# Family Explore how Mormon Transhumanism reimagines family bonds through faith, technology, and eternal relationships that transcend mortal limitations. Scripture enlarges the family from one household to every kindred in heaven and on earth, and Restoration temples seal that family across death. Technologies that change how children come into being and how long generations live together can be judged by that eternal bond. A family, in the plainest sense, is a group of people joined by birth, marriage, or adoption. The Hebrew *mishpachah* names a clan, the circle of kin larger than a household and smaller than a tribe, while the Latin *familia* first meant everyone living under one head of house, servants included. A common reading treats the family as a mortal arrangement that ends at the grave, and some readers find support for it in the Gospels. Told that his mother and brothers were waiting outside, Jesus pointed to his disciples and said that "whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matthew 12:50). Restoration teaching reads the saying as an enlargement of the family to include all who keep the covenant, and it adds that family relationships formed under that covenant can continue beyond death. ## All Families of the Earth Scripture traces the family outward from one man's household to every kindred in heaven and on earth. The covenant with Abraham began by calling him away from his "father's house" and closed with a promise: "in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 12:1, 3). It is significant that the word for families here is *mishpachah*, so the blessing given to one clan is extended to every clan. When Peter repeated the promise in Jerusalem, the Greek word he used for families was *patria*, a noun built on *pater*, "father." Paul draws on the same pair when he bows "unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named" (Ephesians 3:14-15). Commentators have long observed the wordplay, which Greek readers could hardly have missed: every *patria* takes its name from the *Pater*. Read together, these passages describe a single household that grows until it takes in all kindreds, in heaven as well as on earth. ## Sealing Across the Generations Restoration doctrine holds that family ties formed under priesthood authority can outlast death. Jesus gave Peter keys by which "whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven" (Matthew 16:19), and Latter-day Saints understand those keys to include the power to seal spouses to each other and children to parents. On the night of 21 September 1823, the angel Moroni quoted Malachi to Joseph Smith in a form that differs from the biblical wording: Elijah "shall plant in the hearts of the children the promises made to the fathers" (D&C 2:2). Latter-day Saints read those promises as the ones given to Abraham, and a 1918 vision names their fulfillment as "the sealing of the children to their parents" in temples, for the dead as well as the living (D&C 138:48). A 1995 proclamation on the family puts the doctrine plainly: the plan of happiness "enables family relationships to be perpetuated beyond the grave." The pattern reverses the opening of Abraham's story. Abraham left his father's house so that every house might be blessed, and the sealing ordinances gather those houses back to their fathers. ## The Family and Reproductive Technology Technology now shapes how children come into being, and it can shape how parents regard them. At least twelve million children have been born through in vitro fertilization since the first in 1978. Latter-day Saint guidance discourages the use of donor eggs or sperm and otherwise leaves fertility treatment to the prayerful judgment of a married couple. Since 2019 some clinics have also offered to rank embryos by polygenic risk scores, statistical estimates of a future adult's chance of heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions, though the scores predict modestly and their use remains disputed among geneticists. Mormon transhumanists count such tools among the means God has provided for human flourishing, and they welcome treatments that bring children to couples who could not otherwise have them. The risk lies in the habit that selection by score can form, in which parents come to treat a child as a product to be optimized. That habit sits poorly with the doctrine that each child is "a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents," with a divine nature and destiny. ## Longer Lives and the Turning of Hearts Longer lives give the generations more time together, which the Restoration treats as part of the work of salvation. Family researchers have described a "beanpole" family, with fewer children in each generation and more living generations at once, so that many children now know their great-grandparents. Radical life extension would make that overlap ordinary, and it would give the generations decades together in which to turn their hearts toward one another, as Moroni's version of Malachi promises. Of course, longer lives also raise questions of inheritance, care, and the place of elders who no longer work, and a family can be strained as easily as strengthened by them. The test for any technology that touches the family is whether it turns the hearts of the generations toward one another and receives each child as kin, or sorts children and elders by their usefulness.