No Country for Young Fathers: Paternity Testing on the Rise
Long before Maury Povich famously began declaring “you are not the father,” young men sought to avoid fatherhood. Thirty years ago, Michael Jackson sang denials that Billie Jean was his lover, while in recent weeks Justin Bieber confirmed he was was no baby’s daddy. The rejection of fatherhood is not new, but the number of young men avoiding the title of dad appears to be growing.
In the past few weeks, numbers have been released showing a serious increase in men using DNA testing to determine parental status. In a late November press release it was reported that “according to DDC (DNA Diagnostics Center,) the largest provider of private paternity testing worldwide, questions about paternity testing from men have increased annually and now account for about 40% of all inquiries.” The American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), the accreditation organization for paternity testing laboratories, reports that last year there were nearly 500,000 paternity tests done in the United States (compare that to 150,000 in 1995 or 350,000 in 2003). In fact, DNA paternity testing has risen in the United States over 400% in the last two decades. Dr. Michael Baird, chief science officer and DNA technical leader for DDC, said:
As one of the leading companies in DNA testing, we’re seeing an increase in calls by men seeking paternity answers, especially for cases where there are disputes or where chain of custody is important.
Why such a rise in testing? No research has been done, so one can only make an educated guess. Reasons could include greater availability of the technology, the increase in unmarried sex and therefore unplanned pregnancies, less expensive testing, and a better understanding of parental rights. While all these factors surely play a large role, most likely the primary cause of increased testing is that young men, more than ever before, want to avoid fatherhood and the responsibilities that come with it.
Paternity testing used to be far more expensive and only available in hospitals (or on Maury’s show). Now a guy can walk into one of the many paternity lab businesses all over the country and get his mouth swabbed to find out if he has any fatherly responsibilities. In fact, you don’t have to walk in. Look online and you can order a simple kit to do yourself and then send in to the lab. The tests are 99.9% accurate when done right. Caroline Caskey, CEO of Identigene, said,
Paternity tests used to require blood samples, which were messier and more invasive to obtain than the swab. Also, in the past few years, technology has improved, enabling a lab to complete a test in a few days, rather than the two months it used to take.
Some may argue that the real increase in DNA paternity testing is tied to court cases. In fact, that is one of the main reasons DNA testing has gone up. It has become far more frequent for courts to demand a father take a DNA paternity test. But the majority of those cases are proving fatherhood in order to get a man to fulfill his requirement to pay child support. Court cases are on the rise all over the country tied to child-support. In Illinois from 2008-2010, for example, some suburban counties saw rises in cases in arrears from 24-66 percent. Much of that is tied to a hard economy and men wanting to shirk their responsibilities.
Color me crazy but I’m not so sure it’s wise to make life-altering decisions on faulty information.
If the child is mine then it is in fact my responsability.
But if it isn’t then the burden is not mine to shoulder nor should it be.
Maybe the unwise thing is having sex with someone you don’t give a damn about.
Just a thought.
Maybe finding out that someone he gives a damn about has betrayed his trust kills his enthusiasm for being committed. Just a thought.
SPOT ON.
But it’s never the women’s fault, now is it? It’s all those evil men! Nothing to do with women who A: sleep with anything with a pulse and B: then when they find they’re pregnant seek the fattest wallet, repeat A, and screw them again in the courts.
Maybe if people of both genders started treating relationships as something that should last longer than a few days and actually developed a sense of honor, this wouldn’t be an issue. And maybe the happy little elves will ride out of the forest on their unicorns too.
Orion
Exactly. Spot on.
Far more women cheat on their spouses than do men, and the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women who no longer want to be legally committed to their spouses but who know that in the U.S. court system their former husband will be committed to paying them for the rest of his life regardless of their personal circumstances.
As the article says, 1 in 25 men is paying to raise a child which is not his own, so if you get 3 of your male friends together, chances are one of you, is. The U.S. court system can command a man who is divorced by his wife to pay child support for a child which is not his own child. So in fact paternity testing is not a foolproof defense.
Still, any man who doesn’t demand a paternity test is an idiot. And given the extreme anti-male bias of family court, any woman who is not willing to agree to a paternity test must be assumed to be a lying gold-digger and is _definitely_ not wife material. Smart, loving couples should be writing paternity tests into their marriage licenses. Knowing your spouse has been faithful is the material foundation of a healthy marriage.
@Johnstone and Orion
There is no benefit to be had from casting blame on one side or the other for an act that takes two willing participants.
Color me clueless but I see no difference between cheating on your mate and helping someone’s mate to cheat on them.
To me demanding paternity tests is a sign of distrust (and it is) so I feel it only logical to make sure the trust exists before doing anything else.
Incorporating paternity tests into marriage is in my opinion tantamount to doubting her fidelity.
Exactly.
Yes, I myself am a woman, and I have to say that I have met a lot more greedy and amoral women than greedy and amoral men. It’s completely false that civilization was invented to control and harness male urges; rather, it was invented to rein in the inherent skankiness and untrustworthiness of women.
You wouldn’t believe the number of hustlers who go through the garbage to find used condoms from men they aren’t even associated with, so as to get themselves pregnant to get a meal ticket for life.
And domestic violence? It’s generally started by women, and the men don’t dare try to defend themselves, because the legal system is not in their favor.
Back in the old days, the bastardy laws gave no leeway for deceptive women to victimize men. The divorce laws allowed the children to stay with the father, who earned most of the income, and who could hire someone to handle the day-to-day physical upkeep of the children. That discouraged divorce and it also resulted in children being raised with a father’s guidance, which is far more important than anything that the mother contributes.
One college roommate found at least one or two men to pay for an “abortion”, when she wasn’t pregnant. Kicked her out soon after so I don’t know how many ultimately fell for it.
FYI that’s a two-way street. And why is having sex and the woman choosing to have the child against your wishes the man’s responsibility? If she plows forward knowing he doesn’t want to be a dad, he’s being used as a sperm donor at that point. IMO she should foot the bill on her own and not expect child support. Women have all of the rights but men have all the responsibilities right now. That has to change. Women can abort, place a kid in a safe haven, or put it up for adoption. That’s 3 methods women have of avoiding parenthood, 2 of which are after birth. Men have none. In the interests of a fair and equal society men should be allowed to give up their parental rights the same way, at least on paper.
MANY women steal sperm to get pregnant and then try to pin the obligation onto the man who has made it CLEAR he is not planning on children. Just ask Liz Jones of the Daily Mail in the UK who did this TWICE. Thankfully unsuccessfully for the man.
Face it. Western women are lairs and hypocrites in the main. No man is safe with one of these women. That is why many men are recommending putting hot sauce into used condomes and secretly video recording all sexual encounters to defend against false rape allegations.
I take the easier way out. I never date a woman raised in the west.
Just how exactly do you steal sperm you great steaming nitwit? Are you saying that men are so brain dead they don’t know when sperm is leaving their bodies? Misandrist turd.
The best thing is to have the paternity test if there is any doubt at all. The child not only deserves to know who the biological father is, but also may need to know for health history reasons. Fathers, on the other hand, also deserve to know if they are or are not the biological parent. A women inherently knows she is the biological parent, parental testing is the only way a man can know.
Perhaps it has as much to do with the fact that women now have as many partners as men do. And indiscriminate quicky sex is now more common place to many women. Very sad commentary on our society.
I do not believe many aspects of what is wrong with our society, politics, etc. will get corrected until members of our society live a family oriented God centred life where not everything is seen through the lense of feel-good morality.
Let no lie be told. If you have cheated, be sure your sin will find you out. A man has no responsibility to raise a harlot’s children who are not his own. “Protest against your mother, protest! For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband!”
Given the well documented corruption in family courts, Who in their right mind would not perform paternity tests?
Your premise is broken…
Men are testing the paternity to make sure that they are not getting ripped off by women’s claims and they are protecting those children from having their true identity stolen by their own mother.
Men are not ‘shirking’ their responsibilities, they are ensuring that they can later on in life, when the time has come, afford a *real* family instead of getting enslaved by a fraudster.
Men, please keep this DNA testing thing going, have *every* child tested, and when you got the cert that proves that this is your child frame it on the wall and throw a huge party to celebrate your REAL fatherhood, make this a new tradition, so it’s expected by society that the DNA is tested and the result held up for all to see.
And if you catch a thief, celebrate too, because you did the right thing for the child and yourself.
IMHO, you misunderstood the premise of the article (reversing cause and effect):
The author wasn’t arguing that paternity tests cause serious social problems, therefore paternity tests should be avoided or banned.
Rather, the premise was that an observable social problem (unwanted children conceived outside of marriage) is reflected by the increased demand for paternity tests.
The talk-shows are just a canary in the coal mine. This article is a warning not to be surprised when the social costs (taxes / poverty / crime) resulting from an increase in children without paternal support increase as exponentially as the rate of paternity tests.
Of course RightwingHippyChick’s comment did not follow the premise of the story. She intentionally added balance to an article which could have used a lot more of the other side of the story. If the legal system is going to saddle a man with the high cost of child support for eighteen or more years, then, in our promiscuous society, it should have an obligation to establish his paternity.
There is no “shirking of responsibility” in a man’s wish to only support a child which he fathered.
Actually I go further than that and want to encourage men to create a specific new tradition where fatherhood is officially established and publicly celebrated with DNA proof of true fatherhood and a huge party. You deserve it!
If you’ve adopted, good! — the adoption cert is as good as as a DNA cert!
But either is your proper proof of fatherhood which you should hold up for all to see on the fatherhood party you celebrate.
Stagnight is great, but the Paternity Party with the framed cert is ultimate upgrade
In a sense I agree with you, but in another sense –
One should be proud of impregnating a girl without being married to her? Really?
exactly right GammaRay
“Rather, the premise was that an observable social problem (unwanted children conceived outside of marriage) is reflected by the increased demand for paternity tests.”
Gamma. I am a man who was a great husband and father who was denied his right to a paternity test at the end of an 18 year marriage. It is not the out of wedlock births etc driving the desire for more paternity testing. It is the fact that men are waking up to the fact that ALL WOMEN CONDONE CUCKOLDING OF A MAN.
ALL…OF…THEM.
They just wont tell you that…or they willl vigorously deny it like the liars they are. paternity testing is on the rise for one reason and one reason only. Lads are starting to realise that women are not trustworthy. They are finding this out from the many men like me who are telling them our stories and presenting the PROOF of how women support the crimes of perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse.
I completely agree. In fact paternity testing should be mandatory at birth and part of the battery of tests they already do when a child is born. To placate the libertarians in the crowd, make it default, but something men have the right to opt out of. However, if a paternity test isn’t completed the nobody can be named on the birth certificate as the father–that would require a positive genetic match and would serve as a nice impetus to get people to take the test by default.
Even for married men? For Jews, this could cause a tremendous issue, becasue under Jewish law, the product of an adulterous (but not an unmarried) relationship is severely limited in whom they can marry. On the other hand, a married man is always assumed to be the father, unless proven otherwise.
And remember, these tests are not perfect, there are always false positives and negatives. Universal testing will by definition cause misidentification.
For unmarried men, if she just wants you as a cash register, protect your rights and test, for sure! If you want to raise the child as your own, at least you’ll have protected yourself.
For unmarried men who want to protect themselves, keeping it zipped would work far better. So when does the abstinence education start?
The famous “keep it zipped argument”. Wonderful. Why doesn’t you should have “kept it zipped” apply to women who get pregnant outside of marriage and demand child support? After all “keeping it zipped” is the ultimate way not to get pregnant. You should be embarrassed to promote such a bigoted double standard.
It’s really sad that you feel that way. Not having walked a mile in your moccasins, I can’t really say what past events would lead you to surmise that the majority of couples, not to mention married ones, would benefit from such a mandate. Without a doubt, it would be viewed as an unwarranted invasion of privacy. Within a stable marriage it’s an assumption of being guilty until proven innocent, which is precluded by Western legal and moral tradition- not to mention completely unnecessary the vast majority of the time.
