I have suspected that my daughter who is 18 now was not biologically mine since about the age of two. At about the age of 4 I decided that it really didn’t matter to me because I loved her unconditionally anyway. I paid child support on time every month and don’t regret it. It helped that her mother let me see her anytime I wanted to. So really I had no reason to scream blood test!
Also the older she has gotten the more she reminds me of the female version me. That could be just because she has picked up some of my quirks over the years. But darned if she doesn’t have the same sense of humor as me, and mostly has the same sort of grin.
I understand it would be different if it’s a newborn or if you haven’t had much contact. I was thinking more of situations where you’ve already been in a parental role for a significant period of time and developed a bond (not that it takes that long).
I appreciate the responses from the adoptive and stepfathers for averring and confirming that you don’t have to be the sperm donor to know you’re the father.
Not my personal story (I’m a mom, I know that my kids are mine) but a story that I witnessed. I knew a couple years ago wherein the wife was notoriously unfaithful. So much so that when she ( a very pale white woman married to a very pale white man) gave birth to a beautiful mulatto boy, not one person (including her husband) was surprised.
We all expected a huge blow up from the (very redneck) husband, but he said that it wasn’t the baby’s fault his wife was a whore. He stuck with it, and when she left him a few months later, he got custody of the kid (she never would name the father – hell, if she had, he would have run like the wind!) and is still bringing the boy up as his own.
As for myself, on the other end of the spectrum – there is some doubt that my dad is my biological father. My blood type at birth was supposedly unpossible considering my parents’ types (one of those 1 in a million possible types) and I have dark hazel (ranging from green to black) eyes, while both of my parents have blue eyes (another 1 in a million possibilities). Do I care if he is not my biological father? No. Do I think it would have changed his love for me? No – he told me the story of my birth:
“When you were born, they came out and said, ‘Mr. Litoris’ Dad, there is no way that child is yours, based on her bloodtype.’ I said to them, ‘I think you are mistaken, that baby is mine every bit as much as I am standing here today. I don’t ever want to hear anything like that again.’ Your mother was unfaithful to me, and I know it, but you are my daughter, and always will be.”
I never told anyone else that story, but it makes me tear up even now. Meh. There’s my Dad’s (and by extension, my) story.
I actually only have one bio-kid. My ex had a three year old coming into the marriage. We got to be real close real fast. He calls me Dad and I call him my son. (as oppossed to step-son)
My ex and I have been divorced for eight years now. My non-bio son still comes over on a weekly basis and he still calls me Dad. I love him just like I love my bio-son. I can’t imagine it any other way.
For me personally; emotions aren’t like a light switch you can just turn on or off.
My emotional bonds with my kids (who are only 10 and 11) has - as far as I can tell - very little to do with their DNA - because they are people with whom I have a relationship.
When they were first born, yeah, it was partly - perhaps significantly - about them being the fruit of my loins, but I think that’s probably mostly because that’s all there was at the time. I couldn’t have a conversation with them, or any of that personal, interactive stuff, until they learned how to do it.
This suddenly made me think of Dale Gribble’s situation in King of the Hill (his wife, Nancy, has been carrying on an affair with Native American John Redcorn for years and the son, Joseph, looks just like John Redcorn–situation is obvious to all but Dale). Especially the episode where Dale is convinced that the reason he can’t relate to Joseph/why Joseph doesn’t resemble him is because an alien fathered Joseph.
ETA: Litoris, that’s a great story, and your father sounds like a class act.
I can’t imagine my feelings towards our little Buggy ever being other than what they are right now. And my wife and I are also trying to adopt another child as well, so I’ve already dealt with the difference between being a sperm donor and a father.
My little guy is only seven months old and I love him so fucking much I can’t even believe it myself. If you confronted me with a DNA test saying he was not biologically mine I would not care one bit. I can’t imagine what kind of insecure shallow ass would care. Once the parent child bond forms it seems to me that biology has little if anything to do with it. I would sue fight lie cheat steal whatever to keep my son with me.
Would you feel any differently about them? Yes
Would you still love them? Yes
Would you disown them? No
Could you look them in eye and tell them you don’t care about them anymore? No
There is no way I could be unchanged by the fact, and my feelings would adjust accordingly but I adore my daughter for who she is, and not just for who I am. There is a lot of me in her regardless of whether it is genetic or not, but I couldn’t help my change in feelings due to the change in the dynamic between my wife and I. A child is an expression of love between two people, if that is some how proven to be false, it’s hard not to change how you feel about that.
I don’t have children but I have been very blessed to have been a big part of my nephews’ lives when they were little, and to be an honorary “auntie” to my friends’ children in various families. There isn’t one kid in the bunch who I wouldn’t love to have walk in my door every day. One couple of friends have stated in their will that if anything happens to them, the kids come to me. That, I think, is the greatest compliment I will ever have in my entire life. I do love them like they’re my own, and I tell them that whenever I see them.
As to the OP…not being male, obviously, I can’t comment on how a man would feel…but I do know very well what it’s like to love a child with all your heart and I can’t imagine closing off to a child, or anyone with whom you’ve had that kind of close relationship, over something that they have no control over.
I would cut these people some slack. Kids can get caught in the middle emotionally in a bad breakup, and this is just another aspect of that. I can’t imagine it happening to me, but then again, it hasn’t happened to me, and while I don’t think of myself as the “contextually vindictive” sort, I have been lucky enough never to have been even close to suffering that kind of emotional wound, so I will withhold judgment and merely sympathize with the innocent victims (the children).
There was a story I read in the NY Times over a year ago about how the “post-9/11” (Bush Administration) INS has really cracked down on thoroughly checking out legal immigration processes, to the point of doing DNA tests on children that permanent residents are claiming are their own and want to bring to this country to live with them. A significant number of, shall we say, surprise discrepancies have been uncovered this way. It was really sad and stuck in my mind.
Nevertheless, everybody they profiled had that reaction: that the emotional father/children bonds were not shaken, rather their trust in their familial ties were.
They profiled an African who was working here in America for eight years, sending back money, calling frequently, saving everything they sent to him about his four sons… Then after he gained citizenship, he found out while preparing to bring them over that only the eldest was biologically his. Their mother had died years ago, so he could not confront her. What was left only was that he could not bear to tell his children why he could only bring one of the four to America.
Ah, here it is, courtesy of the NY Times search engine:
Same here. I’m an adoptive Dad, and it’s never made the slightest difference, for even a second, tha twe’re not related by blood.
First, I absolutely fell in love with my son when my wife and I first saw him at the hospital (we missed his birth by a few hours).
Second, once you HAVE a baby, you don’t have time for much except attending to its constant needs! Whether a baby is related to its caregiver by blood or not, that baby needs to be fed, changed, rocked, soothed… and if you’ve been the “Daddy” doing all those things for years, it’s beyond me how the bond that SHOULD have been formed could be changed because of an accident of DNA.
I’ll never know, but my hunch is, if I found out that a child I thought was mine wasn’t, I’d hate his mother forever, and would never forgive her. But I couldn’t stop loving my child.
