When fathers discover their children have a different biological father
This is a disturbing article on a lot of levels, although it describes a phenomenon that’s not a great surprise: the fact that sometimes a man is married to a woman who cheats, and sometimes that cheating results in a child, and sometimes the man doesn’t know it’s not his biological child, and sometimes—now, with the advent of genetic testing—the man discovers the biological truth much later.
That’s a sad and difficult situation. The man can be devastated, and the child can be tremendously traumatized. The mother is ordinarily in big big trouble, although at least in that case it’s a trouble of her own making.
There is no simple or one-size-fits-all solution. Going to a really good family therapist could help, but really good family therapists are not so easy to find. If the family is religious, answers might be found there.
But the emotions that are stirred up can be explosive and exceptionally painful. For the man, the pain and outrage can go very deep. And with the growth of DNA companies and their use, this sort of situation is probably going to become more common.
But the particular story that’s tracked in the article I linked is disturbing for different reasons. The father, whose pseudonym is Christopher for purposes of the story, had long strongly suspected his wife had been unfaithful early in their marriage around the time their daughter (who was now 15) had been born. So for a decade and a half he had wrestled with the idea and even the deep suspicion that she was not his biological child.
That’s a bad situation to begin with, and one with which Christopher had obviously not made any sort of peace or gotten any resolution for an entire decade and a half. But before getting the test, he should have figured out exactly why he was requesting it, how it could change things, what he planned to do if the results showed the girl was not his biological child, and how it was likely to affect all parties involved, especially the completely innocent daughter. In his case, he had to know he was throwing a bomb into the mix, a bomb that might detonate. It’s very different, of course, when the DNA test is taken without any suspicion or foreknowledge of infidelity, and the news comes as a total shock, but that was not the case here.
This is Christopher speaking. He had wanted the test in order to find out whether his daughter was his biological child, although the daughter had no idea that was the motivation:
I knew my ex-wife was having affairs back then, and I couldn’t catch her. When I bought the test, my daughter went and told her mom [that they were taking the test; the daughter had no clue why her father wanted it], and then an hour and a half, two hours later, in the middle of the night, my ex gets up and she says, “I need to talk to you ’cause I had an affair. I think it was a two-year-long affair.”
The worst was to see the reaction of my daughter. She just cried and cried. It was like a nuclear bomb going off. It changed the dynamic for a long time between my son and her.
The marriage ended, as well.
When asked if the results of the test changed his relationship with his daughter, Christopher answered this way:
On the day that I found out, I was like, I wanted to reject her, because I said my boundary was I will not raise another man’s child from an affair. My mom put me straight. She was like, “She’s innocent in this. Don’t blame her.” So I consider her my daughter.
I commend Christopher for getting over the hump, because if he hadn’t, his daughter (and she is his daughter; he’s been her father her entire life) would have suffered even more than she already has. But there’s a remnant of his original thinking in the terms he still seems to use to refer to the fathers: biological father and birth-certificate father.
I’ve never heard that latter term before. It would make sense if we’re talking about an infant, a baby with whom the non-biological father has never really bonded, and hasn’t raised. But a fifteen-year-old? As Christopher’s own daughter said, “He just created me, but you’re my dad.”
Historically, the difficulty of knowing for certain who the father of any child is has made for some customs that restrict the movement of women and particularly their sexual behavior. Those days are gone, but even before their demise, there was always the possibility of infidelity and passing off another child as a man’s own. Now the opportunities are even greater, and the fear of this happening can be great as well. On top of all that, we have the ability as never before to actually determine whether a child is the biological offspring of a particular man.
This makes for a potential powder keg, and if anyone steps into it knowing (as Christopher knew) that the chances are good that the child is not his, he needs to prepare himself in advance for the consequences, and consider how the entire thing will affect the child he has nurtured all these years. It is a supreme act of slefless fatherhood to be able to put that child’s needs first.
