It's a number I've heard bandied about. I guess now I'll have to back it up. Give me awhile. Assuming it's true, I don't think it's out of line to point it out when somebody says that the guys are just trying to legitimize abandonment.

Please read the thread, dear boy. It was specifically referring to legal abandonment of bastard children.

Sorry, Nomarchy, I missed this post earlier.

I was referring to:





"Sperm donors" had no legal obligations to their bastard children or their womb donors.

I did take umbrage at the possible implication that I, for one, had been advocating abandonment of one's offspring.

You know you have a battle ahead of you when someone of the caliber of our own miss bart doesn't understand where you are coming from.

Whoa. Isn't this just what you have been advocating -- that if you conceive a child with your womb donor, but sans marriage or some other contract, and the womb donor has legal right to abort while you have no legal right regarding the birthing either way, that you have no moral or legal obligation to the child born from your sperm donorship to the womb donor?

In short: NO!

There are so many outright fabrications and distortions of my position in your rendition that it's not even funny. It must be your Libra nature, or something.

You can say that, again!

If the right of a woman to terminate a pregnancy at her will is premised on her 'autonomy and privacy rights' there can follow no legal obligation on the part of an individual man or the community at large to support her and her issue. One's autonomous and private choice cannot logically produce a legalcompulsion on another to affirmatively support the results of that choice, absent prior agreement.

The mans legal obligation does not follow, rather it precedes the woman’s option to let him (as well as herself) off the hook.

So – both choose to create a pregnancy (or risk creating a pregnancy.)

Both are bound by law at that point to support the child which may be created by their choice (to have sex), assuming neither natural or induced abortion.

So both have mutually assumed the risk of state-mandated financial support for any issue at this point in the decision tree.

Next comes the “woman’s choice”.

Her sole choice at this point to abort will relieve both she and the man of (future) parental obligations, not just the man.

If she foregoes the option to let both off the hook, both remain committed to the same result they would have gotten were there no such thing as abortion.

Therefore, the woman’s decision on abortion can only relieve the man of his obligations as a parent, it does not create any obligations which would not have been present already absent the abortion.

Lucky the womenfolk don't congregate here or you'd REALLY be in trouble. ;P

Not so. He cannot choose to terminate a pregnancy nor to bring it to term without the woman's consent. She, on the other hand, can do both.



At what point? He is bound by law, you're arguing, to support any child that may result from the sexual intercourse in question. Nonetheless, whether it does or does not can be determined by the woman after intercourse, while it cannot be determined by the man.



I see your point, but the decision tree has a loop.



So, whether he is going to be asked, in practice, to fulfill any such obligations depends on the autonomous and private decision on the matter. For purposes of analysis, can you provide an analogous situation whereby such an implicit covenant (promise now to perform later) is entered by dint of participating in an activity involving at least one more party?



Despite my questions, above, I think your syllogism has a lot of merit. Therefore, to be on the safe side, absent prior contract, no man should ever place his semen where it may contribute to a conception.

None intended, and the seemingly gratuitous reference fails to eludicate.




See SpaceDude below -- which you already did.



Good enough.




I will happily settle for your conclusion, adding only that your first paragraph skips entirely over the creation of that pregnancy, which in my opinion avoids the very most critical and proximate cause of said logical and legal obligation. As I have said before, womb donor cannot (generally) get pregant by herself. Unless & until that customarily obtains, your argument will probably remain utterly unconvincing to me.

No distortions or fabrications ever intended.

You'll never believe this, though, but parking (and parking lots) are one of my few driving strengths and comfort zones.

Gratuitous reference? You're lucky I didn't say "damn the torpedoes" and let you have it.

Mind your characterizations, dearest. Take care not to take attempts at working out the analytical steps of a syllogism and turn them into calls for men to be absolved of any moral responsibility to their children.

Ok. I will haul out my abacus and count my blessings.

I do not know how many more times or ways I can say I do not intend to mischaracterize, fabricate or distort. From the very beginning of this discussion in some way-other-thread I have tried to understand what you and others were saying, have asked many questions and have worked to understand the answers. I have even asked "what am I not getting." And I am still getting what I am getting.