Dana, I am speechless by your absolute lack of logic (or maybe it is just plain dishonesty)
What paternity test do is finally allow for a man to be treated as innocent until proven guilty as opposed to the situation where they are automatically assumed to be fathers because the woman says so.
You are just like majority of women… you can’t force yourself to look from perspective other than your own internal organs. And no I am not generalising – only summarising. It’s not alway about you… you know men are humans too…
The child has a right to know his or her real family medical history, and it is a matter of public health to establish accurate genealogies. If you’ve been faithful, DNA testing will just be a formality.
Uh, no.
An action like that would be pure poison for married people in a stable and committed relationship, which is still an extremely common occurrence in America despite what the media would have us believe. And I can’t honestly imagine any decent wife who would acquiesce. I sure would have told my husband to take it and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. But that wouldn’t erase the heartbreak that would inevitably result from wondering why he’d ever ask for paternity testing in the first place.
amen Dana
“Paul Cooper
amen Dana”
What a MAN-HATING bastard and traitor you are Paul. I am putting you into my Mangina Hall of Fame.
I honestly can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want him to share your certainty that you are your child’s biological parent. Don’t you love him enough to share that gift?
“But that wouldn’t erase the heartbreak that would inevitably result from wondering why he’d ever ask for paternity testing in the first place.”
My 2nd son (2 children total) was born out of wedlock. I’d been living w/the father for almost 2 yrs., and we were engaged. The *minute* he found out I was pregnant (birth control failure) he started badgering and inflicting the heartbreak described above on me. Once every 10-14 days, he’d yell, “It’s not even my kid!”, but being so controlling & manipulative, he knew damn well it was. 4 mos. after the birth, he disappeared on New Year’s Eve, so he could have a “fresh start” in the next year. I finally started court proceedings 6 mos. later for child support, because at that time I truly couldn’t do it alone $$-wise. He never even asked for a blood test, let alone DNA. He KNEW that was his son, but beat me over the head that it wasn’t for months. I can’t begin to describe how absolutely awful, degraded and plain ol’ dirty that made me feel. Of course, looking back now, I realize that was part of keeping me under his thumb; much easier to do if you’re dealing w/a depressed & demoralized person. I guess at least I, um, learned something — like, my “picker” was broken.
I’d hate to think of ANYone, male or female, being caught up in the literally living hell of having a partner with no honor or integrity; evidently they think everyone else is just like them. Now I try very hard to surround myself only with people like me. You know, those who say what they mean, and mean what they say: your word is your bond.
Dana,
a man has a RIGHT to a paternity test. A RIGHT. You and Paul are just like so many other MAN-HATING people who think a man should have his RIGHTS trampled merely because a woman does not like it.
And with ALL WOMEN CONDONING CUCKOLDING OF MEN…this RIGHT to know the child is ours is more important now than ever before. As a man who was DENIED the exercising of this RIGHT at the end of an 18 year marriage and whos house was stolen with a final split of 5% vs 95% in a clear crime I am telling EVERY YOUNG MAN I CAN what a bunch of liars and hypocrites you women and your mangina lackeys like Paul are.
I tell every lad I meet “5% is the new 50% if you happen to be a man”.
The family courts are a criminal cartel. And it is the WOMEN who commit perjury to get into that criminal system. You women have a LOT to answer for. And you are about to answer for it. ALL fathers who wish to bring cases against CRIMINAL women will soon be able to do so. “equality before the law” is coming your way. And I am HATED ON for bringing “equality before the law” to women.
I think this article is very sexist. Rather than blaming fathers with wanting to know the truth, maybe an increase in infidelity among females in a monogamous relation, and the increase for acceptance of this kind of behavior has a lot to do with it.
Sexist? Really?
The article does not say if it is talking about married or unmarried men. I presume the issue is men not married or at least separated.
Look, the cause is that 41% of American children are born to unwed parents, and this usually means no Dad. This is the cause of most of the problems in the US, as per Ann Coulter. If people aren’t willing to wait until marriage, well then…..
The issue is promiscuity. (And no-fault divorce.)
That figure is over 70% for Blacks and is the root cause of tremendous social and legal problems, yet we can’t talk about it without being called racists. On the other hand, Blacks can do “songs” about the EBT and the whole lifestyle of being the baby mama living on welfare. One illegitimate child is an accident, more than one is somebody too stupid to function in civil society and I don’t know why I should be expected to support the baby mama if I didn’t get anything for my money.
I don’t find much room for different “sides”, here; rather does the author attempt to simply coalesce or frame a few things into one part of the picture; “different sides” I think, may as easily be the result of desires, hopes, bias, prejudice, or perhaps half baked opinions in the minds of the holders of them. One thing we can be ever so sure of, the child is glad to be alive; and as the adults of the Society, we need to apprehend things essential to keeping that gladness going forward, and into strings of good memories, . . .
In a larger work, more could be added: our author spoke nothing of that strange time which we’ve entered upon in which the rider of the red horse of REVELATION CHAP. 6, is given power that, men will kill each other, generally, partly, at least, if only to “make a statement”; and nothing of that time in which there shall be “woe unto those who nurse a child in that day, . . .” and in which, “Men shall be without natural affection, . . .” or foresight, for, until recent times, a child was held more often to be a sign of wealth and a source of wealth, . . .
I was a sociology major, and from considering y. men and women and DNA testing in that perspective, nor has our author spoken anything about the perpetual employment program—for otherwise mostly unemployable people—in the state’s interest in bustin’ up families, or, taking gross advantage of badly fractured homes, . . .
The great Apostle has said, the law cannot make anything good: while merely saying that, a man must care for his child is one thing, how that might be accomplished is a matter far removed—especially in a time in which jobs are removed from this continent because, in a global arrangement of things, it has been decreed that, the jobs are to be elsewhere.
An old woman—upwards of ninety years, the pianist at Peninsula Baptist Church, PDX—once told me: “Men like to work. If they’ve had a night’s sleep and breakfast, they like to go out and work.”.
What about the y. man with low skills and a child “in the chute”, he might feel kind of confused and desperate—right? And what about the woman who is in association with such a fragmentary man? And they both, then, with little option but to fall back into the tribalism of sharing found articles at the level of the lowest common denominator with those who may be—and in fact, are—similarly situated, Democrats all, and Occupier types. I actually met some Occupiers. How many of the men of their number would you venture, are any in consideration in intellectually and manually skilled condition to find interest and enjoyment in life partly because of what they can do in the way of productive work which may be easily turned to provide for themselves and maybe a wife and a child—and guess what? Women are pretty savvy—to show skill in dividing men in two groups on that basis, is no shadowy mystery, deep and dark.
And for but one example which might be adverted in this larger context, for some decades, the tech school, Benson High School in Portland, cranked out skilled workers for the wood and metal trades and beyond. But then, say, twenty years past, the shop tools were gotten rid of, and now, about the closest to manual skills which Benson teaches, is basket weaving.
So yes, as to why the growth in DNA testing, and entertainment media based thereon? There are causes and reasons.
And, all of his, to simply say that, because there is a larger picture—and, to our more opinionated posters—merely upon our own bias and lack of scope, let’s not try and read too much into this brief and otherwise well done article, . . .
Why should a man be trapped by a woman using a baby that is not his? This scam has been going on for ages and now we have the technology to end it. Any woman who objects to the testing would seem to be hiding something, wouldn’t she?
It’s worse than you think. Most courts follow a very unusual standard. That is, if you are deceived into believeing a child you are responsible for isn’t yours, and then prove that via paternity testing, the court will invariably rule that you are responsible anyways. That by having supported the child when you thought it was yours somehow now means you are responsible to continue to support it until 18, even if post-facto you discover it isn’t yours.
Which is why tests like these must be performed as soon as possible. HippieChick above is right!
This law needs to be updated. It was fine when women wanted to stay married.
If a man wants to support someone elses’ child, let him do so voluntariy, and not risk jail.
Well, that’s really stupid. In any other case, fraud with the intent of monetary gain will get you jail time. In this case the “mother” if I may use the term loosely, should have to pay back all the ill gotten gains with interest and penalties. I use the term “loosely” because what kind of a mother would she be and what kind of moral values would she teach her child?
“Young men, more than ever before, want to avoid fatherhood and the responsibilities that come with it.”
Or do not wish to be held responsible for a child they HAVE not fathered.
Many young men (and women and older people of both genders) are already paying for children that are not theirs thanks to the wonder of welfare cash payments that incentivise illegitimate children.
The United States is going broke paying for other peoples mistakes…
You don’t think these bimbo’s get pregnant on purpose, with malice aforethought, if they think they’ve got the right cash cow corraled? Look what Oksana put Mel Gibson through.
Yeah! Remember the recording when Mel admitting punching Oksana in the face while she held their baby (she had to get stitches), but insisting she deserved it because she wore clothing that wasn’t modest by his standards? What a b-tch, having unprotected sex out of wedlock and not aborting the child that she alone was to blame for conceiving. Poor Mel…
Was he the father or wasn’t he?
And not to put too fine point on it, Given how marriage, paternity and other parental rights laws are stacked in the favor of women, both legally and socially, who in their right mind unless the kid is theres, wants to be put through the legal wringer?
If you are an attractive, successful male these days, a woman can offer you sex, tell you she is on birth control, when she isn’t, get pregnant, and stick you with the bill for child support, if your relationship sours. On top of that, she can kill your child without anything you can do about it, as long as she does it before it is born.I think the law should be changed. If the mother gets pregnant before she gets married, she should not be able to get court ordered child support from the father, unless she gives the right to veto abortion, to the father. There are two parents. Neither one should have the sole responsibility for the decision about whether or not the child lives. If the mother does not want the baby, but the father does, the child cannot be killed. Once born, the child would become the sole responsibility of ,the father. If the mother wants to keep the baby, and the father doesn’t, then the father should be able to walk away, with no responsibilities. If there is a marriage contract, when pregnancy occurs, then both parents are financially responsible, and parentally responsible.
When sex occurs between unmarried people, there is a reasonable expectation by the man ,that birth control is being used. When someone pays a prostitute for sex, they should be able to assume that no child will be able to be conceived. They are renting space, not purchasing. The marriage contract is for purchasers.
Good lord, what sexist, deluded nonsense. How many men who sleep with women who sleep around would be likely to veto an abortion? And did you actually mean the final sentence here:
If the mother does not want the baby, but the father does, the child cannot be killed. Once born, the child would become the sole responsibility of ,the father. If the mother wants to keep the baby, and the father doesn’t, then the father should be able to walk away, with no responsibilities. So, the father gets to veto the abortion, and if the mother decides she wants to have custody, the father doesn’t have to pay any child support for the kid whose abortion he vetoed? wtf
I have a friend who’s son is an elite hockey player. As a player on an elite team, he got a girl pregnant. When he found out, he quit hockey to get a job, to pay for his child’s upbringing. He proposed marriage. While at work one day, she texted him to come and get his things, she had aborted the baby. My friend, the local principal of our high school, had tried to teach his son, plus his students, to accept responsibility for his actions. It was my friends grandchild who was killed here. His family had no part of that decision.
@arhooley
“Good lord, what sexist, deluded nonsense. How many men who sleep with women who sleep around would be likely to veto an abortion?”
You’re being disingenous. The specific formulation you’re protesting against could be applied any number of different situations, for example:
A couple have been together for some time. She becomes pregnant. She tells the man, and he is happy, because he want’s to be a father (yeah, there actually are men who want children.) She doesn’t for whatever reason.
The point? He can do nothing, what so ever, to stop her from aborting the child, even though it is just as much his as it is hers, and even though he want’s the child. He couldn’t even offer the solution Keaton suggests, namely that she carries the baby to term, and then lets him take full responsibility for it.
The result? Not just a broken relationship, but atleast one broken heart, and one dead child.