I don’t have the answer to what’s best—each father must decide that for himself—but I do know that in a case like that, preparation is key.
Neo, I haven’t read the article yet, but I don’t understand why Christopher has any culpability in this, as far as prepation or reaction? It was his ex-wife’s responsibility to consider all that, oh those many years ago. She created the situation. She perpetrated the lie and kept it going for years. The daughter and Christopher are the victims here.
I’m sorry that the test had to involve his daughter. He could have thought this through beforehand and decided not to damage her by doing it. Regardless of biology, he is her father, as she days.
Bastardy has frequently been a double-edged sword. In addition to being seen as a mark of social illegitimacy, there were also times when it was publicized because it placed one in line for the throne and, at the very least, allowed a claim noble blood.
The Irish “Fitz” as in John Fitzgerald Kennedy is a linguistic recognition of it and the bar sinister in heraldry a visual mark (an angled bar running from the shield bearer’s upper left to his lower right).
Today, culturally, we don’t seem to play down the public recognition of illegitimacy but as Neo’s post points out there are still deeply profound personal repurcussions.
Mandatory, state-funded DNA testing at birth.
“Today, culturally, we
don’tseem to play down the public recognition of illegitimacy. . .”Sorry.
We get DNA tests thinking about ancestry, forgetting that we are someone else’s ancestor, or related to their forebears. My fifth son is actually my wife’s nephew who we took in at 12. His mother was adopted at birth, closed. He is interested in knowing her heritage, which he suspected was Jewish. (She was placed with a Jewish adoption agency.) She was half-Jewish, it seems. Close relatives are identified. He asked on ancestry if the anonymous close relative knew anything. His biological grandmother must be an aunt or first cousin of hers. No, she said, none of her close relatives had had a baby in Boston in 1967. We must be wrong.
We didn’t want to push it, because the poor girl had decided to keep things secret and had done so successfully all these years, but now there’s going to be this story around…
When I had mine done I had worries there might be a half-American sibling in Japan born 1946 or 47, as my father was in the army of occupation and was not a sexually continent person until he was much older. I also worried if a niece or nephew might sudddenly show up, a child of one of my brothers.
We now know things we could only suspect before, and this knowledge about each other will grow. There will be no more secrets soon.
Victor Belmont:
Hmm, I see you’re not a libertarian, to say the least.
Mandatory DNA testing? Do you have a clue what you’re saying? What an incredible amount of power to give the state!
Rufus T. Firefly:
His culpability was in not preparing himself or anyone else for the probable results of the DNA test, which he knew (and had known for 15 years) would be likely to prove that his daughter was not his biological daughter.
The results were divorce, and incredible pain for his innocent daughter (and also his son, who was his biological son). But Christopher had already known, or strongly strongly suspected, for fifteen years that his wife had been unfaithful and that his daughter probably wasn’t his biological daughter, and he had continued in the marriage and continued as her father. He threw a grenade into the entire situation by forcing the test without thinking through how it would affect everyone, and being prepared.
After letting the sleeping dog lie for 15 years, the man should have let it continue to sleep. I think what he did was very irresponsible and quite selfish, and I am sympathetic to the notion of not wanting to be a cuckold. Once you have raised a child to the age of 15, you should love her enough not to do this to her.
Neo:
Never claimed to be a libertarian. But I recognize the immense power the state already has when it comes to whose name is in the box for “Father” on the birth certificate, mainly because laws that were enacted in a wholly different cultural calculus haven’t been updated for contemporary society. It’s a simple matter to make sure that the name in the box is the correct one, or at least, not the incorrect one.
Imagine our Christopher decides he doesn’t want anything to do with a child that isn’t his. This is not an unreasonable position, but guess what – he’s still going to be on the hook for child support, plus maybe college tuition, plus maybe health insurance until the child is 26 (family court judges have far too much power IMO, and zero appealability), because as far as the state is concerned, that child is legally his, the truth of the matter be damned. He would literally be being punished for trusting his wife, or at the very least, not speaking up for distrusting her. In what world is this equitable?
