I'm rewatching Picard again, and I noticed something that has always slightly disturbed me about all the incarnations of Star Trek. For a technologically advanced society, the Federation seems to have a very low life expectancy. What do I mean by that? Surprisingly few of our main characters have surviving family members that aren't on their respective ships/stations.
I understand that "found family" or "chosen family" has always been an important theme in Star Trek, but if you do that by regularly killing off parents/grandparents/siblings then you give a lie to the idea that this is a better society.
Take ST:Picard as an example:
Picard himself - for the vast majority of his Starfleet career he has minimal to no meaningful family relationships. They even kill off his brother and nephew, in a particularly horrible way, to emphasize that he is alone, with only his crew as family. His parents and grandparents are all dead. We know how his mother died - but his Dad? During TNG, if we assume Picard was in his mid-40s then his father would probably have been in his mid-80s to 90s at the most.
Raffi - no meaningful family connections, other than an ex husband and an estranged son - no parents, no grandparents, no siblings.
Seven - no siblings, dead parents, no mention of grandparents
Agnes - no siblings, no parents, no grandparents. At least none that seem to hold any tie for her.
Rios - absent father, dead mother, no siblings, no grandparents - he outright says in S1 that he has no family.
Elnor - fair enough, he was born into chaos in the Romulan evacuation.
Beverly Crusher - dead husband, dead parents, dead grandparents, no siblings, one estranged son and one son that she is close to
Riker - no siblings (no Tom doesn't count); mother dead when he was very young; father now also dead, no grandparents; only gets a wife and children of his own after the main series is over and even then, one child is dead.
Troi - father dies sometime during TNG, only sibling died before she was born; no mention of grandparents.
Strange New Worlds is doing the same thing, Uhura's immediate family all died in a shuttle crash, Pike's father is dead, even though he would have been barely older than middle aged by 24th century standards.
I could continue but you get the point.
Life expectancy is strongly hinted to be around 120 by the time of TNG; so there should be surviving parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, for all of these people; even if they are all only children.
Again, I know this ties into the idea of found family, but it bothers me because in some ways it seems like the writers are just writing 20th (and early 21st) century family relationships, where you wouldn't necessarily expect an adult to have living parents or grandparents and ignoring that life expectancy will have changed 200-300 years from now. And it will change, even if we have an upper limit to the human body - more people will be reaching that limit as we deal with things like cancer more effectively.
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