“So, the father gets to veto the abortion, and if the mother decides she wants to have custody, the father doesn’t have to pay any child support for the kid whose abortion he vetoed? wtf”
You’re drawing false conclusions based on your own prejudices, which is to say that you’re misrepresenting Keatons postition. Quoting what you quoted:
1. “If the mother does not want the baby, but the father does, the child cannot be killed. Once born, the child would become the sole responsibility of the father.”
2. If the mother wants to keep the baby, and the father doesn’t, then the father should be able to walk away, with no responsibilities.
Neither implies that “the father gets to veto the abortion, and if the mother decides she wants to have custody, the father doesn’t have to pay any child support for the kid whose abortion he vetoed.” Read what Keaton wrote, the entire post, again. You’ll surely see that your conclusions are wrong.
Did you read what he said? He said the father will be solely responsible.
Warn your sons- no matter how much of a big-shot they are, they are never too “important” to disregard morality. “The adulterous woman’s lips taste like honey, but her feet go down to the netherworld…. The price of a loose woman may be scarcely a loaf of bread, but if she is married, she is a trap for your precious life.” Men who have sex with any harlot who offers are suckers, and it will destroy them.
As Ann Coulter pointed out, this WAS (and maybe still is) the legal norm in many cases. The father only had rights and responsibilities if married. MAybe we should go back to this.
And what is this garbage about forcing a woman to name a father, even if she has no idea. This is court-enforced perjury.
yes, the wording in this article is misleading. the 1 in 25 raising someone else’s child may be quite a bit higher. the rates at clinics for negative results nationwide is about 1/4 to 1/3. one gal on murray had something like 12 guys on looking for her bd. since most judges won’t allow married men to test for paternity we may never know how accurate the 1/25 number really is. however, having these results hidden can and do destroy families years down the road. can’t really think of a good reason for not having a baby’s dna taken at birth and given to both parents. this could prove useful in later years for so many reasons say if the child was stolen.
not revealing a child’s true parentage is a form of fraud. fraud against the child, the father and the child’s real and assumed families.
also, just as a side, dna has been used by groups like the innocence projects to free over 250 men from prison, usually after suffering decades of false incarceration. this was usually done by recovering dna from old crime scene materials (accidentally) saved, since dna recovery was not known back then. also, many times prosecutors had to give permission for these tests to be run.
Yes, but since these tests must be actively sought, rather than administered routinely at birth, it follows that only those who have reason to suspect infidelity would order them. If you have no reason to suspect your wife of being unfaithful and you can see the resemblance between yourself and the child, why get a paternity test?
Shortsighted. America has become “no country for men,” fathers or otherwise. The legal structure of this land, with special emphasis on labor, discrimination, and family law, has taken a swerve away from “blind justice” and toward a regime in which men endure a pervasive state of disadvantage — especially in their relations (if any) with women.
Ultimately it will be to American women’s great sorrow. Meanwhile, American men have a hard row to hoe.
Or a hard ho to plough.
The legal system has saddled men with support payments lasting decades to pay for children that they did not father. I know all the arguments, and I know the meaning of justice, and the arguments do not prevail. The author has presented his thesis. I’d give him an incomplete.
What about the children? Even if a child is not that of a man who had sexual relations with the mother, especially, if they are married, surely it is better for the man to accept responsibility and help raise the child.
And if a responsible man chooses to take that responsibility with full knowledge of the child’s paternity, then we should honor him.
However, given we have the technology, there is no reason for a man to be saddled with another’s child by ignorance, fraud or deceit. It was a while back but the numbers of children born to married parents who are not biologically related to the husband is astounding and made me wonder why husbands didn’t demand paternity tests in self-defense. (although, such a practice might cause friction in the marriage)
Men are such jerks. Women have a right to commit adultery and not worry about the consequences. Bah to your idea for self-defense paternity tests.
Women do have the right to commit adultery and not worry about the consequences. This development of cost effective testing simply limits the collateral damage. In the past, determination of paternity was difficult so the solution was very oppressive societal rules to ensure fidelity. Today, cheap testing lowers the risk to men of being cuckolded causing an erosion of controls on women freeing them to engage in liaisons at their pleasure. Of course, the old ways die hard, the testing does remove the financial fraud even as it extends the exposure of betrayal of vows for both men and women beyond the liaison.
The problem is that women just vote for state welfare benefits and tax all males to pay for their dominion.
Women’s empowerment, has come at the expense of men’s power. But the whole point was to break the social compact and mores of the old Christian bourgeios society, and usher in a New World of State Dominion.
Cultural Marxism. The Sexual Marxist Revolution.
Enjoy!
There is not and cannot be a “right not to worry” — about anything. If there were, men would have a “right not to worry” about their wives conceiving adulterous children.
I sincerely hope you were just playing l’agent provocateur with that comment.
Of COURSE Allie was being sarcastic. Sheesh!
“What about the children?
Tough luck for the child that it has a harlot for a mother.
“Even if a child is not that of a man who had sexual relations with the mother, especially, if they are married, surely it is better for the man to accept responsibility and help raise the child.”
Better for the child, and most certainly for the mother, but better for the man? No. An equivalent analogy would be to pay for a house, and then find out that it isn’t actually yours, but that you’re still expected to pay rent for it.
A man has no responsibility what so ever for a child and its mother if the child was concieved under false pretenses, and he’d be stupid to accept any.
Anyways…
You don’t seem to understand the unspoken agreement between men and women when it comes to reproduction in monogamous societies. The low down is thus:
1. The woman provides the man with exclusive access to her reproductive system
2. In return, he provides her and the child with protection and material support.
This implies:
A. Should she have another man sire a child with her, the agreement is void, and she can do nothing but blame herself if she is left alone in the cold.
B. Should he sire children with other women, he will ultimately be responsible for the protection and support of them too.
Thus:
# It is in the interest of the woman to keep her man faithful, so that his resources aren’t diluted.
# It is also in the interest of the man to make sure that the woman is faithful, so that he doesn’t waste his resources on progeny which isn’t his.
Historically, it has been in the interest of all women to keep their legs tighly shut for all but their husbands, because if they didn’t, there was a considerable risk that they’d be left out in the cold with infants to feed. Add to that the shaming and ostracization the society would wield upon her. On the other hand, it’s been virtually impossible to prove paternity beyond doubt, so if a woman was discrete and cheated with a man with looks similar to those of her husband, she could get away with it.
To be fair, men haven’t had as strong reasons to keep their pants up, (also) since it’s been virtually impossible to prove paternity beyond doubt, but societal shunning and retribution from cuckolded husbands would have done the trick most of the time though.
Today however, the state forces men to provide for unfaithful wives, cheating partners, etc, which means that women in general can screw around which significatly less risk of being left completely without support. In fact, through such measures, the state enable “gold diggers.” Unfaithful women are, at worst, given a societal slap on the wrist, by which I mean:
1. Most other women will likely despise her, shame her, and ostracize her (because nobody hate loose women more than other women, and you know it.)
2. Men will most likely not be interested in a relationship with her, because she’s proven herself unworthy of any trust. If they’re rational, that is. No strings sex is different matter though.
In the past, the only way a woman could ensure that she and any child would be protected and provided for, was to insist on marrige before sex. It was rational, and completely reasonable.
Today though, women KNOW that they’ll be looked after by the state in some fashion if they get pregnant. They KNOW that the state will force the father to pay alimony, child support, or whatever. Men on the other hand, KNOW that they’ll be forced provide said alimony, child support, or whatever. Is it not reasonable that they want to make sure that the child is atleast theirs?
There can be no unconditional trust between men and women any more. In the eyes of the law (and many many women,) men have been reduced to little more than donors of sperm and money.
As things stand, paternity testing is the one and only defence men have, apart from shunning sex entirely, against being stuck supporting another mans child. In fact, today, a man would be severely stupid if doesn’t insist on paternity testing, even if married.
A well reasoned, to the point, explanation of the real world of reproduction. I’m sure the honesty of the post will ruffle some feathers, but you are spot on.
@ JustAl
Thank you. It is good that there are those who still appreciate honesty.
Sticking as close to the empirical as it is possible while avoiding spinning the rationalization hamster too much, even if what ones sees has unpleasent implications, simplifies reasoning significantly. Arguments put forward with honesty will be less convoluted, and that makes it harder for opponents to misrepresent ones position. One may still be wrong, but if that is the case, ones mistake is atleast an honest one.
Maybe it would be better for the woman to admit she’s a liar, and force the real father to take responsibility for the child.
Better? For who? For many women, the GOAL is to find the fun, good looking stud to screw until an ‘accident’ happens, then find some poor schmuck to foot the bills and provide for her and the baby. Win-win (well, except for the nice-guy schmuck who she fooled into believing the kid was his).
Momma can continue sleeping with the good looking studs on the side until she gets bored or the schmuck runs out of money, then divorce him, take his house, car, and half his income, and move on to the next schmuck.
What’s not to like? But now, of course, there’s all these stupid tests that are putting a stop to the scam. THAT sucks. Well, for that all-too common sort of woman anyway.
Orion
Better for who? Certainly not a man who is incorrectly identified as the father. And what of the real father? Should he be left in ignorance of the happy event? Is it truly even in the _child’s_ interest to regard the wrong man as their parent? There is only one party for whom successfully convincing the wrong man to support the child is an unalloyed benefit and that party is not the child.
Why take responsibility even if it’s yours when the woman wants the child — without the father — for her own dolly to play with while he and society at large pay for it?
If baby daddy wanted a bigger “dolly” to play with, he’s gonna have to pay, too.
Agreed. But I was addressing the women who don’t want the man, only his sperm, then his money, labor and talent from a distance.
And that’s a LOT of womyn today.
If you want to celebrate “true fatherhood”, it might be a good idea not sleep around with women you don’t respect, don’t trust, don’t particularly like and don’t even want around for the long haul.
I’m just sayin’. . .
(Ah, the poor American male! He has such a hard row to hoe! “You mean sex with women actually produces babies sometimes?” AAAAAGGGGGGGHHHH! The horror.)
Amen, Betty Blue! I was going to point Francis to your post. Men in America really have it rough, don’t they? Looking at the pre-sexualization of America’s little girls and pop culture images of “ideal” women really adds to men’s burdens!
It is stupid mommies who are slutting up their daughters; it isn’t fathers taking them to the store and buying streetwalker clothes for them. There may be some fathers whoring their daughers out in the beauty pageants for three to six year olds, but I think that’s more a mommy thing too. Now somewhat in mommy’s defense, I saw enough of girls leaving home in shapeless sweats and when they got to school or work peeling off to their slut clothes. One of my less pleasant duties as a supervisor was monitoring the belly buttons and thongs sticking out of the hip-hugger jeans favored by young female employees and telling them that wasn’t appropriate for a professional office, a totally stooopid and radical concept to most of them. If you didn’t watch closely, “Casual Friday” quickly became “Stripper Friday.”
If the women are sleeping around with multiple partners what is there to respect and why would you want to be with them for the long haul.
Why would you want to risk sharing your DNA with a skank in the first place?
Oh that’s right. Men are just ruled by their nether regions and can’t help themselves spurting spooge out of control at every vagina in their midst. *eyeroll*
Yeah, we know, Delia, women need a reason, men just need a place, and all that. Sorry, but there are plenty of women out there who are just as sexually agressive as any man and the reason ranges from they just like sex to they want to use sex for power over men, and there are plenty of men dumb enough to play.
We live in a culture where 15 year-old virgins, male or female, are an oddity and where a blowjob is considered to be little if any more intimate than a peck on the cheek. Sorry, but its hard to keep the general run of women on a pedestal anymore.
Really, Art? I see a lot of blogs devoted to being “Players” and trying to score as much “POON” as possible and most of these guys never even talk about using condoms or responsibility whatsoever. It’s all about the ‘snatch’.
And, excuse the eff outta me, but, prostitution has been around since time immemorial because men ARE a bunch of sperm spurting, penis ruled idiots.