Please don't take it personally. That for sure would be an error.

BL.

Well, it's not as if you've actually put together an argument from principles, yourself. So, the fact that my argument "will probably remain utterly unconvincing to" you is largely immaterial.

Womb donor is a misnomer, by the way. You figure it out.

Finally, your argument boils down to saying that a man's mere participation in sexual relations creates a legal obligation to be the social father of any child whose genetic progenitor he happens to be. The notion that it creates a logical obligation is peculiar. Logic does not create obligations.

Let's deconstruct the patriarchal notion that genetic contribution creates legal obligations. So, the legal (and, for you, moral obligation) of a woman to a child arised strictly and singularly from her genetic similarity to that child? Let's discuss this . . .

All that is fine and good. The point is that you appear to have not had the good sense to figure out that I would find totally insulting your synopsis of my positiion as being identical to your preposterous rendition thereof, to the effect that men, absent prior contract, have no moral obligation to their children.

And who get's to put the price on that, absent an intact mother/father relationship?

Table 1.
Marital History by Sex for Selected Birth Cohorts, 1925-34 to 1965-74: Fall 1996
Characteristic 1925 to 1934 1935 to 1944 1945 to 1954 1955 to 1964 1965 to 1974
MEN (in thousands) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,668 11,446 18,094 22,019 18,666
Percent ever married by:
20 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4 25.5 24.8 18.6 11.3
25 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67.7 69.9 62.3 49.1 (X)
30 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84.7 84.7 77.0 69.2 (X)
35 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89.9 88.9 83.9 (X) (X)
40 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.9 91.3 87.9 (X) (X)
45 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93.0 92.9 (X) (X) (X)
50 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93.7 94.1 (X) (X) (X)
60 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94.5 (X) (X) (X) (X)

WOMEN (in thousands) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,374 12,157 18,664 22,624 18,955
Percent ever married by:
20 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50.3 51.9 44.9 33.6 25.2
25 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83.5 82.8 75.4 63.4 (X)
30 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91.5 90.0 84.1 78.8 (X)
35 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93.7 92.5 88.5 (X) (X)
40 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94.7 94.3 90.9 (X) (X)
45 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95.2 95.0 (X) (X) (X)
50 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95.6 95.3 (X) (X) (X)
60 years. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96.0 (X) (X) (X) (X)

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), 1996 Panel, Wave 2 Topical Module.

About 19.8 million children under 18 lived with one
parent (27.7 percent of all children under 18).
• The majority of children who lived with a single parent
in 1998 lived with their mother (84.1 percent). About
40.3 percent of these children lived with mothers who
had never been married. Children who lived with their
father only were more likely to be living with a divorced
father (44.4 percent) than with a never-married father
(33.3 percent).
• No other adults were present in the household for 55.7
percent of children living with single parents.
• About 4 million children lived in the household of their
grandparents, representing 5.6 percent of all children
under 18. Of the children living with their grandparents,
1.4 million had neither parent present.
• The proportion of married-couples who identified the
woman as the householder has tripled since 1990, from
7.4 percent in 1990 to 22.9 percent in 1998.

Still digging for the counterpart American study. Here's the Canadian table while you wait....




Of non-joint applications:

Year:
1991 1992 1993 1994
Wife makes application 72.75% 72.47% 73.42% 74.05%

Or for a more complete view (all applications):

Year:
1991 1992 1993 1994
Husband makes application

25.77% 25.37% 24.55% 23.87%
Wife makes application

67.85% 67.74% 67.82% 68.10%
Joint Application

6.34% 6.89% 7.63% 8.03%

Theories abound as to why it is so often women who file. Janis Magnusson, a Calgary divorce mediator, says she frequently sees women with unreal expectations of marriage and their partners. "Women expect a Prince Charming, while men just want a wife, sex, food and a job," she says. One of her clients left her husband for a younger man she found more exciting. But to her "great chagrin," the woman discovered after five years of marriage and two children that her new husband was a fake.

