Just as a little personal background, when my wife became pregnant with our first child about 3 years ago, I was reading through a book for expectant fathers and came upon a section about how it was surprisingly common for fathers to, at some level, question the paternity of the child. I don’t remember the exact number, but it was high, like more common than not. Which made me feel better, because every once in a while the inventive portion of my brain would make up fantastically complicated ways in which my wife could have possibly cheated on me.
It was an absolutely crazy notion, given how infrequently we were apart at the time, but I figure if even I had those thoughts, imagine what other guys are coming up with. And now I’m thinking, what if the state, in an effort to answer child support questions once and for all, made DNA testing mandatory?
Would people cheat less? Would more men leave if they found out their kids aren’t really theirs? Is it better for a child to grow up in a relationship built on a lie, or to grow up without a father? Would the net effect to society be positive or negative?
Obviously everyone is going to have Big Brother issues with this, but I’m not really looking for that sort of discussion. Assume that mandatory testing magically becomes socially acceptable.
I’m not sure what the expense is and whether it would be acceptable…
…but I like the idea. At first there would be havoc, but after women knew that their child would be DNA tested and they knew they couldn’t cuckold their partner it would force them to be above board about wanting their man to raise her child but not be the father of it.
It is a very crappy thing to do…do have a man THINK the child is his - to love, raise and support it but it really is another man’s child. I do not understand why this isn’t felony fraud. I can understand mens’ fear about this. It is a huge theft of the man’s life.
With present technology several hundred dollars - which leaves the question of “who pays for this?” an interesting one. It’s not like you can delay birth until someone raises the money.
I know it comes as a shock to the suspicious, but a LOT of women do not cheat and have zero intention of deceiving any man in such a way. Thank you :rolleyes: for implying all women are cheats and liars.
While I do not, in any way, condone fraud (and you are correct, deliberate deception regarding paternity is fraud) your father is the man who raises you. That is why adoption of children is possible. A man who raises a child for 10 or 20 or however many years and then learns the child is not genetically his is entirely justified in being angry at the deception but may well continue to have parental feelings for the child he did, in fact, raise. Certainly, the child will also have a strong tendency to continue to regard the social father as a father.
There is the one way aspect of it to consider. This would basically set up a much larger disincentive for women to cheat than men. The fact that they can get pregnant already exposes them to more risk, but this increases it.
Note that I do not condone cheating (which to me means breaking promises and trust, so does not include open relationships), I am merely pointing out that unless the program also automatically identifies the father (which I suppose after the database becomes large enough is possible), then it would basically reinforce the idea that men cheating is acceptable, but women cheating is not.
Agreed. I believe that the percentage of dads who are deadbeats because they aren’t positive the kid is theirs is small enough that this program wouldn’t have much effect, unless it was tied to anti-deadbeat legislation, which is a whole separate issue.
Hmm, interesting angle, Strassia. I wonder if cheating fathers would be outed more regardless of the size of the database. If a couple has a child and the man is found not to be the father and he splits, will the mother then seek out the real father and expose him to his current significant other (if he has one) for the cheater he is?
One of my professors asserted that blanket paternity testing would not be socially acceptable because approximately 1 in 5 people would discover that they had been misled regarding their paternity. So, apparently, approximately 20 percent of women are cheats and liars. Pretty high odds there.
I think this is a great idea. While things might be difficult for the cheaters, it is good to have the facts about a child’s parentage upfront immediately. It would give people their correct legal options at that point before any real bonding, or legal ramifications take hold. Not your kid? Don’t sign the birth certificate. Can’t work it out? You are free to leave without sticky support issues. Of course the downside is that Maury will have to find something else to do on his show.
Agreed about the paranoid tone taken toward women here. Wouldn’t mandatory DNA testing also create a disincentive for cheating men, since they might have to raise a child that would otherwise be believed to be another man’s?
It’s hard to beat irrational fear with facts. Even with DNA testing I think many men would remain suspicious.
I believe in one of Robin Baker’s books, he hypothesized a regime in which all children would be routinely paternity tested and the father, if not the mother’s husband, would be subject to automatic child care (“baby tax”).
When I saw the title, I thought it was about an eugenic type of DNA testing, not paternity testing, so I’ll still post my answer, because it’s a great movie-
watch GATTACA.
I think the figure is 5%, not 1 in 5, but I could be remembering incorrectly. I doubt it’s 20%, even if the rates of infidelity are as high as that (or higher).
I remember reading (though the accuracy of the study I’m not sure about) said that it is about 6-8%
Sorry, Broomstick for the suspicion. Twice in my life women have tried to cuckold me. I’m a little jaded. Seems some women feel I would be a great dad but not worthy enough to actually BE the real dad.
It has been said many times that the biological imperative for men is to impregnate as many different women as possible. Similarly the biological imperative for women is to find suitable environmental and genetics for their offspring. In many cases, they can’t get them to match up in a single man. Make no mistake, female infidelity has played just as significant a role in human evolution as male infidelity has.
It would be a additional disincentive for men to sleep with married women, but not for married men to sleep with single women.
Although now that I think about it, it may currently be men have more disincentive sto sleeping with single women than married. If a man impregnates a woman married to another man, he can potentially spread his genes without expending his resources. Women can’t really fob their children off on some other woman without her knowledge.
From a callous, purely financial aspect, this may actually bring the sexes in line if paternity is automatically known.
This was probably a far greater problem in past times than current ones. When you find out is at about puberty. ‘Why does this child look more like Seamus than me?’
When I got my wife pregnant we went through thinking about these things as its ingrained now. ‘Do we want to keep it? Is it really mine?’ I decided yes in both cases. Despite a lack of paternity I still think so. As I have a congenital heart condition DNA testing is a possibility, and she has shown no trepidation at the thought.
I’d be in favour of it. Sure it covers the infidelity issue, but there are also many genetic defects that could be picked up. The prospective parents can then make an informed choice whether to abort or not, if abortion is legal. (Let’s not get into a discussion of abortion itself).
Indeed, where there’s universal healthcare, is it not in the State’s interest to know so it can best care for the new citizen?
Whatever the health care system is, the issue is bound to come up more often as medical science advances and makes it more and more likely that genetic screening of newborns might make a difference to their future health. Eventually, genetic testing for treatable conditions, markers indicating which drug therapies work more or less effectively than baseline average, etc might become routine, with a paternity result generated as a side effect.
Also, the question can arise with simple blood-type testing – some combinations of parents simply can’t produce certain blood types in the offspring.