Important points are arranged in bullet form.
Mommy's little secret
I'll never be able to look at any human the same way again.
Whenever I see a foid, I can only see an adulterous whore. Whenever I see a non-Chad, all I can see is someone doomed to a life of involuntary celibacy … or involuntary cuckoldry.
Mommy's little secret
Hospital staff have felt bound to keep the secret from [cuckold]. But when they told the mom [that the child had a different father], it came as no surprise; it rarely does.
- It's now widely accepted among those who work in genetics that roughly 10 percent of us are not fathered by the man we believe to be dad. Geneticists have stumbled upon this phenomenon in the course of conducting large population studies and hunting for genes that cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis. They find full siblings to be half-siblings, fathers who are genetic strangers to more than one of their children and uncles who are much closer to their nieces and nephews than anyone might guess.
- Non-paternity is believed to cut across all socio-economic classes and many cultures.
- It exposes the myth of female monogamy and utterly shakes the assumption that women are biologically driven to single-mate bliss.
- Even the most learned among us are grappling with the implications. Last month, the 10-percent non-paternity rate was cited during a science seminar for judges in Halifax.
- A British survey conducted between 1988 and 1996 by Robin Baker, a former professor at the University of Manchester, confirmed the 10-percent figure. That seems high to skeptics such as Dalhousie University geneticist Paul Neumann, although even he admitted that "my colleague, who's a woman, tells me women have no trouble believing it. . . . It's the men who can't."
Bernard Dickens, a specialist in health law and policy at the University of Toronto, said that in another British example, the non-paternity rate was three times that.
In the early 1970s, a schoolteacher in southern England assigned a class science project in which his students were to find out the blood types of their parents. The students were then to use this information to deduce their own blood types (because a gene from each parent determines your blood type, in most instances only a certain number of combinations are possible). Instead, 30 percent of the students discovered their dads were not their biologically fathers.
- The notion of a woman carrying the child of someone other than her partner is older than the Christmas story itself. No geneticist believes non-paternity to be purely the product of modern immorality; they have been tripping over the infidelities of earlier generations for decades.
- Logistically, it may seem that only men are naturally programmed for multiple partners. After all, they can produce sperm by the thousands 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and do it well into their retirement years. Women, on the other hand, are limited to the eggs they were born with, maturing one a month and not much past their fourth decade of life. The precious few shots that women have at reproduction may drive them to seek the best mate for prospective offspring - though the decision might be wholly subconscious.
- In 1999, a questionnaire in Britain found that most women tended to be unfaithful to their long-term partners around the time they were most fertile. That same year, researchers at St. Andrew's University in Scotland concluded that women seem to desire different types of men at different times of the month. When they are most likely to conceive, they are attracted to men who have very masculine features, preferring more feminine men when they are not ovulating.
- The researchers suggested that women may subconsciously feel that beefy men may make a better biological contribution to a baby, but softer features may signal a better father. And strangers may have a biological advantage. "There is actually data from Britain," said sexual behavior expert Judith Lipton, "that suggests a woman may be more likely to conceive with a fresh partner because a woman can essentially develop antibodies against her regular partner's sperm, so that she may be more likely to be impregnated by fresh sperm."
- Between 30 and 50 percent of women cheat on their partners, compared with 50 to 80 percent of men, said Dr. Lipton, a psychiatrist with the Swedish Medical Center in Washington who last year co-wrote The Myth of Monogamy with her husband, David Barash. "This jibes with the idea that as many as 10 per cent of these relations may result in pregnancy," she said, explaining that women may cheat as an escape from a bad marriage, for revenge on a cheating partner, to find a better provider, or just for fun.
- It has been only recently that researchers learned just how hard faithful females are to find in any species. Dr. Barash, a zoologist and professor of psychology at the University of Washington, explained how it was generally known that most mammals are rarely monogamous.