So yeah, do it at birth. No muss, no fuss, no hurt feelings, only use the samples for that purpose then destroy them. If our Christopher still wants to put his name on the birth certificate knowing the truth and the responsibilities that come with it, than I’m fine with that.
Two of my favorite fictional treatments of unexpected paternity revealed occur in wildly different genres, with wildly different plot ramifications, but the common thread is the havoc wreaked in the lives of the innocents engendered by the indiscreet parents.
The Lymond Chronicles series, by Dorothy Dunnett, uncovers not one, but two, misbegotten souls (and she does a twist on the theme in her House of Niccolo series).
Lois McMaster Bujold brings DNA testing to the foreground in her Vorkosigan series in several different books.
“But I recognize the immense power the state already has when it comes to whose name is in the box for ‘Father’ on the birth certificate. . . ” “Father” has already been done away with in the UK, where birth certificates now list “Parent 1” and “Parent 2” to keep same-sex couples happy. Some Canadian provinces now allow three parents to be listed, as in two cases in which a lesbian couple wanted the male sperm donor listed as a parent. Then there are cases in which the biological father/former husband became a transwoman and wanted xer name removed as “Father” on the children’s birth certificates. It isn’t just DNA testing that’s opened up a can of worms in regard to birth certificates.
Apropos of the devastation wrought by deception, there’s the case of Charles Lindbergh’s double life; he fathered seven illegitimate children by three different German women between 1958 and 1967. “Ten days before he died, Lindbergh wrote to each of his European mistresses, imploring them to maintain the utmost secrecy about his illicit activities with them even after his death [which they did] . . . .” However, DNA testing revealed the truth in 2003. Reeve Lindbergh, the aviator’s youngest child by his wife Anne, ” . . . wrote in her personal journal in 2003, ‘This story reflects absolutely Byzantine layers of deception on the part of our shared father. These children did not even know who he was! He used a pseudonym with them (To protect them, perhaps? To protect himself, absolutely!'”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#Double_life_and_secret_German_children
Neo, I haven’t read the article yet, but I don’t understand why Christopher has any culpability in this, as far as prepation or reaction? It was his ex-wife’s responsibility to consider all that, oh those many years ago. She created the situation. She perpetrated the lie and kept it going for years. The daughter and Christopher are the victims here.
I’m sorry that the test had to involve his daughter. He could have thought this through beforehand and decided not to damage her by doing it. Regardless of biology, he is her father, as she days.
I think what he did was very irresponsible and quite selfish,
His culpability was in not preparing himself or anyone else for the probable results of the DNA test, which he knew (and had known for 15 years) would be likely to prove that his daughter was not his biological daughter.
I’ve long loved the line from the film As Good as it Gets. The writer Mel Udall is loitering in the waiting room of his editors office when a (female) publishing house functionary strikes up a conversation:
Functionary: “How do you write women so well?”
Mel Udall: “Easy. I think of a man. Then I remove reason and accountability”.
he fathered seven illegitimate children by three different German women between 1958 and 1967.
Horndog was between 55 and 66 years old. What kind of income did he have that he could support four households? That tallies to 13 children. I think Ray Charles stopped at 12.
Father or guardian’s choice. He made a difficult but ultimately right choice. It’s a twist on the popular Pro-Choice. The girl is innocent.
PA Cat:
I read Reeve Lindbergh’s memoir dealing with the discovery of her father’s secret life, and how she and the family handled it. Quite an extraordinary story.
Rufus T. Firefly:
A more succinct way for me to put it might be this: before Christopher decided to force the issue by doing the DNA test, he had a responsibility to separate his understandable animus towards his wife from his feelings towards his daughter.
Lindbergh was used to keeping BIG secrets.