Delia, you have some serious issues, but I’m sure there’s a really friendly women’s softball team that would make you feel right at home.
@ Art… Yep some serious issues. Misandry comes to mind.
Maybe men should just stick to woman who only like anal or better yet, stick to men because men with men are far more promiscuous than women. I think more men should just go gay and save the world a lot of needless cost.
EDITORS,
I would like to flag as inappropriate Marion J.’s comment referring to men “going gay” to “avoid needless cost”. It implies that gay men do not have value (are not costly). This is a hateful and homophobic remark and should not be allowed on this fine website. A specifically-directed derogatory remark is one thing and should be allowed, but a general statement which dehumanizes gay people as a “solution” to a problem of “cost” rather than affirming each individual’s sexual preference, should not be allowed to stand.
ChevalierdeJohnstone forgot the /SARC tag.
So women lying to men about paternity, then forcing those same men to pick up the tab, is okay. Yes, American men do have a hard row ahead if a woman feels entitled to her husband’s or boyfriend’s money despite her dishonesty.
It is called “Sowin’ the Wild Oats”.
Millions of years of evolution. Now , in the last 40 – 60 years such as you show up with your clap-trap. Well good luck with that in the long run.
Misandry… it is called. That is voo-doo you do.
Oh. I see the light.
When men f*ck around it’s called “Sowin’ wild oats” and when women do it they are whores. Brilliant!
No, it’s called whoremongering, and it has been condemned for thousands of years.
Betty,
you would mean women like my ex that I was with for 23 years and married to for 18 years and ALL the women around her who supported her in her crimes of perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse?
We are making it MUCH easier for young men. We are explaining that NO WESTERN WOMEN are tust-WORTHY because they condone and support the crimes of perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse. If you women want to be trusted you need to be trust-WORTHY. In the book I make the point to NEVER TRUST A WESTERN WOMAN. NOT EVER. Why? because they condone the the crimes of perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse.
Here. You can read the FREE book here. It is called “living free in the femnazi world”
http://www.crimesagainstfathers.com/australia/Forums2/tabid/369/forumid/216/scope/threads/Default.aspx
As a taxpayer, I’m not wild about subsidizing anchor babies and their families and the offspring of deadbeat moms and dads. There is no DNA test that gets me out of my share of the financial obligation. My sympathies lie with children and with young families so I won’t be contributing to any dance parties for young men seeking a “do over” for sleeping around with young women who sleep around, nor will I be hosting baby showers for young ladies where one of the games is “guess the father”.
The myth of female honesty falls.
Because men are all upstanding citizens who NEVER cheat or sleep around. LMAO
Men who cheat can’t legally force their innocent wives to pay for bringing up some other woman’s baby. If these unfair laws affected women, you’d be screaming injustice.
Men who cheat can’t legally force their innocent wives to pay for bringing up some other woman’s baby.
An innocent wife can’t know if her husband is keeping a side-piece and her illegitimate brood he spawned with said woman in some nice home, paying her bills and taking money from the family pool for his skank.
In spite of that, you now argue that a woman should be able to lie about her child’s paternity, then force the man (that isn’t the father) to pay for it. That’s just terrible.
Where was it written that a woman should be able to lie about paternity?
Also, if a woman is sleeping around, she might not even know the paternity herself and just assumes it’s her regular squeeze.
Sowin’ them wild oats! YEE HAW! GIDDYUP!
Sure she can, it’s called reading the bank statements. Is it a joint account? Then she has every right to read the statements. Hubby won’t show her his pay stubs? That’s a red flag right there, but break out the tax returns. She has to sign them in order to file jointly, so she must likewise read them. If large amounts of cash are being withdrawn without explanation, something is going on that he’s trying to hide. Of course, there are reasons besides an affair that could be draining the bank account, but unless he’s planning a good surprise for her, a man has no business withdrawing large sums of money from the family account without telling his wife what it’s for. Now I suppose it’s possible for a man to say that he was going to the Super Bowl when he was really going to visit his mistress, but that is something that she can follow up on.
Delia, you are living in some man-hating fantasy world. ‘Course, the attitudes and disposition you’ve demonstrated here undoubtedly limits the universe of men who would come near you. Do you have any idea what it would cost to completely put up a mistress and children she bore you? You would have to be wealthy and powerful enough to divert and hide several thousand dollars a month AND have a wife that was completely oblivious.
There may be some investment banker types or maybe some dot com type who got rich off an IPO who has complete control of a lot of money and whose wife doesn’t know or care about money so long as her Sak’s and Tiffany’s cards work, but nobody, I mean nobody, who works for wages could hide enough money to completely support a mistress in her own home or apartment and living solely off him. A few hundred to a hooker or to a strip joint is all but impossible to hide from any but the most oblivious wife in these days of joint accounts and shared financial responisibility. Sorry, but these days “kept women” are the exclusive province of the very, very wealthy.
It’s easy enough for any man who travels much to keep a number he can call when he’s in town with some expectation of sex for the price of dinner and drinks and maybe a bauble from time to time, but that’s not the same as supporting her and even the cost of drinks and dinner and baubles is hard to hide from the usual female “inquiring minds.” When I travelled a lot, my wife got out the powerful light, the car battery, the drill, and the bamboo splints when the bank and credit card statements came in. If you’re fairly well-off and powerful, it is easy to have the opportunity to have these liasons, but it is much harder to get away with it; you will be found out. If you’re well-off and powerful, especially the powerful part, you’re going to be well enough known that no matter where you go, it is likely that somebody will know who you are and they’ll either rat you off because of who you are or hold it over your head so as to have power over you.
You and your sidekick, Marion J., here seem to think that men have no control over their sexual urges. That may be true of young men with nothing to lose, but it certainly isn’t true of the majority of men old and established enough to have anything worth losing. I acknowledge that wealth and power generates hubris in some men to the extent that they come to think they can do anything and get away with it, but that same hubris is ALWAYS their undoing and if they’re playing with the PYTs, they will get caught and the price is very, very high. Most men know that well enough to curb Mr. Happy no matter what he wants.
My mother divorced my father before I was born because he beat her and raped her at the point of a gun during her pregnancy.
My father never paid a cent of support and went on to rape a young virgin woman the night before her wedding. He later settled down with a single mother of two daughters (who he later raped), he then went on and had four more daughters with this woman while she remained on welfare. He never paid for any of them and lived off of the welfare with his baby mama.
Ain’t life grand?
And what genetic material will the next generation be made of?
You just told us: your raping father and the women who love him.
Why don’t your mother and the other women in this man’s life take ownership of their decision to be with him. Y’all love the emotional roller coaster; at least you’re not bored! because boredom is apparently worse than this rape you obsess about.
It’s all his fault, is it? Bullshit.
My mom left the stupid POS, “CHILDLESS”.
And, please. REMAIN childless. FOREVER.
Wow. The men folk are so enamored of other people with penises that they will even defend rapists.
Wow.
Marion J.,
It’s really very wrong of you to deny women who are with or have had the courage to leave abusive partners the opportunity to take responsibility for associating with such men in the first place. Acknowledging that one is responsible for one’s own choices in life does not make one responsible for the abuse; it affirms one’s own strength and ability to choose to change and avoid in the future such bad situations. This is the difference between a survivor and a victim.
Delia, your father and your life experiences are too extreme to be relevant as anecodotal evidence in any discussion about child support and paternity. They’re like using the Port Arthur Massacre as the single basis on which to ban or regulate guns.
So why wasn’t this POS in jail? Why do you blame all men for the failings of one? You need serious mental counseling.
Mike T
Delia, your father and your life experiences are too extreme to be relevant as anecodotal evidence in any discussion about child support and paternity. They’re like using the Port Arthur Massacre as the single basis on which to ban or regulate guns.
———-
LOL! Okay.
ChevalierdeJohnstone
It’s really very wrong of you to deny women who are with or have had the courage to leave abusive partners the opportunity to take responsibility for associating with such men in the first place.
—
Erm. My father came from a good family. My paternal grandfather was a retired military man and my paternal grandmother was a retired school teacher who were both seen as upstanding in their respective community and so my mother considered my mother thought my father was a product of his good parents. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t so. He was a ‘bad seed’ and his parents had been covering for many of his wilding, ruthless, cruel and heinous misdeeds for years, so, when my mother married my father, she was like the lamb going to the slaughter and she had no idea how far the rabbit whole went.
But, anyway… Thank you for playing, dumbass. Men make stupid mistakes in choosing women too. *sniff-sniff-sniff-sob*
Delia,
Because claims that something “never” happens are very rarely factually correct for anything, asserting the fact that this is probably true is also not a particularly effective form of argument. It bespeaks ignorance and an inability to adequately craft an intelligent argument.
Try again dear.
Likewise, the assertion that an “innocent” wife “can’t” know something is pretty demeaning to the intelligence of many “innocent” wives, and also unlikely to be factually correct, as already pointed out.
Likewise, an argument based on personal anecdote is also not a particularly effect or reliably generalizeable form of argument.
Keep trying dear, you’re bound to luck out eventually!
LMAO. Are you trying to say that married men can’t be sneaky or underhanded enough to manage to siphon money to a whore without the wife knowing? Really?
LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
The reality is that what is being discussed here is primarily a class of individuals, male and female, that engage in unprotected promiscuity. The author, unjustly, places the spotlight on men in general, pointing to raw statistics. How many of the 500,000 tests were performed on a single individual? How many out of wedlock births went unchallenged by the supposed father? Who in turn accepted financial responsibility! Scoundrels have always screamed PROVE IT! Now it can be proven. Too bad for them! Also, Too bad for the sleep around that picks a name out her date book or off the marquee.
Knowing a child’s paternaty insures neither acceptence nor support! Dead beats have lirrle money!
Those who object to the TV spectacle, just tune out the Maury Povich WHORE show! All involved are prostituting themselves to be on TV!
You missed one reason, women are much more likely to have multiple sperm donors(if you catch my drift), and often point the finger at someone for social or economic reasons, because they wish to hide their multiple partner promiscuity or wish to rope a economicly or socially adept male.
Oh the joys of the sexual revolution.
I have a wee question. How is it that, 50 years — two generations! — after the introduction of effective birth control, so many unmarried women are getting pregnant? Please don’t tell me that it’s because that’s what their stud du jour wants. Either we have to conclude that these women want to get pregnant, or we have to conclude that they are unbelievably stupid.
Here’s another wee question that I’ve never seen properly addressed: In this age of easily available birth control, does a woman have a constitutional right to have as many babies as she chooses, whether or not she has made provision to pay for their proper upbringing, and to have access to taxpayer wallets if she can’t support them? In all this thundering about irresponsible fathers, where’s the outrage over irresponsible mothers? Where’s the social stigma that used to minimize the problem?
Oh, I forgot: that would be blaming the “victim” of male irresponsibility.
My solution: Have one child out of wedlock, sister, and you are put on court-ordered contraceptives until such time as you are married. Have a second child out of wedlock, and it’s off to women’s prison for three full years, where the fact that you can’t stay off your back will be a harmless eccentricity. For the men who don’t pay child support, I suggest a three-year stint on a work gang, under the lash at minimum wages, with the wages forwarded to whomever is raising the child. As an added bonus, let the chain gangs build a huge barricade along the Mexican border. As a taxpayer, I’m willing to fund my share of such a regime.
Fine, provided that the child is actually his.
“How is it that, 50 years — two generations! — after the introduction of effective birth control, so many unmarried women are getting pregnant?”
Because EVERY birth control method (except hysterectomies, as far as I know) has a failure rate, but since everyone thinks “just use birth control and you can have sex with anyone anywhere, anytime without negative consequences”, more and more unmarried people are having sex. (More sex) multiplied by (failure rate) = (more out-of-wedlock pregnancies).