"His home was filled with easels holding half-finished paintings," recalls the woman. "He seemed so cultured. But once we married, I never once saw him paint a picture." Now back with her first husband (who had also remarried and separated), the woman says, "I joke that we originally divorced because he left wet towels on the bed. Seriously, he wasn't much help. But did I ever say, "Could you put in a load of laundry?" No, I was busy being the martyr. I just fumed, stomped and slammed. Now we talk."

"I did avoid conflict," her husband admits. "I'm a police officer and I treat words as bullets. I know you don't get them back. However, both my wives also had unrealistic ideas. I wasn't playing the husband role the way they perceived it in the fairy tale world. But men are different. They don't believe in gift horses or fairy tales."

Alberta Report, January 11, 1999, p. 31
Spit-on-men—the new media game

To explain the preponderance of divorce filed by women, some blame the media for taking a toll on men's image over the past 40 years. Dagwood regressed to Homer Simpson, culminating in today's advertising which often reduces men to male bimbos. "My wife recently pointed out a billboard that made her angry," reports Michael Brady, Acting Research Director for Human Life International Canada, "It showed a mother, dog, kids and a case of cola in a boat, motoring away from shore, leaving dad behind. The slogan was, 'There is nothing more important than X cola.' Others point to television commercials such as the Eaton's man chained to the stove, or a woman saying, "I have two kids—three, counting my husband." A cosmetics company announces that its product was "not tested on animals, except on men."
"Latent contempt for men has now given way to open hostility," writes Lysiane Gagnon in the September issue of EnRoute magazine. "Imagine the reaction," she says, "if a male journalist talked about women the way columnist Rosie DiManno talked about men recently in the Toronto Star. 'Men are from another planet, sent here by spaceships to copulate with female earthlings and and propagate the species—a task for which science has rendered them all but redundant. We need keep only a handful of donors on a sperm farm for that purpose, where they can subsist on pizza and beer and Playboy magazine...Men think with their ding-a-lings and screw up with their brains.'"


The rest of the piece.

Child Custody Policies and
Divorce Rates in the United States
Richard Kuhn
Children's Rights Council
Washington, D.C.

John Guidubaldi, D.Ed.
John Carroll University (Cleveland, OH)
and Kent State University (Kent, OH)

11th Annual Conference of the Children's Rights Council October 23-26, 1997. Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1997, Children's Rights Council. Reproduction with attribution is permitted.

Abstract

This paper compares divorce rate trends in the United States in states that encourage joint physical custody (shared parenting) with those in states that favor sole custody. States with high levels of joint physical custody awards (over 30%) in 1989 and 1990 have shown significantly greater declines in divorce rates in following years through 1995, compared with other states. Divorce rates declined nearly four times faster in high joint custody states, compared with states where joint physical custody is rare. As a result, the states with high levels of joint custody now have significantly lower divorce rates on average than other states. States that favored sole custody also had more divorces involving children. These findings indicate that public policies promoting sole custody may be contributing to the high divorce rate. Both social and economic factors are considered to explain these results.

I have not myself put together an argument from principles? I have argued the principles of basic biology. The legal obligation comes from society's adoption of a certain base level of child welfare protection and the imposition of that on the genetic progenitors. To say this is not "logical" seems to me to split semantic hairs. To say it is a patriarchal construction seems also to me to avoid that biological reality.

YMMV.



Well, I did have the sense (of daring) to attempt to question and understand your position. That may not have been good sense.

Custody Policies and the Divorce Rate
It might be argued that joint custody could encourage divorce, by making divorce "easier." On the other hand, widespread acceptance of joint physical custody might be expected to reduce the divorce rate, because joint custody makes it difficult for an angry parent to hurt the other by taking away the children, or to relocate and thereby eliminate interaction with the other parent. In addition, an economic argument has been advanced that high levels of child support associated with sole custody may encourage divorce, because custody of children represents an asset for the custodial parent to the extent that child support payments exceed the cost of raising a child (Muhtaseb, 1995). Because joint physical custody results in a more equal division of parenting time, child support payments may be lower, although there are still payments unless both parents have the same income. States that more frequently award joint physical custody may thus see a decline in the divorce rate. To date, no study has provided empirical evidence to support either hypothesis about the effect of joint custody policies on the divorce rate.

