This is how you feel, which is fine. But not everyone feels the same way. Thus, your desire to force others to confront this is unwarranted.
No, probably not. But I do think that many (most?) false-paternity scenarios do not come about because the woman is a scheming harlot. (Not as catchy as manipulative succubus, I know.) And I think a significant number of husbands would rather keep their marriage intact and raise a non-biological child than have their non-paternity thrust upon them.
Remember, I am not suggesting paternity tests be kept from men (or women) who request them; I am arguing against forcing this information upon them.
The issue that arises is that unless a man finds out that a child is not his very soon after birth, his options become very limited. The alternative to mandatory paternity tests at birth is giving men good legal options when they become aware a child is not theirs (which they can chose not to take).
The argument that most people are happier not knowing they’ve been duped is easy, but also troubling on an introspective level. Fact is that your wife having someone else’s child behind your back leaves you with few good options.
In this case, the mother didn’t pass off a child as belonging to her husband, but I’d guess most cases of unclear paternity may happen like this.
We know of a grandmother who was in the Ancestry site, and a grandson she did not know existed contacted her. It turns out that one of her sons had a brief relationship with a young woman in college. They were not exclusive, and she had multiple partners during that time, so she did not know who the father was. She never told the young man that he might be a father. She moved, so he never knew she was pregnant.
Fast forward 30 years. The young biological father in the situation married a woman who was unable to have kids, so he thought he would never have children. He was thrilled to find out that he has an aadult son, although he missed out of the opportunity to raise him, see him grow up. His son never had a stable father figure in his life, and was interested in having relationships with his father, and paternal family.
Yeah, it’s terrible but if you imagine that you’ve taught that kid to tie his shoes, and ride a bike, and coached his little league games. You love that kid, so even if you found out at age 20 that he wasn’t yours, you’re the only father he’s had. And he’s yours. You love him at that point.
Sure, but I know of a man who married a young woman with an infant from a previous relationship. He raised the daughter as his own, and that young girl is his only child. I’m not sure why he wasn’t able to adopt her, because the biological father was not in the situation. Meanwhile, the bio mom was an uninvolved and self-absorbed person who frequently went off on the weekends with friends, had work and hobbies that meant she was often away. They had a terrible marriage, but he felt like he couldn’t leave because he had no paternal rights to their daughter. I think he was a saint for being committed to the little girl.
I wondered in those cases if there should be some kind of common law situation for parents. He was the stable parent, but had no rights. He stayed with her mother until she was out of high school, but it was a really sad situation.
Absolutely. I consider you to be a pretty reasonable fella. One of the outcomes of this question would shock the bejeezus outa me.
It seemed like your problem was that everyone is offered outright and can then opt in from there. Your counter was that you think the test should be available if a parent requests it. I would ask you, as a doctor, how you would let someone know a procedure is available (a procedure that you can and do already openly run in house, or at least have the means to be a middle man) and subsequently not be offering to do it for them (in the very way a paternity test was offered to me).
As an aside, me being present to sign the birth certificate forms is quite literally the only time they can guarantee I’m going to be there. Does a better time exist to inform him of a paternity test?
If a woman let’s a man dedicate his entire future based on an egregious lie of that nature, she is a scheming harlot. That is not small potatoes. That is a massive life choice being ripped away.
"We do a paternity test unless both parents opt out of it. And, in the case that one is done, we only share the results if you choose to have them shared with you, individually. "
Boom, done. Solving problems on PWI like I was getting paid.
Answer: The cost of a DNA Paternity test can vary. A Legal DNA Paternity test typically costs between $300 to $500, which usually include the collection costs associated with the test. Non-Legal Paternity tests start at about $30 for the retail kit (not including the testing) to $250, depending on additional services such as expedited testing and shipping.
Ballparked low end @ 300 (forgetting the staffing, data maint, etc), that’s 1.18Bil. Roughly 1.8x the annual defense budget.
I’m pretty sure the US defense budget was not $1.18 billion. It’s cute that you think that. For starters though, cutting federal funding to planned parenthood would pay for about half of that.
@ rape. It’s not a great analogy, but point taken about consent. I agree that it’s not the same situation.
I was just thinking out loud here about other situations where someone who has been acting as a parent has no parental rights, or in the first case, where someone wasn’t given an opportunity to exercise parental rights.
I’ll stop muddying the waters. There are a lot of terrible situations.
Oh, no worries. I understand. But yeah, the parents would be responsible. And, they could opt out for any reason, including the cost. But that’s not actually my first position. I already stated it earlier. Here, I’m just brainstorming to overcome objections.
Actually, if you account for sexual dichotomy, paternity fraud is a fairly good corollary to rape.
Rape is when a man makes a woman use her resources to help him reproduce his genetic code without her consent. Paternity fraud is when a woman makes a man use his resources to reproduce her genetic code without his knowledgeable consent.
There are lots of details that make the situations differ surrounding psychological damage to the victim (which can be considerable in both cases if the paternity fraud is discovered) as well as the morality around whether it’s better to be a knowing victim or unknowing victim. On the other hand, rape victims can be argued to be better off from a Darwinian standpoint as the child of rape is still genetically hers. Moreover, the fact that rape without the knowledge of the victim is rare means that rape victims inevitably have lots more choices.