He hid his spy craft in the service of both FDR and DDE.
His infamous non-intervention speeches were crafted by FDR’s crew to infuriate.
They succeeded. They also harped on our tiny USA Air Corps.
When the time came it was funded like crazy.
State compelled and funded paternity tests are something that MUST come to pass.
For what you now have is a horrific moral hazard to fatherhood.
I, myself, have been invited by adulterous wives for impregnation.
Nailing a dude with an IQ >180ish was reason enough.
I refused to break the Tenth Commandment.
British stats indicate that about 8% of all births are cuckholds. This mass paternity survey was performed without providing any feedback to the cuckholds. To cloud the issue, the samples were obtained by a ruse, an alternate explanation as to why swabs were required from the whole family.
Per Moses, only wives can commit adultery(#6). Men get tripped on the Tenth Commandment, of which only men can commit. #6 and #10 are both mortal sins, of course.
The primal genetic urge of women to ‘trade up’ for better DNA drives most of their mating behavior… which is repressed at the cognitive level by women.
If universal paternity testing were impossible to get around, you’d see a collapse in adultery for the purposes of procreation. For the woman, her affairs on the side are driven by her search for a DNA upgrade from hubby. PERIOD.
All other reasons are mere rationalizations.
And it’s COMMON for the woman to actually mate with an inferior source of DNA. This happens all the time. The primal urge to mate with a sexy man focuses on what was favorable mating strategy during the lawless millennia before the Late Bronze Age. Yes, women constantly seek out criminal genes.
The primary driver for male imprisonment is their failure to get away with impressing a prospective mate via criminal activity. Since women don’t need this mechanism to attract a mate, they are far, far less likely to be in prison.
@ Victor Belmont “…whose name is in the box for “Father” on the birth certificate, mainly because laws that were enacted in a wholly different cultural calculus haven’t been updated for contemporary society.”
I don’t think this is so. Non-paternity events have always occurred, and as our laws developed that was understood. Nothing new here.
1. Conspiracy fetishism is a bore.
2. Cack-handed pseudoanthropology is a bore.
A young inlaw of mine had an ex-girlfriend show up a couple years later with an infant, saying, “It’s yours and I need money.” The instant I heard the story I said, “Get a DNA test.” No, he didn’t want to do that.
So after she took most of his money and maybe got tired of him playing daddy, she informed him that the child was not his, and split.
It’s a less complex story than Neo’s, and you might surmise that the young man just wasn’t very smart, but at least on an IQ test you’d be very wrong.
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I used to work with Navy officers, and I had one approach me at the beginning of a project we had just started. There wasn’t any mystery or a long period of wondering. His wife just told him one day, “I’m pregnant and it’s not yours.” Marriage over, goodbye.
He may not be her father, but he is her Dad, and Dads are far harder to come by, and infinitely more important.
Maybe I missed something. Is there the slightest, slightest possibility that Christopher spent that 15 years specifically trying to foresee the results of finding out for sure whether the daughter was his, and how to manage so as to avoid the damage or at least ameliorate it?
Back in the ‘80s, my ex-husband and I were very close friends with another young couple. Soon after my marriage ended, I got a call from the husband who was beside himself because his wife had left him and took their 3 kids – all 6 years old and under. She had started to negotiate with him about splitting up the kids. She wanted the duaghter and he coud have the sons. When pressed, she told him the girl was not his but was the daughter of a former co-worker. Without missing a beat, he told that he didn’t care who made her pregnant, that girl was his daughter and she wasn’t being separated from him and her brothers. He confirmed the story, took the kids back (by force) and raised the kids with his parents. He eventually met another woman, got re-married and had more kids with her. We lost touch but I often think about him. He told me that he never – not for one moment – thought of that girl as anything but his daughter. I’m still in awe of that.
