Trend Kinship is being assembled deliberately rather than inherited

Summary

This trend describes families and close ties being deliberately put together rather than simply inherited. Sitra's imagined 2046 magazine asks what families will look like and whether the growing loneliness epidemic has been overcome. Its speculative answer is forming families through legal contracts. The story draws on signals such as adopting new family members through Facebook groups, students living in an elderly care home, a boy gaining four neighbourhood grandmothers and single mothers sharing homes. Other signals concern ageing, including exoskeletons that support walking and efforts to add healthy years to life. Behind them all is research framing loneliness as a global public health problem.