This topic has been discussed many times on political forums. Much of the blame may lie with a liberal agenda. Increase access to birth control and you get more sexual activity. Provide financial aid to unwed mothers and you get more unwed mothers. Have an abortion-on-demand policy and fathers no longer feel an obligation when they get someone pregnant; the man can simply say to the woman “It’s your choice whether you have the child or not. I’m outta here.” The situation is complicated by remnants of laws that predate these increased “freedoms”. Paternity laws make a man financially liable for a pregnancy HE didn’t want – just because the mother wanted it. Women say nobody has any busines telling them what to do with their bodies. With freedom comes responsibility.
Also, I’m glad this piece mentions Maury. Any time I start feeling sorry for the noble poor (as opposed to the greedy rich), I watch an episode of Maury. Bad decisions lead to bad outcomes.
Sorry Kermudjin, If you don’t want the baby don’t screw the girl.
If you don’t want to be a father become a monk LOL!
I find this article terribly unfair to men. Nowadays there is absolutely no reason for a woman to get pregnant, given the fact that such a wide variety of birth control measures are available. Unlike yesteryear, a woman can no longer blame a man for an unwanted pregnancy.
The Maury show is watched by a particular demographic–people who stay home during the day and watch TV instead of doing any kind of productive work in their homes. TV trash shows provide no models of decent behavior for such people. So people watching such shows unfortunately receive reinforcement for their dysfunctional behaviors, rather than learning how to improve their lifestyles. Instead of a rant against men, the author should be suggesting a boycott of advertisers who support trash TV programs that glamorize dysfunctional behaviors. Being on TV is a big reward to the people who appear on the Maury show; if the show didn’t exist, there would be one less reward for those women who can’t seem to keep their legs together in the presence of a man.
Hear hear.
Gloria, I am guessing by your screenname that you are a woman. As a man, please let me offer my admiration for your stand. A large part of our society has forgotten that it takes two people to make a baby. Moreover, a large number of men, including perhaps the author of this article, in a well-meaning attempt to treat women better than perhaps women have been treated in the past, have sadly denied to women the opportunity to take full responsibility for their own actions. These men pretend that they are asking men to take responsibility for their own actions, when in fact they are exhorting men to take responsibility away from good women for whom, as for all good people, responsibility may be sometimes difficult but is always a blessing.
To deny someone responsibility for their own actions is to deny the existence of a part of them. In the guise of “helping” women such men in fact do real and horrible damage to womankind, and the women who accept their “help” are in fact committing a kind of suicide of the soul, in exchange for a fleetingly material satisfaction. I commend you for your courageous stand in opposition to this terrible trend.
This test cuts both ways. First, for men who seek to run away from their actions, this test will confirm with very little doubt whether or not he should be held responsible for a child. It actually prevents running away from such responsibility. Second, a cheating wife can be found out more easily.
In other words, men and women can both be held accountable for their actions. This test IMPROVES accountability, because it documents with near certainty the age old question: Who Is The Father?
I do not see a problem with men asking for this test. I see a problem in honesty that has existed since the beginning of civilization. Well known performers such as Justin Beiber would have had his reputation severely tarnished had it not been for this test.
Let’s improve honesty and do as Reagan once said: Trust, but verify.
More likely it’s men who don’t want to be suckered by predatory women who see them as a free ride. And you wonder why men are hesitant to get married when the courts force them to pay child-support for other men’s children.
1 in 25? I have a feeling that’s low by a factor of about 10.
Orion
Paul, your heart seems to be in the right place, if you are suggesting than men should always shoulder responsibilities towards their children (sexual partners are not the issue). But you aren’t really citing or understanding the data on paternity tests. Your first citation is to a newspaper article about a poorly conducted study in another country, and you misstate even the second-hand description of the results. You should offer a real citation and contextualize it to prove your point or not make any assertion at all.
You are correct that courts are requiring more paternity testing. In many cases, it is routine for those seeking dissolution of marriage or child support. In others, it is requested by a suspicious party. There are no universal standards in collecting data on testing from the thousands of legal forums in which it may be requested. Neither of the circumstances stated here will give rise to statistics applying to the general population, either. So any statistical argument based on them is utterly meaningless.
More and more, I’m seeing such carelessness in this magazine and others. Where are the editors? Where are the standards? Or am I simply mistaken in expecting more than an opportunity for various people to vent about their exes? Because I was expecting that.
I, too, would like to know where the editors are. Are there editors?
EDITORS WHERE ARE YOU?
This magazine was founded mostly with a few well-known authors who have or had other popular blogs. These people presumably are used to writing professionally or at least semi-professionally. I may disagree with their various biases and conclusions sometimes, but I have yet to see any of these original members make any egregious factual or logical error. However, with the growth of additional content from no-doubt ordinarily excellent writers such as the author of this article, there has been a distressing trend of what is, apparently in the opinions of several readers including myself, distressingly bad editorial decisions. I join my fellow readers in exhorting the EDITORS TO PAY CLOSER ATTENTION to what gets published herein. We don’t mind reading something with which we disagree; we don’t like reading something which is a false portrayal of the facts. Writers have an opinion and should be able to state it; it should be the duty of the editors to ensure that their opinion does not trample on objective facts. If it is necessary to publish less content so that an overworked editorial staff can do a better job, then please make that change.
Please list for me all false portrayals of facts in my article. I have not been made aware of any by you or anyone else. Please back up such comments with your own facts, especially when you are attacking someone’s work.
I’m really confused with your comment. The information I cited is from an American organization and published out of Ohio. It wasn’t from another country as you claim.
Maybe you are referring to my 1 in 25 stat on page 2 – which isn’t what the piece is based on. That does have a UK article, but the 1 in 25 stat is the same in USA, and somehow I must have put the UK link there on accident. The link should have been fixed, but the facts are the same. If you want the right link for US 1 in 25 stats go here: http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/fathers-and-kids-parenting-fraud
And my article lists lots of reasons for the possibility of increased DNA testing. I even state that you can’t know for sure: “Why such a rise in testing? No research has been done, so one can only make an educated guess.” So attacking my research and a need for better editing seems to be a cheap tactic to try to discount an article you simply don’t agree with. Of course, the other explanation is you simply accidentally skipped reading page 1 of 2 pages of my blog. That may be more likely.
First, if you’re having a paternity test because you question who fathered your wife’s child, you don’t need to be married to that woman, probably don’t need to be married at all unless you have some pretty graphic evidence that she’s been sleeping around. I feel the same way about pre-nups unless you’re well off and are willfully marrying some young hottie just because you like the way she feels and how she looks on your arm – and don’t expect her to be around very long, or hot very long.
I’m of the generation that many of you think destroyed civilization with drugs, sex, and rock ‘n roll, but, frankly, I and most of my peers that I know were and are outright prudes compared to young folks today. Unless you’ve raised and been around today’s adolescents and twenty-somethings you have no idea how promiscuous and sexually agressive they are, and its certainly not just the males who are aggressive. The girls don’t like birth control pills because of perceived and sometimes real side effects and the belief that they make them fat. The boys don’t like condoms, because boys don’t like condoms. And, theres a certain amount of thrill seeking in unprotected sex as well. I have two step-sons in their twenties and if they were dealing with a woman claiming they’d fathered her child, I’d drive them to the Doc for the paternity test! I raised my daughter from Wife 1.0 as a single father from when she was 13. I learned that with the temptations of modern popular culture, your foremost goal with a child is to get them to 25 without a felony conviction or an unwanted child; they’ll recover from almost anything else, but either of those will severely limit if not outright ruin their lives. Every parent should look at their kid(s) Facebook page and any other social media they participate in. Look at their history to see the Craig’s List hookups, and all the other forms of “booty calls” they have available to them.
It used to be said that the good thing about older and married women was that they didn’t swell and they didn’t tell. Well, they’re a lot less likely to swell, but they’re sure more than happy to tell you what they’re going to do to you if you don’t see things their way. I spent a lot of years in government and politics and the horizontal career move is alive and well there, and if you play, you WILL pay.
> the primary cause of increased testing is that young men, more than ever before, want to avoid fatherhood and the responsibilities that come with it.
Actually, this statement, and the basic premise of this article are illogical.
Deadbeat dads are decidedly NOT the ones who want paternity tests … it’s the responsible NON-fathers who request such testing!
If a man is fairly certain a baby is his, and he wishes to “avoid fatherhood and responsibilities that come with it”, the LAST thing he wants is a paternity test confirming this. Such test results could and would be used as evidence in a child support case.
On the other hand, if a man is fairly certain or at least highly probable that a baby is NOT his, then he will indeed want to have a paternity test to confirm this (non-paternity) and support his position in the courts.
Why would you possibly want to saddle an innocent man with supporting a child that is not his, and then slander him as being irresponsible just because he wants a test result supporting the truth ???
My point is that both sex and fatherhood have been disconnected from responsibility. People are having meaningless sex and therefore will make every attempt to avoid fatherhood. What I think you are missing in your comment and attempt at logic is that most of these cases are men who have been claimed as the father already. If they do nothing then they automatically have to take responsibility. And so if the man hopes/thinks that the woman they were with is also having meaningless sex with others, then they hope that child isn’t theirs and are willing to be tested in hopes they are right. So the tests are done as his only and last ditch hope out of parental responsibility. Somewhere between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 tests prove the men are not the fathers. In other words, the majority of these guys who hope/think that child is not theirs find out they are wrong. So your argument that most guys are simply choosing to take it because they are nobly trying to avoid a child that they know is not theirs is off. It’s a hail mary to get out of responsibility.
However, I am not arguing that a man should have to pay support for a child that is not his. My point is, the fact that so many guys are hoping to prove the child is not theirs is proof you have lots of guys not wanting to get “stuck” being a parent. If they didn’t want to get “stuck” they should have avoided sex.
Or perhaps they don’t mind shouldering the responsibility provided the child is truly theirs. I would not flee fatherhood, I would, however, flee false fatherhood and would feel no shame whatever in doing so.
Obviously, wearing a condom for a slutty man is just too much trouble and doesn’t feel as good as raw-dogging it. *sniff-sniff*
Obviously, slutty women are too stupid to usecontraception, and too dishonest to acknowledge the real father.
That’s why slutty men AND slutty women should be temporarily (if not permanently) sterilized for at least ten years. Especially considering all of the STDs that can cause a child to be born with disabilities. If people want to go around being “Alpha Players” and “Sluts” then they should not be allowed to procreate. Period. Let the eff each other and keep their diseases to each other.
Oh, I see; and you get to decide all that. OK!
The state could decide. Why should a woman or man who wants to sleep around and spread diseases be allowed the chance to pop out illegitimate for everyone else to pay for? There are consequences for actions and obviously some men and women cannot keep it in their pants or pay for their own mistakes.
@Marion J -
You are a very confused person. On the one hand you have the libertarian view that society should not have to pay for the consequence of sexual promiscuity. On the other, you argue the statist or totalitarian view that society can decide who can reproduce. Grow up! Learn something other than what you feel; you might as well be a liberal.
Dear f Art:
We lost our freedom a long, long, time ago because a certain part of our populace has no desire to take personal responsibility for themselves. That’s why you have baby daddy’s shirking their responsibility from one baby mama to another.
Funnily, the more women start acting like ‘men’ the worse things become because men really have no moral compass when it comes to sex. I’m convinced of this. Jimmy Swaggart, cry your eyes out!!!!!
Unfortunately, something like that can only be done under the force of tyranny; I bet you knew that though.
Why not settle for restoring appropriate social stigmas that used to keep this sort of crap in check. Example: Refuse to either host or participate in any shape, manner or form any baby shower hosted for some honey who is pregnant out of wedlock with no wedding plans on the horizon.
If only one half of the equation are stigmatized (i.e. ‘women’) and the other half are given a free pass because they are ‘sowin’ their wild oats’, then, this is not ever going to be resolved.
“If only one half of the equation are stigmatized (i.e. ‘women’) and the other half are given a free pass because they are ‘sowin’ their wild oats’, then, this is not ever going to be resolved.”