It was early on Michaelmas in 1942 that I came into the world in a country doctor’s surgery in upper NY State. My mother tells me that one of the women there present exclaimed that I looked just like my mother. The Doctor replied. “That doesn’t help, we know who the mother is.”
“Victor Belmont:
Hmm, I see you’re not a libertarian, to say the least.
Mandatory DNA testing? Do you have a clue what you’re saying? What an incredible amount of power to give the state!”
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Libertarian or not, this is a completely conceivable (heh) extrapolation of the current laws and jurisprudence, although IANAL.
[1] According to some googling I did a few years back, adoptions are appx. 3% of births. Cases of paternity fraud are apparently slightly higher, but of course good stats are hard to get.
[2] A number of common law countries have court decisions requiring adoptees and sperm donor children to have their genetic complete history, for health reasons. Heck, there was a case where a woman wanted her ‘cultural’ background (so much for tabula rasa).
If [1] and [2] are taken together, then there are 4+% (???) of children who don’t really know their genetic history. Since we can’t really know which 4% are the result of paternity fraud, mandatory testing is required. It’s For The Children.
I didn’t say I like the idea, just that Victor Belmont may be a libertarian and have arrived at this conclusion as well.
In the not too distant past, CA established and/or modified law to recognize the concept as “acted as” or “presented oneself to be” the father regardless of actual biological evidence otherwise. Issues regarding fatherhood came to the fore when determining child support during dissolution negotiations. Some spouses were objecting to supporting someone else’s child.
There is also a provision some place in the law, now, that a man’s name does not go on a birth certificate unless he is married to the mother or he is present and consents to being named as father.
I may be wrong on the details here. I am well beyond (age and surgery) having to stay current on such things.
Recommended reading: “The Third Chimpanzee” by Jared Diamond.
Human reproductive strategies are complicated. For women, who they want to mate with and who they want to have sex with are not necessarily the same man. Strong aggressive alpha males make attractive genetic fathers, but they do not make the most stable and reliable mates.
When DNA testing became available, researchers were shocked to discover how common it was that children had different biological fathers than their legal fathers.
In what may or may not be a side note, I have a thought about how we should understand the results of DNA testing to establish identity, or lineage:
There was a time when fingerprints were supposed to be unique to a given person.
Now, I understand, it turns out that they are not. Whether this is true in an absolute sense, I don’t know:
1. It may be that two sets of fingerprints are similar enough that we cannot distinguish between them (whether by pattern analysis based on our own sight or on comparisons made by computer), while still in fact they do differ in some way. Or
2. It might be that two sets of fingerprints are indeed from the same person, but that they still differ because of very minor physiological differences dependent on the weather or or on age or on whether the person is bloated for some reason, or on heaven-knows-what, when one was taken. Or, alternatively, because of slight physical differences in their representation.
–Now please note, I have no idea whether either of these is possible, let alone is the case. I’m just saying that given the nature of pattern-recognition, whether done by humans or computers, and of modern statistical theory, it seems to me nearly impossible to make absolute statements about physical realities at the sub-macro level. (At the macro, directly-observable level, there is no doubt that the Sun is not the Earth.)
Reportedly, even DNA is no longer an absolute criterion as to identity. Whereas the idea, at least among the general public, has been that any given person’s DNA is unique to him: A person’s DNA is fixed, and no one else in the world possesses DNA 100% identical to his. “Unique” meaning “100% unique” or “absolutely unique,” which is what the word “unique” used to mean, regardless of how watered-down its meaning may be nowadays.
… Given the general lack of agreement on what the meaning of “is” is (technically, I agree that “is” carries more than one meaning and, and also that A and B may agree on the meaning in a specific case and still disagree on the import or implications of the statement “X is …”), one no longer knows with certainty whether “unique” means, well, unique, or whether it means “X is ‘unique’ to within some statistical indeterminacy.”
“In the not too distant past, CA established and/or modified law to recognize the concept as “acted as” or “presented oneself to be” the father regardless of actual biological evidence otherwise.”
