…was fathered by members of touring metal bands from roughly 1970 to the present day? 
My suspicion is a significant portion of one percent. I wonder if there’s some high school in a Cleveland suburb where half the freshmen were fathered by the members of Marilyn Manson during the Antichrist Superstar tour.
Regardless of where this thread goes, I want to applaud the concept. I have had this thought so many times it hurts! You could plug in “rock stars” or traveling entertainers of all stripes and I suspect the percentage would approach 10%!
When you get right down to it, what percentage of us are even sure if the guy we called “Daddy” (or the synonym of choice) even knows our biological father!?
Fun topic!
What about big bands in the early 1950s? My mom and her sisters were singers in the band where my uncle played clarinet. My father was an audience member…
Yeah, music runs in the family. 
I had a highschool friend who was adopted, and one year he wore Gene Simmons makeup for Halloween, and he looked so much like him it was fucking scary. Years later he found his real father and it wasn’t the demon. Made us wonder though.
I think you’re being a bit generous.
US population under age 40 is +/-200 million (I couldn’t find the current data, but in 2000 65% of population was under 40 so 310 m * .65 = 201 m)
so 0.5% = 1 million kids of metal bands
say from 1970 - 2010 = 40 years so 25,000 kids per year
say 5 band members times say 30 bands touring per year = 167 kids per band member per year
I don’t buy it. While I can believe that some rockers had sex with that many women every year, and in some cases maybe more, I think that’s high for an average. More importantly, even if they did have sex with that many women and it was all unprotected, I doubt you’re going to get every woman you have sex with pregnant (or even half of them). Plus I would think over time more and more women are going to be on the pill and, especially since AIDS awareness, more and more of that sex would be protected. Not to mention that even if they did get pregnant how many of those women would have had abortions. Besides if there were that many rock kids around I’d think you’d have seen a lot more paternity suits over the years.
I think it’s probably 2 or even 3 orders of magnitude smaller than you state. Maybe 10,000, probably less.
(I can’t believe I spent the effort to actually run the numbers on this)
Nevertheless, you did a good job of setting outer limits for the OP’s target group. However, in the expansion I would propose, with “traveling entertainers” replacing “traveling metal bands” and expanding the time frame to include the Big Band Era and maybe even further back, and perhaps even including sports stars and the like, it would make for a larger potential subset of the population that might be the offspring of “star” and “groupie” in a one-night-stand or backstage fling.
I still cling to the notion that that subset of our population is a large one, even if they have no personal knowledge of their own parenting.
Also, think back to “George Washington Slept Here” and all that implies. Adding politicians to the offending fatherhood contingent could get us to some scary numbers, I wager.
Once we open the floodgates to speculation and rumor, who would be the most likely father of the most people in the USA? Elvis? Bob Dylan? Bill Clinton? The possibilities are unimaginable.
Probably someone who has made regular donations to sperm banks for many years could top all of these.
Well, I’m still not sure I buy that there this is some huge percentage of the population. Of course it happens, but I can’t imagine that there are that many children born to celebrities out there. First because it seems pretty demeaning to women to think that there are that many out there who are either unaware of who the father of their children are or are willing to lie to the kids and husbands about it. Now I’m not going to deny that there are a lot of men out there who are going to use their fame, money or power to sleep with anyone wearing a skirt.
Since the end of WW2 there have been roughly 3-4 million children born annually. To get to your 10% number that would mean that 350,000 kids born every year are the bastard children of famous people. That means every single day of every year that 1000 women are becoming pregnant with a star’s child (actually more, again due to abortions and miscarriages). Even at 1% that means 100 kids every single day.
I’m not sure how to put the numbers to include all traveling musicians and the like, but I’ll give it a go.
Pro athletes in MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS roughly 5000. Let’s quadruple this to include boxing, Nascar, etc and also to include former athletes that are still famous enough to get groupie sex. So 20,000.
Actors-I don’t know, say 1,000, probably less. I assume we’re talking about at least “D” level stars. Not just some guy who’s able to get laid because he was “Waiter #2” in some rom-com.
Musicians-again I don’t know-say 5,000.
Politicians-say 2,000 famous enough on a national level to get groupies, probably less though.
All told I come up with 28,000 people famous enough to get groupie sex. I think my numbers are generous with the possible exception of athletes (should college players be included). but lets double this number to 60,000 people touring the country and popping out kids with random women. As a quick reality check: based on a US population of 310 million this would mean roughly 1 out of every 5000 people is famous enough to have groupies. That doesn’t seem unreasonable.
So 3.5 million births every year * 10% = 350,000 kids / 60,000 famous people = 6 kids per year for every famous person. I can’t believe that. Even the worst offenders (an NBA player) I could find had something like a max of about 6 illegitimate kids (in total, not for a single year).
Even at 1% this would mean 35,000 kids / 60,000 men = +/- 0.5 kids. Which would mean every famous male in the country is having an illegitimate child every other year. I’ll admit this is at least entering the realm of plausibility, but there are still problems. First, not all of the stars are unfaithful. There are a fair percentage (30%? 50%?) that I don’t think are sleeping with anyone in a skirt. And of those that do I would guess they are more discreet and have a mistress or two on the side and are relatively smart about protection and birth control. I think the Wilt Chamberlains and Motley Crue’s of the world who sleep with hundreds of women area relatively small minority of the cheaters. Most I would guess are an occasional fall from grace with some women they met at a hotel bar while on the road or that they have a steady mistress. Besides I would think if Tom Cruise or Mitt Romney or Bon Jovi were having bastard kids every other year it would get out in the news eventually. There would be a lot more paternity suits with the kind of money we’re talking about.
So to get back to the OP. While I think it may be high I think I could buy that say 0.5% of births (say 10-15 thousand) per year are due to groupie sex of one sort or another. This is for all famous people though, not just metal bands.
The NBA players blow the curve!
Are you including the roadies?
Wow, that’s some impressive work y’all! I meant the thread to be mostly a joke, but I am intrigued by the math.
Zeldar, AFAIK no reputable study has ever been done determining what percentage of children are the result of “non-paternity events” (ie Daddy is not biologically their daddy). My gut feeling is that 25% would be the absolute high estimate, and perhaps more like 10%. That percentage might actually be dropping, what with the availability of abortion, paternity tests, BC pills, condoms, etc. Likewise, I would think that the majority of the ‘rock star babies’ that were born were born before the availability/legality of abortion and birth control, from the Big Band era to the early '70s.
Well, the curves are blowing them right back, it seems.