With the notable exception of sexual assault, sex takes place most often with the woman’s consent. If more women chose to keep their legs together, there wouldn’t be so many of these men running around “sowin’ their wild oats.”
You missed Marion J’s point, bobbcat.
Shaming only FEMALES and not MALES solves NOTHING.
Women are called whores for the same activity that men are ‘lauded’ for and called ‘studs’ for.
Get it, dumbass?
I wholeheartedly and totally reject the idea that anyone should be forcibly sterilized for any reason other than a legal sentence handed down after a fair trial.
I call on all the sane members of the readership to pray with me, Lord we pray that you will help Delia to see the extreme error of her ways, to heal her and help her to be a person who recognizes what an evil thing that is to say that any of your fallen and imperfect human children should be forcibly sterilized against their will, regardless of their personal imperfections.
Amen.
I wholeheartedly and totally reject the idea that anyone should be forcibly sterilized absent a legal court sentence following a trial.
I call upon the sane members of the readership to join me in prayer: Lord, we pray to You that you will help Delia to understand the extreme error of her statement, to heal her heart and soul and understand what an evil thing it is to say that any of Your fallen, imperfect human children should be sterilized regardless of their personal imperfections.
Double-post douchetard, I don’t give a flying fig what you ‘assume’ about me and keep your smarmy prayers to yourself when you ask God to give you more than three inches.
Unfortunately, sometimes condoms DO break. It’s not always the guy’s fault. In that case, it wouldn’t be the girl’s fault either unless the condom broke for hot stud poor-guy number 1 and the girl convinces well-off every-guy number 2 not to use one later on.
That’s why I find it ridiculous that loose men who are screwing loose women find themselves ‘victims’ of anything when they knowingly poke their stick in every Tammy, Denise and Harriot hoping that their choice of ‘protection’ is not going to falter (even though condoms are still better security than none).
The only victims are the children born to two f*ckwits with no self-control or ability to delay gratification.
Oh hell. We have become a society that is fast becoming an imbecilic example of the lack of self-control. Big surprise.
When do the MEN & WOMEN both say: “Sex outside of marriage is wrong”?
When do men stop using hookers (which is sex outside of marriage). How many prostitutes get pregnant and abort the fetus of whatever Tom, Dick & Douchebag who comes along with fifty bux? How many men bring STDs home to their faithful women?
It never ceases to amaze me how the whole ‘victimhood’ mentality has infiltrated every corner of our society.
What a bunch of roaming gnomes worthy of nothing and most certainly not worthy of being called fathers or mothers.
If a man simply wants to avoid paternity, he can have a vasectomy and never worry about it again.
A man who asks for a paternity test usually wants to avoid responsibility for the child of another man and of a woman who deceived him. That’s hardly a blanket rejection of paternity.
And there may be other reason. The man may already know that the woman had sex with another man, but doesn’t want to disclaim paternal responsibility.
Perhaps at the time, the two had not formed an exclusive relationship, but have since gotten married. He may still want to know whether the child is his by blood.
Or the man may want to marry the woman, but she is reluctant, and his being the father of her child could help gain her consent.
Or there could be medical conditions involving one of the putative fathers which make it important to know who it is.
Or the mother left the man for another man, and the first man doesn’t want this other lout raising his child (if it is his).
Or the mother left another man for the man, and the man wants to establish his paternity and exclude the other man from any claim of paternal rights.
Or the couple are married, she had a brief affair, they’re reconciled, and won’t publicize anything about the child… but the other man lives in the same town and has other kids, and they don’t want their daughter coming home with a new boyfriend who is – oops – possibly her half-brother.
Or the couple are married, she had a brief affair, they’re reconciled, and won’t publicize anything about the child… but the other man lives in the same town and has other kids, and they don’t want their daughter coming home with a new boyfriend who is – oops – possibly her half-brother.
—
This could be said for any number of men who cheat on their wives and a baby results and their respective children could end up together (remote but possible).
How about people stop effing around and grow a brain and learn to masturbate more creatively?
Sex is so overrated it makes me laugh.
…You’re doing it wrong.
Orion
Frankly, I can enjoy a donut and a cup of coffee for longer than what it takes to risk a pregnancy or STD and usually the donut is much less messy.
A doughnut? Never tried that. Thanks for the tip. Does coffee taste better after sex? Never tried that either. lol
The trick is to warm the donut up first (make sure to buy one with a hole).
Rich wrote: “If a man simply wants to avoid paternity, he can have a vasectomy and never worry about it again.”
I knew a guy who had a vesectomy that got very upset when his gorlfriend got pregnant. He accused her of being a slut of immense proportions, and she insisted she had been faithful. He demanded a paternity test and she agreed.
Big surprise: He was the father. Later tests proved his vasectomy of a decade past had healed itself and his semen was fertile. Sterilization apparently is not always the answer.
Obviously, wearing the rubber hat was too hard on the ol’ boy as extra insurance.
Poor baby. It must have been so hard for him to find out his girlfriend had been faithful.
WAHHHHHHHH
Just have the balls snipped off.
Why on earth would have have gotten the idea that he would need a condom as “extra insurance”?
Cutting his balls off? You are truly disgusting.
The only 100% effective means of sterilization is to remove the gonads. If the man wants to guarantee sterility, cutting off his testicles will accomplish that. That said, I believe that sterilization is a form of amputation, and as such should only be done if rendered necessary by illness or injury in order to prevent said illness or injury from doing greater harm to the patient. If it wouldn’t justify cutting off an arm, it doesn’t justify cutting out a portion of the reproductive system.
“Much of that is tied to a hard economy and men wanting to shirk their responsibilities.”
Nice bit of feminist shaming language you’ve got there (sarcasm), not to mention the wild ass guess to begin with as to the true cause. Besides, since when is not paying for a child that’s not yours considered shirking responsibility? Maybe, just maybe, it’s got something to do with men NOT WANTING TO BE THE VICTIM OF PATERNITY FRAUD!
Paternity fraud? I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘fraud’. Have you seen those Maury shows? Sometimes the women are just as surprised as the ‘player’ dumbass men when they find out the paternity results.
The only difference between men and women apparently is that men can sleep around and knock up a bunch of women and that’s ‘accepted’ but if a woman does it and a baby results she’s a ‘ho’.
Frankly, if you are a man-whore sleeping around with women-whores, wtf did you expect you stuid f*cks?
I think the real fathers should be hunted down and forced to help pay for their offspring and the men who are not the real fathers should never have to pay (unless they want to for some reason).
The idea of sterilizing people who cheat or run around like dogs in heat is a great idea. Less crotch fruit for taxpayers to have to foot the bill for. In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to just castrate men who are known for being ‘players’ so as to reduce not only future children but also the spread of sexually contracted diseases (I’m talking about gay men too who are notoriously promiscuous because…well, they are men).
You never hear about Lesbians being super promiscuous but when men go for the manly brown eye they can’t stay monogamous to save their lives (or dicks).
I had a shipmate when I was in the Navy whose girlfriend back home gave birth to a baby and swore to high heaven the child was his and that he was the only person she had ever been intimate with. The announcement came, of course, with a demand for 50% of his semi-monthly paycheck, which being he was in the US Military was as regular as clockwork as long as he remained enlisted.
He demanded a paternity test, feeling something was wrong with the timing of the child’s birth compared to his infrequent ability to visit home. (His hometown was in the south, we were based in the northeast.)
Sure enough, and to my shipmate’s relief, the test came back negative. Miss ‘I was never with another’ had given birth to another man’s baby and tried to pawn it off on someone with a steady paycheck. With the negative results, she was also presented with the bill for the test, as it was her paternity suit that began the proceedings.
For the sake of the child, I hope the real father was hunted down like a dog and forced to pay child support. It seems men have no qualms about shirking their responsibilities onto more responsible men and that is patently wrong. But look at the black community? They don’t care who pays for their illegitimate brood.
Unfortunately, we had no way of learning the final results. Needless to say as soon as the test results came back, my shipmate permanently ended his relationship with said girl.
Hopefully she had the smarts to name the actual father, knowing if she tried to pick someone finacially stable again and the test results came back negative again it was only going to cost her more money.
You just repeated every Maury show.
It’s tragically hilarious when these ‘women’ and ‘men’ come back on the show with 3 or 4 more potential fathers for dna testing.
Most of these women are butt ugly and the guys were obviously banging them just to get some ‘tang’ which is even more pathetic. The whole genital jungle out there is frightening.
Speaking of which, any man who is named by the mother as the baby’s father when that man never actually had sex with her should sue her for slander.
I have never come across an article until now where I disagree with everyone. Everyone is right only a little bit. Most societies have accepted standards with deviations (Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter). America accepts all deviations and so has problems with its offspring who seem quite capable of creating new forms of deviation. It is called chaos and reflects our perennial adolescent period. It will end with a bang or a whimper, but it will end.
Perhaps all parental rights should be terminated at birth and the responsibility for raising children would then belong to the state alone. Adults will be seen as so irresponsible that the courts will find them unfit as a class. Scientists will be commissioned to seek a monoclonal antibody to disable oxytocin and perhaps vasopressin function to a minimum level consistent with life, relieving mothers of their biological mechanisms for bonding with their partners and any new children. All the children could be raised together. I remember! Romania had a really neat system for handling unwanted children.
Alternatively, sex will be outlawed between unmarried adults and deviators (my new word for the evening) will be stoned to death as in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Because of this article, I will have a difficult time sleeping tonight. I wish you all the same.
I think a scarlett letter tatted onto the forehead of skanky men whores and women whores would be a great idea! You could also give them extra tats for how many baby mamas and baby daddys they have and how many sexually transmitted diseases they currently have.
That would turn all the ‘players’ and ‘hos’ into the pariahs they deserve to be seen as.
All the male-bashing and female-bashing aside, why wouldn’t both parties want to know who the father actually is? I see no reason for a man to pay for a child he didn’t help create, unless he decides to step up for his own reasons. The child may actually have an interest in knowing. Surely, the woman would want to know who fathered her child? Yes, I know there are a certain number of unscrupulous females who just want someone to pay, regardless of paternity, but most women should want to know, at the very least for the sake of their child.
The problem probably lies with the fact that often some men and women don’t even remember who they slept with on any given drunken night.
Without booze I doubt a good portion of the ugly majority populace would even get laid.
In this day an age, it’s not the fathers wanting to avoid resposibility. Men don’t want to be paying child support to the baby’s actual father. When women initiate 75% of divorces, it’s usually because they found someone else and guess why… there’ve already been plenty of horror stories of men paying for kids who aren’t theirs. Mandatory paternity testing of kids at birth, whether they need it or not, would end all this.
Mandatory testing won’t solve sh*t until both men and women are shamed out of random sex acts outside of marriage because the majority of these cases are with unmarried people who are sexually promiscuous (I won’t name the race).
Many men wanted the current conditions too. Many men wanted to have more access to sex without consequences just as females did. Now we have unwed baby mamas and papas and STDs through the roof.
If every man had the chance to get pregnant during a sexual encounter I doubt that would stop him much. Men don’t care what whiskers they poke their load into. They only care about the quickie fix orgasm. Then what? Are you itching down there yet?
I am not sure if the author of this article has suffered a lapse of logical reasoning, or merely found it difficult to convey his true thoughts via the written medium.
But contrary to the implication of what I will charitably assume is a distressingly poorly written article, men who ask for a paternity test cannot possibly be trying to avoid their parental responsibilities. In fact I cannot believe that the editors of this website would publish such such an obvious falsehood.
Briefly, some simple logical reasoning. If the man asking for the paternity test is in fact the father, our courts will demand that he pay child support whether he wants to or not. And if he is not the father, then someone else is. I shudder to think that someone so myopic as to miss this fact probably drives a car.