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That has actually been stretched in some places to include long term boyfriends, even when the man met mom *after* the birth of the child, the reasoning being that the child has imprinted on the new male.
This can’t be good either for single moms or their children, since at least some men aren’t going to take a chance on years of child support.
Julie near Chicago:
I have never heard that DNA is not unique enough to identify a person with pretty near certainty. For example, the likelihood of someone being the father (or the perp, if it’s a crime investigation) is usually expressed in terms of probabilities, and the probabilities are extremely high with a match (see this for the technical aspects). On the other hand, it is possible to exclude someone with certainty (unless, of course, there’s a lab error, but I assume you’re not talking about that).
Sonny Wayze:
I can’t find the logic in your argument.
In the US, even mandatory federal ID cards are considered a no-no, and a person cannot be compelled to give DNA even to the police unless there is probable cause in a crime. That’s why you see those crime shows on TV where the police wait for the suspect to discard a coffee cup or a cigarette so it can be tested; once these things are thrown into the garbage they are fair game.
Mandatory testing for all children and parents is a no-go so far, and extremely anti-libertarian to say the least. It would be a huge break and a huge step to do something like that.
What’s more, the “for the children” argument doesn’t wash. If two people are married or are in a stable relationship, with children, the law sees it as in the best interests of the children for them to consider these two people their parents, whether they are their biological parents or not. So there is no general public interest “for the children” argument in favor of mandatory testing.
I just wonder if Prince Harry ever had a DNA test. He sure looks exactly like his mother’s equestrian guy.
When my younger son was born, his mother and I joked that he must have been switched in the nursery because he did not look like anyone in the family. We eventually divorced and I remarried. My second wife and I had a daughter who looked very much like my younger son. At last we could be certain that he was part of the family even if it took another mother to produce his sister. He has an older sister but he and my younger daughter are the two who look like brother and sister, even to being both tall.
Neo, I appreciate your response. I agree about DNA analysis as resulting in “pretty near” certainty.
Perhaps I s/have ended my response here and added thefollowing as a separate comment….
. . .
My point was that “pretty near certainty” is not the same as “absolute” certainty. I mentioned the current demotion of fingerprint evidence from “conclusive” to merely “possibly evidentiary” as an example of falling from “pretty near certainty” to “not all that near certainty” : Evidentiary, but not conclusive, in the real world. This example causes me to speculate whether at some point DNA’s reputation as having “pretty near certainty” will likewise be demoted to some such status as “evidence for” or “indicative of” the identifying of a single person as the lone possible carrier of two DNA samples.
Of course it is certainly possible that DNA might in actual fact be a stronger indicator of identity than is fingerprint evidence, even if it does not absolutely establish it. In that case, it might become more like “evidentiary but not, strictly speaking, conclusive.”
The NIH article to which you link certainly looks interesting, and I will read it; again, thanks a bunch.
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As for the proper interpretation of any statistics, that is a very thorny field. There was an absolute 0% statistical probability that either you or I would come to exist, until we did; and here we both are. The statistical probability of my existence became, suddenly, 100%; and so, later on, did that of yours. So, in the real world, what?
Another example is the statistical probability that I would meet my Honey; yet today, I make my home with a result of that unlikelihood’s coming to pass. This leads me to make the following observation about the care we need to use when we gather data and analyze them using statistics, and interpret the statistics, and draw conclusions about the real world from our interpretations.
Forecasting or prediction that includes the knowledge of prior causal factors has nothing to do with this point about statistics as conclusive evidence. At least one causal factor which, if known, could affect prediction, is the circumstance that my future husband and I happened to meet each other because we both happened to attend the same college at the same time … and so forth, forward and also backward. Now based on this additional knowledge of contributory factors one might also find an elevated statistical probability that there might be a union of two particular persons resulting in the existence of a new person. But this conclusion would be based on a different and more comprehensive set of statistics.)