Another happy lil tale...










Political Commentary

Studies also show that many noncustodial fathers who do not pay child support simply can't afford to. Some are unemployed or on sick leave. In fact, one of the best predictors of nonpayment is the unemployment rate.

Maintenance-enforcement programs are ruining too many lives by Candis McLean

Rick Fowler remembers the "gutwrenching" case that made him vow to commit every spare minute to helping people known contemptuously as "deadbeat parents." The case concerned "Edward Cooper" (not his real name), an Albertan formerly married to a doctor. She had employed him during their marriage and, since the wages were a write off, paid him extremely well for his labour. Yet upon their divorce, although he had lost that job and was now earning only $8 an hour, the judge inexplicably based Mr. Cooper's support payments upon the wages he had been earning while in the employ of his ex-wife. Months later, in a presentation to the Alberta government's Maintenance Enforcement Program (MEP), Mr. Cooper's girlfriend revealed the man's merciless, behind-the-scenes struggle while his ex-wife lived in a luxury home and drove the children to music lessons in her SUV.

"When I first met him in 1997," the girlfriend explained, "he was living in a little room in Chinatown. At that time he had no car-really, he had nothing materially. Financially I wondered how he even survived. When he started as an apprentice cabinetmaker for $8 an hour, the only thing that I saw happen was that he worked very long, hard days and still had nothing to show for it. Legal bills grew as he tried to get a maintenance order to reflect his actual income. Edward didn't even get the opportunity to see his kids, yet not once did I hear him complain of having to pay child support.

"He lived on nothing. He never had food in his house. And yet, somehow, maintenance enforcement was able to garnishee wages on five occasions. After the deductions, he took home less than he was paying for maintenance-on an order that was out of date. He had obtained a new order for significantly less payments per month, yet somehow MEP enforced the old one that was based on a significantly higher income. I believe it was due to pressure placed on MEP staff by a relentless, demanding ex-wife, who used her position as a doctor to influence the action that was taken. "Falling behind in his rent, Mr. Cooper was evicted and unable even to afford a bus pass. "Then his parents gave him $200 to buy an old car; it took a lot of gas and it had no heat. For a little while, Edward had hopes that this vehicle would allow him to seek employment in the field for which he was trained, and thus get a chance to try to build a life. He literally was trying, so very hard, to pull himself up by the bootstraps. Then the car died, and once again things went down hill. "I remember one month that Edward was two days late making his maintenance payment. His ex-wife had him into court and she wanted him put in jail. Of course, even before that case was heard, the payment had been made. Edward fainted in the courtroom, the pressure was just so great. The judge commented, "What are you trying to do? Destroy this man?' Obviously, that was [the ex-wife's] objective. Unfortunately, MEP helped her in doing so."

Finally Mr. Cooper was forced to live in his car, and eventually, in 1999, he died in his car, using the exhaust to end his life. "Edward actually died of a broken heart," his bereaved girlfriend maintained. "It was unjust, just plain wrong, what this system allowed. I blame [the ex-wife], but she only did what the system let her do. In the end, Edward was destroyed. His life literally hung in the balance, and when he needed Alberta justice to support his case, it failed him, setting him on a slippery slope on which, unfortunately, he never regained his footing.

Before the 1960s, social pressures and legal requirements made divorce relatively uncommon in the U.S. Divorce typically required grounds severe enough that a reasonable person could not expect the marriage to continue: adultery, desertion, abuse, insanity or imprisonment of a spouse. With a few exceptions, states adopted unilateral "no-fault'" divorce laws in the 1960s and 1970s, which allowed a spouse to abandon a marriage without traditional grounds. Divorce was actually encouraged by some as an antidote to boredom, or for other reasons that might have been considered frivolous a generation before. About 80% of U.S. divorces today result from the unilateral decision of one spouse, rather than the joint decision of both (Gallagher, 1996), with the spouse who files for divorce first often having an advantage.

