” effect, whereby increasing time, resources and effort would be required from parents to nurture their cognitively enhanced offspring, just to keep up with peers who have also received similar cognitive enhancements. The Singapore educational system practices streaming based on standardized examination and test scores, which leads to children of similar academic ability being grouped together in the same school and class. This will inevitably accentuate academic and social competition among the cognitively-enhanced, who would most likely be placed within the same peer group. Hence, a paradoxical situation might arise whereby anxious parents have to spend more money on advanced tuition classes for their “more intelligent” cognitively-enhanced offspring due to intensified peer competition.