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As to the exclusionary use of DNA — A cannot be B, because their DNA differs too much — that’s an excellent point. (It would also be true of fingerprint evidence, assuming there was no change to the actual physical fingerprints of A and B.)
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Again, thank you.
Julie near Chicago:
The exclusionary use of DNA evidence is huge. Even very promising suspects can be eliminated that way. And of course, The Innocence Project has freed many imprisoned people (usually men) that way.
I just wonder if Prince Harry ever had a DNA test. He sure looks exactly like his mother’s equestrian guy.
He looks like his maternal-side uncle. James Hewitt was an officer in the Life Guards and served in combat during the Gulf War. He contends he met Diana in 1986, a contention backed by her butler, Paul Burrell. Harry was conceived in December 1983.
Hi Neo,
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“Mandatory testing for all children and parents is a no-go so far, and extremely anti-libertarian to say the least. It would be a huge break and a huge step to do something like that.”
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I apparently was not vigorous enough in my original post. I agree with you, and I Do Not Agree that mandatory testing is a good idea. I was pointing out that various black robed solons have been heading in that direction for some time, in various locales, whether they realize it or not. Again, IANAL, but these things seem to bleed from one jurisdiction to another, so it is a good idea to see what is happening elsewhere.
Neo, I hadn’t heard of The Innocence Project. Thank you, and many thanks and congratulations for the project ‘s success in exonerating the unjustly convicted.
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If anyone else here is ignorant about these folks, see their page
https://www.innocenceproject.org/
and, of course, their About page.
(Not to mention WikiFootia.)
“So there is no general public interest “for the children” argument in favor of mandatory testing.”
============================
Hi Neo [2],
I think I bumped my head on Poe’s Law when I said ‘for the children’. The internet *really* needs a sarcasm font.
Mothers are fonder of their children because they are more certain that they are their own.
Who said that?
It can get even more complicated. Look up Lydia Fairchild, and Karen Keegan. Two women whose own children did not match there DNA.
#model_1066
>Mothers are fonder of their children because they are more certain >that they are their own.
>
>Who said that?
Aristotle
(Thanks to Google)
Wow! Victor Belmont:
“Mandatory, state-funded DNA testing at birth.”
“So yeah, do it at birth. No muss, no fuss, no hurt feelings, only use the samples for that purpose then destroy them. If our Christopher still wants to put his name on the birth certificate knowing the truth and the responsibilities that come with it, than I’m fine with that.”
Well, I am NOT fine with that – using my tax dollars to fund other people’s problems/stupidity. Jeez, does it never stop!? Why do some think that government or taxpayer funded something or other is the solution?
Well well well. Following doug whiddon’s lead above, I consulted Ixquick about Karen Keegan DNA .
Results: several about Lydia Fairchild, including, naturally, an article about her unusual condition from the Foot of All Knowledge. It begins,
NIH has an article on human chimeras:
“A mythical beast. Increased attention highlights the hidden wonders of chimeras”:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1808039/
Here’s a paper from Catherine Arcabascio, professor of law at
Nova Southeastern University, entitled
“Chimeras: Double the DNA, Double the Fun….””
https://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/727954.pdf
Mumble mumble mumble … Something about “the more we know the more we know we don’t know…. My head hurts.
lgude — that’s why Judaism is matrilineal. (Many Jewish husbands would say matriarchal, too, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.)
As a side note, if we ever want to control illegal immigration, there will have to be national identity cards. “You takes yer money and you makes yer choice.”
I have never been entirely clear as to why the Conservatives are so adamantly opposed to national ID cards.
So when they divorced, was Christopher ordered to pay child support?
As a side note, if we ever want to control illegal immigration, there will have to be national identity cards. “
Why not start with:
1. A wall on the southern border, 50 ft high and topped with razor wire. Guard towers, live ammo, and signs in Spanish which warn the turnstile jumper that a dose of lead awaits him.