Here it is.

If one investigates the simple question, "who initiates divorce," we find from the Monthly Vital Statistics Report May 21, 1991 (NCHS, 1991), that from 1975 to 1988, in families with children present, wives file for divorce in approximately 2/3 of the cases each year. In 1975, 71.4% of the cases were filed by women, and in 1988, 65% were filed by women. While these statistics alone do not compel a conclusion that women anticipate advantages to being single, rather than remaining in the marriage, they do raise that reasonable hypothesis. If women can anticipate a clear gender bias in the courts regarding custody, they can expect to be the primary residential parent for the children. If they can anticipate enforcement of financial child support by the courts, they can expect a high probability of support monies without the need to account for their expenditures. Clearly they can also anticipate maintaining the marital residence, receiving half of all marital property, and gaining total freedom to establish new social relationships. Weighing these gains against the alternative of remaining in an unhappy marriage may result in a seductive enticement to obtain a divorce, rather than to resolve problems and remain married.

Emphasis mine. And it's not an aside, it's the crux of the issue.

The problem with this is?

BTW, it is not "mere" participation. It is the holy grail of participation.

Shortly after I forwarded an article (search) on the persistent and aggravated abuse directed at Stephen Hawking (cosmologist and author of the best-selling A Brief History of Time who suffers from an advanced case of A.L.S. that left him virtually paralyzed), I received a response from a journalist who thought that Stephen Hawking had it coming what he was being subjected to. She is a great conservative journalist who often writes in support of fathers and families. Her remark seemed out of character.

I tried to correct her on the point she had brought up, but in doing so we seemed to move farther apart to polar opposites of the discussion. That puzzled me. What I wrote next to her made matters worse. A simple example I used to illustrate a general social bias against men got taken by her to be an ad-hominem attack against her as a woman. But that provided the clue that solved the puzzle. I sent back the following response to her.
How come I feel that I am being stereotyped? But I understand now what puzzled me before about your reaction. It's all a misunderstanding! I didn't make myself sufficiently clear.

What you thought was an ad-hominem attack, wasn't. It was criticism (very mild, too) of what you had said. That is a critical distinction. What you had said is far more typically said by men than by women. I would not have dreamed in my wildest dreams that a remark like, "Would you still say 'humph' if the sexes were reversed in such a case?" would trigger your ire.

Men are being looked upon as cads, on average unjustly, and again, far more often by men than by women. If anyone (woman or man) says something that is in line with the general sentiment of society, something that men are more likely to say than women do, and if I then ask if he would say the same thing if the victim in that case would have been a woman, how can that be construed as an ad-hominem attack on account of his sex? I addressed the same question close to a thousand times to specific individual men.

The issue was not whether you, as a woman, said the right thing or not. The issue is that most of society, and men far more often than women, see women as victims even if the perceived victims don't deserve victim status, and that men, even if they are truly victims, are being seen as people that deserved what they got. It is not only feminists that put women on pedestals. Most of non-feminist men and women do! That's the handicap that men are up against.

I remember that we once had a discussion about the code of western chivalry. The chivalry code is a very serious burden on men. There was never anything like it for women, other than that once upon a time women were held responsible to be feminine women, wives, mothers and willing objects of veneration, but the feminists successfully took that away from women, except for the aspect that if women still want to be feminine women, wives, mothers and objects of veneration, they still have the right to do so — at the risk of being vilified, ostracized, castigated and discriminated against as "enemies of the race of women". (1)

Freedom of choice in such matters exists only for women, not for men. Men are rigidly locked in the embrace by western chivalry.

