On DNA testing and paternity
I missed this when it first came out, but it’s an excellent read with much food for thought. The subject: how DNA testing has affected paternity and child support.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
It’s interesting that redefinition of marriage, let alone technological advances, may do nothing to change this situation, though both should. They won’t, because a privileged class of ‘dependents’ (women, that is, not children) would take a hit. And it might not do divorce lawyers any good, either.
“THERE IS A STRONG cultural imperative that a man should never abandon his offspring: that a man who impregnates a woman should be responsible for their child… ”
Many millions of children born into poverty and ‘reared’ by a single mother didn’t get the news.
As much as I hate to say it, I tend to agree with DNA testing at birth (with the requisite acknowledgement that they waive their rights later if they change their mind). Costly, yes. And, guess who is going to pay for it? We all are. But still, my heart goes out to the men like Mike, and their children. Terrible, messy stuff.
Where I work, I’d say 90% of paternity/DNA cases revolve around trying to sort out who the father actually is because of the high gang presence and the fact that many of the mothers are involved in those gangs. So there is often genuine doubt as to who the fathers actually are. Nice, huh?
However I once saw a man with a genetic disorder suing for a paternity test because he’d been told for 45 years that he’d never be able to father children. He desperately wanted to know if it was even remotely possible that his ex-girlfriend’s new baby could be his. He ended up heartbroken, knowing the chld wasn’t his and that she hadn’t been faithful to him.
Ah, Family Court.
Wow. A very disturbing article. The worst thing about it is that while reading it I kept thinking of the word decanting from Brave New World.
In Louisiana, which operates under civil code rather than common law, a child born to a man’s wife is his child. Period. Or at least that’s how it was when I lived there. But even that would be shaky ground now that the DNA genie is out of the bottle and how does that work when such a large percentage of kids are born out of wedlock?
Children have historically been subject to horrendous experiences and survived. They’ve had their families wiped out by the Comanches, or the Cavalry, or Attila the Hun, or the latest Five Year Plan and survived but that isn’t the same of having Dad suddenly transformed from a flesh and blood father into some weird hologram right before a child’s eyes.
This can only be helped by people who care more for the child’s welfare than for their own. Which used to be one thing expected of a parent. But that, while it makes a great slogan, doesn’t always signify.
My heart would go out to guys like Mike, but I know if they didn’t screw that poor schmuck out of child support, my family would be paying for that kid when the wretched mother goes on food stamps and welfare.
As long as the state can find some gullible well meaning dope with pockets to foot the bill, my family won’t have to pay for the little bastards. That’s how it works now. Pick ’em clean.
When a child is born, one always knows who the biological mother is. In “Mike’s” case, the real mom and dad continue to take the man’s money, knowing full well they are screwing the guy every day. The judge knows it too, yet ruled it as he has. They are pond scum, in my book.
The two innocent bystanders in the situation are only guilty of loving one another as father and daughter, as they thought they were.
The article sets the stage by saying that one study showed that 2% of the children of men with “high paternity confidence” turn out not to be theirs, and intimated that that figure was perhaps a lot higher.
I don’t recall which anthropological source I read this in, but I once ran across an article that said that in “primitive societies” an estimated 30% or more of children were not the biological children of their supposed fathers, which of course brought to mind the picture of women and men skulking around at night or finding a secluded part of the forest and basically banging whoever they felt like, and the hell with “society,” and then after the “happy event” of birth, just keeping their mouths shut thereafter.
If true, not a very pretty commentary on human beings.
br549: it is also possible (although not necessary likely) that in Mike’s case, or in some other cases if not Mike’s, the woman herself does not know who the father is. If she is sleeping with both men during the same time period, how would she know?
Some of these cases involve outright deception, of course. But a certain percentage (and I don’t know what that percentage is) involve a woman who is unfaithful to her husband but who thinks he might be the biological father. This certainly does not make her behavior okay, of course.
Wolla Dalbo: some of the men involved in these dalliances, of course, are married men—even the same ones whose wives are sleeping with other men. Therefore in a society such as the ones you describe, many of the men who are raising someone else’s kids have fathered kids on a woman other than their wives, and someone else is raising those kids.
Some societies circumvent this problem by locking women up or otherwise restricting them (chastity belts, purdah). Not a great solution either.
The biological realities are that (a) some people tend to mess around; and (b) till now, it was hard to know what child was fathered by whom. And now that we can know, it certainly doesn’t solve the problem, but creates different ones.
I also learned in some anthro class or other that some societies with low fertility rates (such as the Inuit) have certain kinds of institutionalized unfaithfulness (wife swapping by hunting partners, etc.) that have the interesting side effect of increasing fertility because it a man is infertile, this way his wife has a chance at conceiving with another partner.
I was way ahead in this research area. When i was a kid, i used to take bluejay eggs and put them in a cardinal nest. Then take cardinal eggs and put them in a bluejay nest. Mostly they just fed and raised the birds like it was their own.
Somebody’s got to take care of the kids. The cuckolded man is entitled to be annoyed in the extreme. My view is, track down the biodad and mulct him. I don’t see the philosophical or moral problem with that.
Legally? According to the article, the law is a dog’s breakfast on the repeat. No idea there, but laws can be changed.
However, requiring the cuckolded ex-hubby to pay into the family including the biodad and mom is inexcusable.
Richard Aubrey: child support is supposed to be for a child, not paid to a family. But one of the problems is that in reality, child support cannot be paid directly to a minor child; it must go through the family. And in families such as these, the family is the woman and her new husband, the biological father.