- With the 1980s advent of DNA fingerprinting, a quick molecular test that, among other things, tells scientists whether two creatures are genetically related, researchers have realized social monogamy has little bearing on sexual monogamy in the animal kingdom. "A lot of hanky-panky goes on even if two creatures set up house together," Dr. Barash said. Despite thousands of hours of observation, birds managed to fool not only their mates into thinking they were faithful, but their observers. Yet DNA tests show that 10 to 50 per cent of birds are fathered by a male other than the one sharing the nest.
- In part, researchers figured females would be deterred from cheating since they knew the risks of losing a male by fooling around - their mate might stop foraging to feed the hungry offspring, cutting off the animal equivalent of child support, or worse, turn violent. Yet this, he said, seems only to have inspired females to perfect the art of secrecy and deception: They persistently sneak off in search of stronger genes, better feeding grounds, good providers and protectors.
- Nowadays the hope that fidelity is compatible with wildlife has all but vanished. DNA testing is crossing one species after another off the list. Of 4,000 mammalian species, only 3 per cent are still considered candidates. Birds, bees, snails, snakes, fish, frogs… not even mites are monogamous.
None of this should imply that humans are incapable of monogamy, he added. "Saying something is natural is often used to justify unacceptable behavior. It's natural to poop on the floor, but we spend a lot of time becoming house broken."
Morgan Wise remembers how in 1999 the doctor rose from his chair, walked around the desk and sat down in front of him. Mr. Wise's youngest son had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis years earlier, but a medical test showed Mr. Wise did not carry a CF gene.
"My first thought was that they must have misdiagnosed my son," the 40-year-old railway engineer from Big Spring, Texas, said in an interview this week.
But then the doctor looked him squarely in the eye and said: "Morgan, do you have any reason to think this boy might not be yours?"
The possibility seemed outlandish. He had been married to the same woman for 13 years and they had had three boys and a girl before they broke up in 1996. But for peace of mind, he decided to go ahead with paternity tests.
In March of 1999, the results arrived by mail - a creased piece of paper telling him that not one of the three boys was his.
"I felt anger toward [my first wife] and sadness, and I felt so sorry for my kids," Mr. Wise recalled. "I told my boys, 'I love you all, you'll always be my sons, the only difference is now I'm not your birth father.' "
Despite this revelation, a district court judge ruled that Mr. Wise had to continue paying child support for the three boys. Based on a 500-year-old common law, most states operate on the presumption that a husband is the father of any child born to his wife during a marriage.
Mr. Wise took his case to the media, hoping to generate political support and contact other men in a similar situation. Instead, he angered the judge, who revoked his visitation rights to the children but left him responsible for $1,100 in monthly support.
"This," Mr. Wise warned, "could happen to anyone."
"My first thought was that they must have misdiagnosed my son," the 40-year-old railway engineer from Big Spring, Texas, said in an interview this week.
But then the doctor looked him squarely in the eye and said: "Morgan, do you have any reason to think this boy might not be yours?"
The possibility seemed outlandish. He had been married to the same woman for 13 years and they had had three boys and a girl before they broke up in 1996. But for peace of mind, he decided to go ahead with paternity tests.
In March of 1999, the results arrived by mail - a creased piece of paper telling him that not one of the three boys was his.
"I felt anger toward [my first wife] and sadness, and I felt so sorry for my kids," Mr. Wise recalled. "I told my boys, 'I love you all, you'll always be my sons, the only difference is now I'm not your birth father.' "
Despite this revelation, a district court judge ruled that Mr. Wise had to continue paying child support for the three boys. Based on a 500-year-old common law, most states operate on the presumption that a husband is the father of any child born to his wife during a marriage.
Mr. Wise took his case to the media, hoping to generate political support and contact other men in a similar situation. Instead, he angered the judge, who revoked his visitation rights to the children but left him responsible for $1,100 in monthly support.
"This," Mr. Wise warned, "could happen to anyone."
I'll never be able to look at any human the same way again.
Whenever I see a foid, I can only see an adulterous whore. Whenever I see a non-Chad, all I can see is someone doomed to a life of involuntary celibacy … or involuntary cuckoldry.
Last edited:
