Genetically Engineered Family?

Shabazz Muhammad is a freshman basketball player at UCLA.  The Los Angeles Times recently ran a story about his path to college, and prospectively to the NBA, and how it was all neatly arranged and planned by his father, Ron Holmes.  How was this planned?  The details are to say the least, icky…   According to the report, Holmes was “fascinated” as a college student at USC by the careful breeding of thoroughbred horses for the purpose of creating faster, more powerful horses to race.  At the same time in his life Holmes, who was a 6’ 5” basketball player for USC, met a female college student named Faye Paige, who was a point guard, sprinter, and hurdler for Cal State Long Beach.  Holmes stated to a friend, “She’s going to be my wife, and we’re going to make some All-Americans.”  The couple had 3 children, and article states very clearly the intentions of the family unit – “Holmes has pinned most of his hopes on the middle child, Shabazz.”   Really?  There are people in the world who view marriage and family as a means to “produce All-Americans”, instead of seeking values of love, friendship, and family?  I suppose this story should not have shocked me as much as it has, but to be honest, I think it’s sickening.  This type of thinking is just one step shy of “master race” type thinking.  Family is not about creating the perfect one, and marriage is not about engineering perfect kids…what is described in the article is not marriage and family, it’s a business contract.  I have no idea how much “love” there is between Holmes and his wife/family, but regardless of how much he might say there is, the manner in which this family was formed speaks volumes as to the truth.   Can we please put the brakes on a culture that only values marriage and family in terms of what they can do for us?  Can we agree that picking your marriage partner based on how the 2 of you might genetically produce a child is disturbing?  Marriage and family is not about perfection, nor the return on the “investment”…this story should cause us all to take a second look at our own marriages and families, to insure we are not running the risk of sliding down this slippery slope.