That implies that men are still and always obligated to live by the chivalry code, because women's status demands that.
What that obligation means is that a real man pleases his woman, and if his woman turns on him because he failed in her eyes, he deserves it and had it coming. [That already at an early age puts boys and men between a rock and a hard place. The demands placed on boys to prepare them for a life of servitude are tough ones, and there is nothing comparable for girls.(2)]

BOY WANTED

This "want ad" appeared in the early part of [the 20th] century.

WANTED - A boy that stands straight, sits straight, acts straight, and talks straight;

A boy whose fingernails are not in mourning, whose ears are clean, whose shoes are polished, whose clothes are brushed, whose hair is combed, and whose teeth are well cared for;

A boy who listens carefully when he is spoken it, who asks questions when he does not understand, and does not ask questions about things that are none of his business;

A boy that moves quickly and makes as little noise about it as possible;

A boy who whistles in the street, but does not whistle where he ought keep still;

A boy who looks cheerful, has already smile for everybody, and never sulks;

A boy who is polite to every man and respectful to every woman and girl;

A boy who does not smoke cigarettes and has no desire to learn how;

A boy who is more eager to know how to speak good English that to talk slang;

A boy that never bullies other boys nor allows other boys to bully him;

A boy who, when he does not know a thins says, "I don’t know," and when has made a mistake says "I’m sorry," and when he is asked to do a thing says "I’ll try";

A boy who looks you right in the eye and tells the truth every time;

A boy who is eager to read good books;

A boy who would rather put in his spare time at the YMCA gymnasium that to gamble for pennies in a back room;

A boy who does not want to be "smart" nor in any wise attract attention;

A boy who would rather lose his job or be expelled from school than to tell a lie or be a cad;

A boy whom other boys like;

A boy who is at ease in the company of girls;

A boy who is not sorry for himself, and not forever thinking and talking about himself;

A boy who is friendly with his mother, and more intimate with her than anyone else;

A boy who makes you feel good when he is around;

A boy who is not a goody-goody, a prig, or a little pharisee, but just healthy, happy, and full of life;

This boy is wanted everywhere. The family wants him, the school wants him, the office wants him, the boys want him, the girls want him, all creation wants him.

Source unknown
Quoted in The Children's Book of Virtues
by William J. Bennet

"It is an amazing thing to see in our city the wife of a shoemaker, or a butcher, or a porter dressed in silk with chains of gold at the throat, with pearls and a ring of good value... and then in contrast to see her husband cutting the meat, all smeared with cow's blood, poorly dressed, or burdened like an ass, clothed with the stuff from which sacks are made... but whoever considers this carefully will find it reasonable, because it is necessary that the lady, even if low-born and humble, be draped with such clothes for her natural excellence and dignity, and that the man [be] less adorned as if a slave, or a little ass, born to her service."

— Lucrezia Marinella, Venice, Italy, 1600
The Nobility and excellence of Women Together
With the Defects and Deficiencies of Men

Growing pains. To use the word "growing" loosely. I am sympathetic to fathers who cannot afford support for their share of a broken household as well as their own. I barely know how two-parent families support themselves and children. I do not know how this ship will be re-righted, but the notions of individual fulfillment run into a hard wall of financial reality.

All to be covered in the class.




Thanks, Wardlet. Support (I think?) from expected quarters.

God don't strike me dead. It's a minefield in here.

Oh, how far we've fallen.

The most curious sexism in the world is the woman's belief that only one sex is sexist

ROFL nothing has changed!

Is this piece of drivel an original tritism?

Not to be overly oxymoronic.

Most PARTICULARLY my nearly unconquerable sense of humor.

My bad. Don't ever change

The early communists called sexual freedom "free love" (see Communist Manifesto). Is there truly such a thing as sexual freedom? Is free love free? Does it bring freedom? *

Sexual relations bring consequences and responsibilities that are often neither intended nor wanted or optional but are nevertheless inescapable.

"Sexual freedom" is often not freedom but slavery and indenture, whether a child that possibly results is that of the alleged father or not, or whether the alleged father of the child is married or not to the mother of the child.