Contrary to what the author appears to suggest, it is not at all a good thing, nor should it be a socially acceptable thing, for a man to take responsibility for a child which is not his own; because this prevents another man from fulfilling his ethical responsibility to care for his own child. To assert that men should take “responsibility” for another man’s children, without voluntarily, and therefore knowingly, going through the proper channels of adoption, has got to be one of the most evil, vile statements I have ever read.
The proper course of action, given that the technology is available, is to find the actual father and help him – using the force of law to compel him if necessary – to fulfill his parental responsibility. Fulfilling, however poorly, one’s responsibility for one’s own progeny is one of the most important duties of a civilized man. We cannot possibly have a civilization in which men may charitably and with foreknowledge assume responsibility for children which are not biologically their own unless we first assert each man’s responsibility to first look after the children which are his if at all humanly possible.
Now, I admit the possibility that the author, and the editors, may disagree with me that caring for one’s own children is a key duty of a civilized man – though this would be a somewhat shocking disagreement given the general content of this website. However it is a material fact that all children except Jesus do have a biological father, and to leave out this most salient fact from the exposition of this article must be acknowledged as a gross oversight. The author wrongly portrays paternity testing as a means of avoiding responsibility, whereas in objective reality paternity testing is a means of ensuring that responsibility is not wrongly assigned to the wrong party, so that it may be assigned to the correct one. It is an objective fact that paternity testing cannot possibly be a means of avoiding responsibility for a man’s own, real, biological children.
Thus, I respectfully suggest that the author clarify or retract his statements in this article.
I also respectfully suggest that the editors of this website pay closer attention to preventing ethical and logical fallacies such as this from appearing under the banner of this fine publication.
Let me break this down for you since you are struggling with some basic points:
1. Here is why the high number of testing shows men don’t want the responsibility: The men I am talking about have a woman they have slept with tag them as the father. They are going to have to be responsible for that child if they leave it at her word. The men hope they aren’t the father because they don’t want the responsibility. And they expect or even hope the woman is sleeping with other men so they don’t get “stuck” with the child. Their only chance of getting out of this predicament is to get a test. If they don’t get a test they are seen as responsible for that child anyway. If they do get a test they have a shot, a minority one, but at least a shot that the kid isn’t theirs. That whole situation clearly portrays a man hoping to avoid the responsibilities of fatherhood. It is proven when these men show joy that the child is not theirs.
That is a basic and logical point. I hope you grasp it now that I have spelled it out for you. And if you don’t, I am okay that you are driving a car:)
Now is this the situation for all DNA paternity tests? Of course not, and I never said it was. My point was that much of the growth in testing can be attributed to this type of a situation, and that growth shows more and more men wanting to duck responsibility.
2. No where do I argue that all DNA parental testing is wrong. And no where do I argue that a man who is not the father of a child should take responsibility for that child. And no where do I even suggest it, as you claim. The vast majority of your attacks on my article seem to be based on a straw man author (of your own creation) arguing against all forms of DNA paternity testing and demanding men father children not their own. You are arguing against an author and article that does not exist here. And yet you try to argue the editors should be weary of me making “logical fallacies”.
3. I fully understand there are many good reasons for DNA parental testing. My point was that much of the increase is based on today’s young men hoping that the women they are sleeping with are pregnant because they are sleeping with other men. That is clearly a sign of men shirking responsibilities in today’s culture. There is no getting around that, no matter how many times you try to attack the article. I am well aware that there are men out there in what they thought was a committed relationship who have reason to believe their spouse/loved one cheated on them. I do not begrudge those men a DNA test, and was not referring to those men here. Those men are victims and have done nothing wrong.
I hope this clears up everything for you and helps you to move on instead of attacking my work. You have asked me to clarify for you and I have done so.
Bravo, Paul.
You have failed to establish that they hope they are not the father, which is the source of the confusion. They may hope they are not the father but they equally might hope that they _are_. When making life altering decisions, it only makes sense to do so with accurate information.
Did a woman write this? It seems so stupid and delusional about the nature of the men who seek paternity tests that only a woman full in the righteous wrath of “that stupid beta male!” or a White Knight older guy living in the past instead of today could write that drivel.
What drives a man to get a paternity test?
Only one thing — a deep and abiding suspicion that he is not in fact, the father. Rather than a hope to avoid parental responsibilities (fairly easy to do for the typical Alpha layabout male who does nothing but be sexy all day) it seems a reaction to the general high level of promiscuity and sexual activity of most modern women.
Consider “Mamma Mia!” whose plot point is who among four men is a young woman’s father. Because the woman slept with ALL OF THEM around her conception! That is a red flag on the general promiscuity of modern Women today.
Female promiscuity is aided by: anonymous urban living (no wagging tongues of how many me you slept with), rising female income (no need to lock down a provider), and cheap/easy contraception, plus welfare payments.
But widespread female promiscuity means pretty much any man who can get a paternity test WILL get one. Since they have the means to be sure. And know that if they don’t they can be on the hook for Bad Boy’s spawn.
EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING costs. No amount of female hectoring, or elderly White Knight faux-chivalry (newsflash: monogamy and male duty died about 1971, female sexual liberation = male abdication of responsibility) will change that.
Really this place has either hectoring feminists who figure Beta Males owe it to those fabulous women to support their spawn (and the Alpha sexy bad boy) or moralizing White Knight men in their dotage, thinking it is still 1952. Pathetic.
I agree with you about the current attitude of many females. In the current environment, people….and not always the young…….expect there to be a ready and convenient cure for every dilemma. I am liberal when it comes to social attitudes but everyone should realize that casual sex has consequences. Men who participate in that should be aware that they may be tested. The childfren resulting from such activities are the ones who suffer and just money cannot solve their problems.
Donna Quixote wrote, “but everyone should realize that casual sex has consequences”
Always for the fruits of such unions, but less frequently for fathers and mothers.
I can’t conceive of any good reason why a conservative would be opposed to making paternity testing the norm. It is an absolute godsend for children as it is an effective tool for securing justice for them in holding responsible derelict fathers and preventing innocent men from being the victims of paternity fraud. If anything, it should be widely expanded such that it becomes a legal right for all potential and named fathers to request a discretely performed DNA test at or around birth so that the child’s father can be named accurately on the birth certificate.
For unmarried couples, yes. But not for married ones.
There are always false positives and negatives, and universal testing will cause tregedies.
If a positive establishes that the man being tested is indeed the father, there will never be a false positive (I’m discounting the case of identical twins because it makes no difference).
I can see mandatory paternity testing as a part of the process to establish a child support obligation for an unmarried father. I can almost see it as a part of establishing a child support obligation for a father in a divorce. It offends my sensibilities that a man would be justified in asking a divorcing wife to prove a child was his before he would be obligated to pay child support, but not many of us are married to Donna Reid, and I firmly believe you never really know a woman until you meet her in divorce court. God knows divorce is nasty enough and there’s little enough justice for men in it under the best of circumstances in most states, so a little more nastiness isn’t going to make much difference.
The act of divorcing a man rends asunder the protection of presumptive paternity.
Every poster here who has defended or refused to condemn paternity fraud has done so by changing the subject. That has always been a sign of dishonesty.
As a long-time reader and promoter of the site, I must say this article was likely the poorest in terms of logic and reasoning I have ever read here. Roger, what were you thinking to let this claptrap see the light of day?
I think in the past, if someone you had sex with got pregnant, it _was_ much more likely that you were the father.
This article is completely wrong in its assumption that men nowadays don’t want to be fathers.
Men would love to be fathers but that right has been striped from us. The law holds that children only belong to the mother. If she chooses to abort its a father has no say. If she doesn’t abort but puts the baby up for adoption the man has no say. If she has the baby and stays in a relationship with the father but one day calls it quits she takes the kids with her and the father has no say.
The only role the state allows the father to have is footing the bill regardless of whether or not the money is spent on the children and still the father gets no say.
We reduced fatherhood to a nothing paycheck for single mothers. Then we have to listen to how we men are running from fatherhood.
I live in one of the most Liberal states and my daughter’s fiancé won sole custody of all three of his children from a previous marriage to a total dingbat. He definitely didn’t make a good choice in a baby-mama but a lot of young folks are stupid and make bad decisions.
Unfortunately, he isn’t making enough money to support the three kids he produced and is using food stamps and free medical for himself and his children just to get by. Honestly, I don’t know how people can pop out children in such quick succession without thinking things through? *sigh*
This article is simply just so poor I can only shake my head. I look forward to Mr. Cooper’s next article on Australian football and cricket. I’m sure he has an expert opinion on those subjects, too.
Surely Roger L. Simon is on holidays and has decided to leave the operation of this website to work experience staff.
Oh go cry into Whiskey’s bitch-tits, spazz.
I can see where YOU inherited all of your character traits from, and it wasn’t from your mother. The apple sure doesn’t fall far from the tree!
That’s right, B*TCH! I’m rapin’ you with mah words!
IDIOT.
Mr. Cooper, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
I like that movie quote too. I sure wish you would have pointed out even one reason why you would say that about my article though. That would have been helpful for actual discussion instead of empty attacks.
Plenty of people have already commented on it. The biggest problem is that your argument is a non sequiter.
Men aren’t going for paternity tests in order to avoid responsibility, they’re getting paternity tests to make sure that they’re not legally obligated to spend thousands of dollars of on some other guy’s kid. The sad fact of the matter is that there are enough horror stories about some sad sack who trusted his wife, found out she was cheating on him, found out the kid wasn’t his, and is still stuck paying child support.
So now we have a family court system where paranoia is a man’s best friend. Rage against the messed up legal system, but guys are just trying to work within the system, and a negative on a paternity test is a beautiful thing.
This is a thought provoking article that says volumes about what we have become and where we are as a society.
There are always two sides to every story. From a secular view, women want someone to support them as they raise children. With the rise of feminism and the nanny state, we shouldn’t be surprised this is happening. Some poor fool has to pay. It might as well be the man. Any man. So, they seemingly go after someone with the ability to pay, have sex with them and guilt then into marriage. They divorce the man after “doing enough time” with him and expect to be paid alimony for the rest of their lives and child support until the kid turns 18.
First, here’s an example of the negative:
http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html?cid=6a00d83452455969e201348819edaf970c
Second, here’s an example of the positive: An acquaintance of mine is 56 years old and getting ready to retire. Financially, he is very well off. As he tells it, as a freshman in engineering school, he came home and got his girl friend pregnant. Doing the right thing, he married her. Because of this, it took longer for him to graduate with a Mechanical Engineering degree, as he worked “co-op” one semester and went to school the next, while his wife worked that semester. They are still together after 35+ years. Their daughter also is O.K., having been raised in a home with two parents that stayed together. This guy is my hero, “manning up” for ALL of the right reasons.
If you are unmarried and have s_ex you are chancing that you are to be a father. To be ready is irrelevant! Is any man or woman ever READY to be a parent? We all rise to the occasion, or fail to rise to the occasion. Great parents are committed and read and listen to those they view as good parents to LEARN; they try. There is no magic, it is just committed, diligent, hard work. If you do not want to do the work of parenting, then do not play at s_ex – for the purpose of s_ex is pro-creation, not your juvenile enjoyment of a rush of hormones. Caring about being happy is a selfish view of living. Be productive and worthy. That is satisfying.
A M E N!
The only purpose of sex is procreation?
I prosecuted child support cases in 4 counties in eastern North Carolina for many years. I first started in about 1980 and retired from that practice in about 2005. During that time, paternity testing improved dramatically and the costs dropped significantly. During that 25 year period, I begged every alleged father to have first, blood, and later genetic, paternity testing done. In most of the cases the alleged fathers refused. In the later years of my paternity practice, the costs got low enough that the State would move for these tests and advance the costs.
I once had one of the folks who worked at the labs tell me that about 40% of the alleged fathers that they tested turned out not to be the real father.
We found that folks who knew that they were the real father were a lot more regular in their payments. Furthermore, often the real father was better able to pay than a poor sap that the women initially named. They realized that they were getting welfare and didn’t care that the potential recovery was less since they got the same money anyway and that the richer guy was willing to pay to keep up her lifestyle if he was not paying child support too.