I agree that the biological father should most definitely be forced to contribute financially for child support. But completely absolving the original (non-biological) father of responsibility does not deal with cases in which that father has been the acting father all that time, has a fatherly bond with the child already, and wants to continues to be father to the child and be entitled to visitation, etc.. That means he should continue to pay something. This is not to say that his child support payments are payment for visitation rights; it is not a quid pro quo. But if he wants to retain the rights of a father he must retain the responsibilities as well.
Which, IMHO, means that the biological father needs to take on financial responsibilities, too. It is weird and complex to have both fathers paying some child support, but it reflects the complex reality that in such cases there are two fathers.
The solution, of course, is to marry a faithful and trustworthy spouse. But that’s not always easy to find.
neo, interesting the issue is framed as whether or not the man should pay. If a woman is found to have strayed, then maybe she should pay the man’s share too for the child in question. I am sure there are many cases where the woman is working and can afford the extra cost. It sounds like Mike’s case is a good example. She and her new husband should shoulder the cost. Mike should get full visitation rights.
Steve: in most states the woman already pays the man if they have shared custody or he has custody, and she’s got an income as well. Both incomes are taken into account.
If she has custody and he just has visitation, she is presumed to already be paying a certain amount of her income for the care of the child under her roof. The two incomes are taken into account; his is a contribution.
If for some reason she cannot work, and only his income is available, that’s all that’s used, however.
This is true whether she has strayed or not. The state no longer believes someone should pay an extra penalty for straying (although sometimes that does happen de facto if not de jure, if the judge has discretion).
As for the financial obligations of the non-biological Dad:
Wouldn’t the cost of maintaining a room and all of the purchases for that and paying for all of the child’s expenses when they are visiting be sufficient?
Another interesting thing would be if the child is carried on the non-biological father’s insurance and some horribly expensive malady struck the child. What would happen if the insurance company then sued for fraud to deny coverage?
neo, if the state no longer believes someone should pay extra for straying, then I say change the law. If the mother can afford the extra cost she should pay it. If the law says the non-biological dad must, the law is an ass.
DNA testing is getting cheaper all the time. Hence, it should become automatic at birth. Think of all of the legal battles such testing would eliminate. Think of all of the personal tragedy it would prevent.
Doing so would put a real cramp on cuckholdery.
I’ve lost track of the number of married women that wanted me to impregnate them.
The female’s drive to have the very best genes for her child drives the cheating. For the species, on the whole, cheating is rotten for the betas — but heaven sent for the alphas.
Interesting related essay on adultery and the law:
http://www.mrsdutoit.com/index.php/essays/2914/
blert, interesting notion: “The female’s drive to have the very best genes for her child drives the cheating,” but that narrative implies purposeful, perhaps even conscious, actions not supported by any evidence. Mother Nature like mixing genes, but progressive goals are not a part of the deal.
LAG…
The desire by the female to only mate with the most dominant male has been witnessed in sharks, deer, apes, horses,… you name it.
It’s so primal its from the hindbrain — entirely.
Women, thusly, can’t explain why they bedded that dominant bad boy from the ghetto. You see such hook ups every day.
The gene set is 300,000,000 years old at a minimum.
It also explains groupies.
As Frank Sinatra showed — every woman he ran into would throw herself into his bed.
It’s impossible for them not to.
My husband and I know someone who had moved here from New Orleans right after Katrina, with a wife and young daughter. Without a concrete explanation, the wife went absolutely “nucking futs” for a year and a half after they arrived here (taking all kinds of drugs, humping quite a few men around town and who knows what else), and of course, he filed for divorce. Psychologists who examined her for the court said that she was as square as a cube, and found no reason to deprive her of custody, even though he was making all the money.
And then, all of a sudden, she returned to him. No explanation. Then, they announced her pregnancy. The one curious thing after the birth of this second daughter is that neither of us have been allowed to see the younger child. Yet, my husband has seen her only once, and there’s one thing he truly believes about the whole thing: “He’s not her father.”
We have tried to get together with them now that we both live in the same metropolitan area again, but we always encounter an excuse – and it is always because of his wife. The last time we invited them for a gathering at our home, he drove half-way from his house to ours, only to turn back: his wife had a “panic attack” that threatened him and who knows what else. He called my husband to let him know he couldn’t make it there.
It was at that moment my husband and I knew: “She’s hiding something.” The moment we both see it and tell him, the scales will fall from his eyes, and all Hell will break loose.
Needless to say, we haven’t met with him again, and we probably never will, unless we find a way to make him see what my husband and I already know for certain. In fact, he received a note from his old co-worker that he had quit the $100-grand job he was performing quite spectacularly, with no reason given. It was the last time we heard from him.
These two guys – my husband and his former co-worker – are both former merchant marine. They know fully well about how high the rates of infidelity are in this kind of environment, and on both sexes to boot. If an environment like this one doesn’t make a former Chief Engineer “smarten up” regarding a woman’s infidelity and lying habits, what will?
Cuckolding by a woman is just like rape and domestic violence: it is about control through deceit and lies, which is psychological abuse in every sense of the word. Making a person (a man, and also his supposed offspring) believe a lie is one of the most psychologically damaging experiences in a person’s life, especially when the truth finally comes out.
If “There Is No Excuse For Abuse”, then There Is Absolutely No Excuse for Paternity Fraud. That is the reason why we both fully support any law that establishes DNA testing of a child in order to determine paternity. Much sorrow and fraud could be prevented if these laws were established and implemented. And, of course, it might (just might) make a few women think twice before they “spread ’em” to a man who is not her husband or partner.
Who knows if he would have been spared much trouble had he had this kind of law on his side, know well how his “wife” had behaved in the past.