We can't look back from 40 years later with the clear view of distance because we haven't got there yet. Nevertheless, my book, Cryo Kid - Drawing a New Map (www.cryokid.com), takes an optimistic view of the family in a rapidly changing (and challenging) age where new social units are forming, where family values are expressing themselves in diverse ways. It is worrisome because we don't know where we're heading.

But today, when I gave a talk in Los Angeles about my book, about how my grandchild was born to a single mother with the help of an anonymous sperm donor, to a Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Women International (www.jwi.org), I had an insightful moment during the question period. One of the women in my audience, a grandmother herself, shared with us how her own grandchild was born. After successful treatment for cancer, her daughter was able to conceive with her husband's sperm, but unable to carry the baby. So a cousin stepped in and acted as surrogate to carry they baby to term.

"This kid is so loved," my grandma from the audience marvelled. "The whole family was involved in her birth." (It takes a village, right?) The four-year-old grandchild, echoing what her parents told her, explains the process of her birth like this: "Something was taken from my mother and something was taken from my father and put into a dish and mixed together in a laboratory, and then the mixture was put inside our cousin's stomach, I don't know how. So I'm 50 percent from my mother and 50 percent from my father, but you have to subtract two percent for our cousin."

Could be the math is a little fuzzy, but "I'm a miracle," the four-year-old says proudly. "A miracle."

She's right. She's a miracle, this millenial kid. I feel sure now that what I call the transformational family in Cryo Kid is working its way towards a happy ending. In the early stages of this milleniium, we're already moving into an age of miracles.