Results of paternity test in various locations show a disturbing fact, depending on location (anywhere in the developed nations) and circumstances under which paternity testing is done:

In from one in 10 to one in three of cases of individual children the alleged father is not the biological father of the child.

Thanks to Dean Hughson and Lindsay Jäckel:

What a massive abuse (of trust) and defrauding (of income) this is.

Mandatory DNA tests after birth are one possibility to forestall this fraud and abuse.

Lindsay

Now, where have I heard that before?

I think Nomarchy is being mischievous.

There is no logical breach of contract by one party exercising an option to later void the contract, provided that unilateral violability option is agreed to by both parties of the original contract.

The Times (Britain)
23 January 2000

One in seven fathers 'not the real parent'

Lois Rogers, Medical Correspondent

At least one in 10 children was not sired by the man who believes he is their father, according to scientists in paternity testing laboratories.

Some laboratories have reported the level of "unexpected" paternity to be as high as one in seven when they perform DNA genetic tests on blood samples from supposed parent and offspring.

There are now seven government-approved laboratories doing paternity testing. Cellmark Diagnostics in Abingdon is the largest and receives more than 10,000 requests a year. One in five of them is "private" and has not been ordered as a result of a court or Child Support Agency dispute.

David Hartshorne, spokesman for Cellmark, said that in about one case in seven, the presumed father turns out to be the wrong man.

"It is surprising how often the mother is wrong about the person she thinks is the father," he said. Marriage breakdown and more births outside marriage have increased disputes about paternity and the desire for testing, he added.

In addition to DNA evidence, other studies of mass blood samples suggest that increasing numbers of women are unsure if their husbands are the fathers of their children.

This phenomenon of misattributed fatherhood has been investigated in a newly published study by social scientists at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Oliver Curry, the principal researcher, said long working hours and commuting by fathers could contribute to uncertainty about whether children have been fathered by the man who is bringing them up.

"It can have major consequences for the way men treat their supposed children and the amount of time, money and emotion they invest in them," Curry said. "It can range through the entire spectrum from serious abuse to deciding not to pay for their education, or not buying them the latest expensive trainers."

The team from the LSE is calling for investigations to be set up by the government's new National Family and Parenting Institute. They believe that mistrust over paternity may be an overlooked factor in family breakdown. Women are driven by primitive urges to seek the optimum genes for their children, which can lead to them sleeping with a "high social-status Casanova" as well as their regular partner during the fertile period around ovulation, researchers claim.

David Buss, a psychologist from the University of Texas who is about to publish a new study on the subject, said: "A proportion of these misattributed fathers will believe that the child is genuinely theirs, and often the mother tries to foster that belief."

He also estimates that the tendency for women to shop around for the best genes leads to them making mistakes about who has fathered their child.

Soraya Khashoggi, 57, former wife of arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, has revealed how DNA tests established her 18-year-old daughter, Petrina, to be the child of Jonathan Aitken, the disgraced former Conservative minister.

Khashoggi said her ex-husband had completely accepted Petrina: "He gave her his name without ever asking who her true father was," she said.

Paula Yates, the television personality, discovered at 37 that her real father was Hughie Green, the Opportunity Knocks star.

"We call these 'suspicious spouse' cases," says Jennifer Clay, sales and marketing director at Helix Biotech, a Richmond company that does private DNA testing. For $860 Helix will compare two samples of DNA -- from blood or cheek cells, for example-to see if their sources are related. The cost rises to $1,600 if the sample has to be extracted from more difficult sources, such as discarded chewing gum, or Kleenex, or Band-Aids. Helix receives about 100 privately-funded cases a month (though suspicious spouse cases are a minority of these). Its business has doubled in the last four years.
"Bringing forward this kind of legal certainty could have widespread effects," says Darrel Reid, president of Focus of the Family Canada. "Certainly we will see an increase in the number of paternity suits, bitter marital battles,' an upsurge in divorce hearings." Reid says technology is now catching up to the culture of sexual permissiveness. 'We're really paying the price now for a lifestyle that has encouraged infidelity and has encouraged consumerism in matters sexual," he says.