Having said all of that, I have three kids and never considered asking my wife to consent to paternity testing. We were married and being married before you have kids is a more certain thing than not being married. There is no way that any thinking man is going to ask that his wife submit to paternity testing if he wants to stay married and to have more kids. Furthermore, modern genetic testing can make some pretty specific predictions about paternity with samples from the kid and the father only. If you are a married guy and you worry about where your wife’s latest kid came from you can take the kid out for ice cream, get his mouth swabbed, get your mouth swabbed, and find out a lot of relevant stuff. There is no need to hack off your wife. (N.B. I have not done any of that for any of my kids either.)
One final thought: There are a lot of guys who are willing to pay for and raise kids who they are not related to. Think of adoptive fathers; think of a lot of good men who are good step-fathers. My take is that mothers love children when they are born. Fathers take longer to warm up, but once fathers warm up to a kid, they are more likely to do what it takes to protect that child. I recall reading studies that find that children of adoptive single fathers are slightly more successful than children of biological children of intact families. I am not certain where I read this and it was a long time ago, so I could be a little fuzzy on my facts. If I had to guess where I read it, I would guess that it was in The Bell Curve by Charles Murray et al.
“Our next generation is either dying in the womb or being abandoned outside of the womb. And that will sadly create a cultural cycle that does not bode well for America. Paternity tests are on the rise and no one is paying attention. We should be.”
What a sad, sad, and dumb statement. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with a father wanting to make sure that he is the real biological father of a child, especially with all the cases out there where the father is left raising a kid that is not his own
I seriously think you miss this person’s point, it is sad that we have to have paternity tests because as a society we have become more and more promiscuous with little regard to the consciences. However, I am in no way against paternity tests as I feel it is much better to establish whom the father is so that *BOTH* the Mother and Father are held financially responsible for the child.
The Sexual Revolution was designed to destroy the Christian Bourgeois social fabric, thus leaving the population beholden to the state for their well being. Take out the core institutions of the civilization, destroy the civilization.
It’s working a charm.
So you had a child out of wedlock and you are saying the father has no “…no honor or integrity?” Really? You are a slut who forces men to pay for your bastard spawn and you have the gall to complain when they want nothing to do with you. Don’t sleep with men you aren’t married to and that will solve your problems.
Paul Cooper says: “However, I am not arguing that a man should have to pay support for a child that is not his. My point is, the fact that so many guys are hoping to prove the child is not theirs is proof you have lots of guys not wanting to get “stuck” being a parent. If they didn’t want to get “stuck” they should have avoided sex.”
Here is the problem, you are putting the entire responsibility of sex outside of marriage on men. Does it seem reasonable that men who don’t want to have children should not have sex? At the same time, if a woman, within marriage, decides to not have a child she can get an abortion without her husbands permission. I am appealing to basic fairness. This just isn’t fair. That is why the Men’s Rights Movement exists and it is why so many men are attacking you and why so many feminists are agreeing with you.
Do you want to make common cause with feminism?
Mr. Cooper,
If your goal is to have a society in which fewer children are born out of wedlock then I share your goal. The way to that goal is not what we are doing now. Women should bear more responsibility. Incentives matter in economics and they matter in social policy. IOW, if you pay someone to do something they will do more of it.
My solution is shared parenting. If a couple cannot stay together then the courts should award 50/50 custody of the child to both parents with no child support. Both parents would work to support the child and the child would get to know its father and mother. But more importantly, women would lose a powerful incentive to having children out of wedlock- money.
What do you think?
If you pay someone to do something they will do more of it? You mean like PROSTITUTION?
DOLT.
Women should bear more responsibility?
Like carrying a child for 9 months? Breast-feeding? Caring, bathing, teaching etc. is just too little responsibility?
UNF___ING believable.
Paul,
you are an idiot. The australian family courts are a criminal cartel and this has been PROVEN. Further? You pastors are the biggest hypocrites of the lot. You ministers promote and support women breaking the commandments “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigbour” and “thou shalt not steal”. But no pastor I have asked has got an answer for “well, given the womens pass for those two commandments, why should men be bound by thou shalt not kill?”
I sincerely hope you burn in hell for this disgraceful article.
If you want to know more about me just google “crimes against fathers”.
Marriage requires a license, so what’s so different than a (sort of)license to begat children. I am anti-big government but logic and common sense speak to the necessity for all children born having their DNA tested and on file for use in any child custody case that may arise. Since it’s usually the male who gets dunned, he should be able to request a DNA test for the specific child in question. If he’s not the biological father, then he shouldn’t be required to pay support for years, unless he’s agreeable. Eventually, in a couple of generations, nearly every potential father would have his DNA on record from his birth, so every child born would have his match on record.
“But the majority of those cases are proving fatherhood in order to get a man to fulfill his requirement to pay child support. Court cases are on the rise all over the country tied to child-support. ”
Gentlemen. Child support is VOLUNTARY and if you learn how to NOT VOLUNTEER you can do so LAWFULLY. You do not have ANY FATHERLY RESPONSIBILITY if your right to be the father YOU CHOOSE TO BE is violated.
Men like this Paul character are truly disgusting. What he presents is no less than man-hatred. Firstly. A man has a RIGHT to know if he is the father of a child. Men establishing paternity should not be questioned in ANY way. I am one father who was denied paternity testing of children 14 and 16 in divorce.
Given that I was denied my RIGHT to paternity testing the LAWFUL PRESUMPTION is that I am NOT THE FATHER. Further? Being a father is MORE than having donated some DNA. The role of FATHER is a FAR more difficult and complicated job than the role of mother. So each man must find his OWN way to be the best father he can be.
If the state claims that it has superior fathering rights to the father and refuses to PROVE that apart from threatening you with MEN WITH GUNS AND CAGES then you are well advised to do what I did. That is WALK AWAY. PAY NOTHING. GIVE NO COOPERATION AT ALL. TELL THE JUDGE YOU WILL KILL HIM IF HE GIVES AN ORDER TO VIOLATE YOUR FREEDOM and BE ON YOUR WAY.
If the state claims OWNERSHIP of your children through THREAT OF FORCE then it is the STATES PROBLEM TO PAY FOR THOSE CHILDREN. NOT YOURS.
Why would ANY LAD choose to be a father when virtually ALL WESTERN WOMEN AND MEN take the position that the children can be kidnapped and relocated and the man be criminally victimised by the criminal women and criminal family court for no reason at all…or even because of HER adultery.
Lads? Do NOT become a father until we sort this mess out. And call liars and hypocrites like this Paul idiot the liars and hypocrites they are.
Where were MY christian sisters and brothers during MY divorce from a woman who had denounced christianity? They were supporting the woman of course. In direct contradiction to the word of GOD in THEIR BIBLE. I was so disgusted at the behaviour of christian men and women I renounced chistianity as the lie it is and christians as the hypocrites and liars they are.
“Paternity tests are on the rise and no one is paying attention.”
Paul, you idiot. The reason paternity tests are on the rise is that lads are finally being told the truth about women. That they are liars and hypocrites in the west in the main.
My fav#1 told me FLAT OUT that ALL WOMEN CONSIDER CUCKOLDING A MAN IS OK…
ALL WOMEN…
I checked this with many OTHER eastern european women and to a one they said yes, ALL WOMEN CONSIDER CUCKOLDING A MAN IS OK.
In a world where ALL WOMEN CONSIDER CUCKOLDING A MAN IS OK then ALL MEN should insist on DNA testing at BIRTH as a matter of ROUTINE.
By the way? Us men have been SCREAMING OUR HEADS OFF about the crimes women commit in the family courts. The perjury, kidnapping, extortion, theft and child abuse. How about you pastors start talking about THOSE CRIMES rather than men trying to DEFEND THEMSELVES AGAINST CRIMINAL WOMEN, eh?
Here you go Paul. Well done.
http://www.crimesagainstfathers.com/australia/Forums2/tabid/369/forumid/193/postid/1272/scope/posts/Default.aspx#1272
Our country values fair play and the level playing field. Simply put, we watch the baby come from the mother, so there is no doubt who the mother is.
Men deserve the same confidence in their parenthood. Plain and Simple. EVERYONE should be tested. false neg/pos are less than 0.1% and can be solved by re-testing.
ALL women should just withhold sex from men from here on out. No more prostitution. No more free love and no more marriage.
Sex can go the way of the dodo bird.
END OF PROBLEMS.
“ALL women should just withhold sex from men from here on out. No more prostitution. No more free love and no more marriage.”
Too late. We have internet porn. We are immune to your embargo. Before the century is over there will be children born of an artificial womb and then will not need women at all.
Is that a threat? I think the idea of women not having to have to give birth EVER again would be great! lulz
Delia:
Men are too stupid to only rely on masturbation or they would have been relying on that for years by now. Bill C is too much of a pussy to admit he is desperate for pussy and relies on internet porn because he can’t score any pussy so it’s easy for someone who is already a lonely loser to proclaim that ‘internet porn’ is all he needs (because that’s ALL HE HAS).
Regarding procreation? Boys are being born with smaller scrotums and tinier penises because of Phthalate Esters released from everything from plastic bottles to canned foods which causes Endocrine Disruption. What I am saying is, eventually we are going to be a world full of very girl men who often might even be sterile and there might come a day when the only way to conceive a child is to make synthetic sperm from a woman’s DNA. The only drawback is that female DNA sperm only creates females and eventually ‘man’kind will become non-existent.
Just thinking out loud.
I think the idea of replacing women with androids and artificial wombs a better proposition!
Delia,
“No more prostitution.”
So you think you should get to tell other women what to do. Typical fascist women. The ONLY reason you women hate on prostitutes so much is because they sell sex at a much more reasonable rate than wives do.
Here’s what I wrote in a men’s-rights forum:
Be patient, for that which cannot continue will not continue. Women ruthlessly exploit men individually through the family court system, and collectively through the welfare bureaucracy, but both depend on the strong arm of government.
That government is running on empty. Soon the Fed will have to shut off its printing presses, or the dollar will collapse Weimar-style. Either way, millions of women will lose their welfare benefits, and millions more will lose their government-subsidized jobs in education, social work, and health care. Law enforcement will focus on protecting what’s left of the government, not chasing “deadbeat” dads.
In other words, America will become another Argentina. When women see dirty, ragged single mothers and their kids eating out of trash bags, their attitude toward marriage will change real quick.
Dave,
but mens attitude to marriage will NOT change real quick. The current family law system in the west was introduced into Russia in 1917 by Lenin. It devastated russia so badly that after only 20 years of “no fault divorce” Stalin, yes STALIN re-introduced “hard to divorce” laws. But the damage was done. A generation of boys got a GOOD LOOK at exactly what women are like and they have passed that knowledge along. Even today you will hear russian women moan about how there are no good husbands around…..and the cause was the women revealed themselves. I date a lot of russian women so I am very aware of this.
Men like me willl NEVER let the lads forget just exactly how badly women have behaved in the west these last 30 years.
NEVER FORGET WE WERE BETRAYED BY OUR WOMEN.
“It used to be if a guy had a good chance of being the parent he was going to raise that child as his own. He knew he could be the father and was not going to go through the scandal and embarrassment of getting a test done.”
=> What a load of nonsense! This is the kind of thinking that does nothing more than promote men into being chumps for opportunistic women.
The real problem is men have been put on the defensive by women who lack the basic trait of integrity. They don’t rely on her, they rely on the technology to reveal the truth.
Good post. There is enough meat here to get my attention and cause me to share it with others. I own a Drug and Alcohol Testing facility and it’s important for me to see what others insights are with relation to drug use and abuse to see how what I do fits in with that. Your post about “Do your Teenage Children Take Drugs” was insightful- I bookmarked your blog and I’ll be back to see what else you post that I can learn from.
Great points, interesting article!