2. A check-in and check-out system for those visiting the United States, taking biometrics when a visa is issued or on point of entry. We then hunt down, jail, and deport those who fail to check-out on time, debarring them from entering the country for x years.
3. Criminal penalties for illegal entry and illegal lingering. No more catch and release. Those caught are jailed, then subject to a Wapner hearing, then sent back to jail. You’re held for 70 days after the first offense, escalating quanta of time with each additional offense. You’re debarred from lawful entry for 3 years + an addition increment scaled to the length of your illegal stay after the 1st offense and longer after subsequent offenses.
4. Building a large force of interior immigration police (not like ICE, with a mixed mission), dedicated detention centers, and a dedicated corps of magistrates. Head count: 120,000 people, annual charges just north of $20 bn.
When we have the infrastructure in place, we can talk about requiring the rest of us to carry PAPERS.
Art D,
Putting it another way, BOLO for “cures” that are worse than the disease.
So when they divorced, was Christopher ordered to pay child support?
Of course he was. Women have options. Men have obligations.
Mothers are fonder of their children because they are more certain that they are their own.
No, fathers are less fond of their children because it’s their job to be. Child can get along quite well without two mothers. Child gets along without pa, but not without some backing and filling.
Art Deco:
Are you aware that women are sometimes required to pay child support? See this:
Much more at the link.
Shared custody situations are more common these days than they used to be. In a shared custody situation, child support determination is complex, and different states do it differently, but in general it depends on how much time the child spends with each parent, and the relative income of each parent.
Child support and custody is a field in which I have some experience (fortunately, not personal experience). The situation is far more complex than most people realize.
Are you aware that women are sometimes required to pay child support?
Your citation indicates that 4.5% of divorced women pay support. While we’re at it alimony is awarded in about 4% of all divorce settlements. I’ve known two people bearing up under obscene alimony obligations, but it’s not a common outcome of divorce proceedings.
While we’re at it, I’m gut skeptical of the data they cite and would not take it at face value. I’d look at the studies they cite and build a bibliography. (It was a common meme 30 years ago that half of all divorced fathers were welshing on their child-support; if I’m not mistaken the ultimate source of that datum was a study whose information base was…self-reports by divorced mothers).
Art Deco:
The ratio of women to men who pay child support is about 1 to 5. That’s not an insignificant number. You wrote that men had obligations and women had options. I’m pointing out that that’s not always the case.
And most of the time prior to the divorce, the woman was more involved in child care than the man, which is partly why the women tend to get custody and the man tend to have higher-paying jobs. It’s of course far more complex than that, but that’s a big factor in what happens regarding child support.
Alimony is only awarded under unusual circumstances these days (and, as you note, rather rarely), usually if the wife has some incapacity or is very old or cannot work or something like that, or it’s very temporary while she attends school or otherwise gets job training. Men are entitled to alimony and sometimes get it if they meet the criteria AND if they request it (the linked article goes into some of the reasons they are unlikely to request it).
It’s not the same situation, but my son’s former wife remarried and had another little girl in addition to the two girls my son and his ex produced in their marriage. The youngest daughter is cute as a button and smart as a whip–she’s not biologically related to me, but I consider her every bit as much a granddaughter as my two “actual” ones. Divorces cause enough pain, hurt, and hard feelings to go around for everyone: unconditional forgiveness, love, and kindness, in my particular case, have done wonders to keep good relationships with my son, his former wife, and, especially, my granddaughters.
Art Deco — Your 2. is just a variant on national identity cards. And you forgot E-verify and big fines for employers who employ people without running them through it.
Your 2. is just a variant on national identity cards.
No it isn’t. It applies to visitors.
How do you know someone is an illegal and not a citizen? Your idea helps for visa overstays, not for people who sneak in other than at the border. Illegals enter by boat, in cargo containers, trucks, trains, and other means. What about them?