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How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

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Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#81

Post by bitshiftfaced »

mcphage wrote: post #79
bitshiftfaced wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the marginal risk from the blood test be zero, since they do a little blood prick on their foot anyway? Also, there's a second order effect you're ignoring: a mandated paternity test would change expectant mothers' behavior leading up to the birth. You wouldn't try to dupe someone if you knew you'd be found out. Or, if you weren't sure, you'd more likely be transparent.

> Wouldn't the marginal risk from the blood test be zero, since they do a little blood prick on their foot anyway? The source of risk isn't performing the test, the source of risk is the father getting upset and killing the mother and/or child.

I did some looking, and it's so rare that there aren't any go-to statistics to cite. There are some reports of men committing murder after a paternity test, but it's unclear to me how what you're saying is anything more the speculation.

It might actually be that mandatory paternity tests reduces the background rate of familicide. All of the reports that I could find were only after the father had invested considerable time into raising the child as their own. The stakes of the deception are much higher. But if they know the day the baby is born (or earlier), then it's much easier to walk away. It also makes it pointless for the deception to happen in the first place.

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#83

Post by swat535 »

lores wrote: post #39
jorvi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is nuts is that in some countries, its illegal for the father to unilaterally have a paternity test done. I know for France that if you have it done unilaterally and thus illegally you are still on the hook for child support until a legal test is done, which either the mother needs to agree to or needs to be agreed on by the court. IMO a paternity test should just be mandated to be done immediately at birth (or…

In most countries, including France, you are on the hook for child support if you named yourself as a parent. In France you may contest it by applying to court during the first five years, after that only a prosecutor can take the steps to revoke that status. Between the unfairness of making an adult pay for a child who isn't theirs, and that of throwing an innocent child into financial distress, protecting the child…

>Between the unfairness of making an adult pay for a child who isn't theirs, and that of throwing an innocent child into financial distress

As others have stated above, this isn't really about protecting "family harmony" / "saving the child", it’s about cost.

If paternity tests were easily accessible, many men would easily contest child support and if successful, they would opt out. The state benefits from keeping paternity disputes out of court because it ensures that private individuals, rather than government welfare programs, remain responsible for child support.

If too many men successfully challenged paternity, the state would be forced to provide financial aid for more children, increasing costs. Restricting paternity tests shifts the burden away from taxpayers and onto unwitting fathers, all while claiming it’s about social stability.

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#84

Post by ggm »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #4
ggm wrote: post #2

Nurture not nature!

I don’t read anything in the article related to nurture vs nature. Can you explain why you mention it?

don't you think the rate of non-family births plays to the balance between acquired and inherited aspects of existence?

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#85

Post by 123yawaworht456 »

Thiez wrote: post #78
123yawaworht456 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This 'random kid' stuff is absurd. The child is five or older. For all these years you have been calling it 'my son' or 'my daughter', and it has been calling you 'papa' or 'dad'. You've changed its diapers, sang it to sleep, fed it, clothed it, played with it, taught it words, hugged it after a bad dream. You are its world. If after all that time it turns out to be not genetically yours I'm sure that hurts. Probably…

[flagged]

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#86

Post by tycho-newman »

rachofsunshine wrote: post #31
tycho-newman wrote: post #14

There's lots of variations across cultures. You could make the (lazy) generalization that men do not want to invest in propagating genes belonging to another man. But then the Himba have a high level of extra-pair paternity (EPP). How does this make sense evolutionarily? Maybe a high level of EPP means that more members of the community share your genes? Which gives you an incentive to care for offspring that are fat…

Sometimes it helps to just remember that we're talking about people. Like most people, Himba men mostly adopt the norms of their culture, and structure the way they think about the world through that lens. For a Himba man, it is normal to love children that were born via another father. Half of them were raised by fathers who were not their own bio-parents! It doesn't represent a threat to his masculinity, because hi…

This sounds to me like western men would be better off in Himba society. They get more sex and less misogynistic!

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#87

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

thefz wrote: post #70
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rationale is that apparently due to rampant adultery a lot more fathers than previously thought are raising another man's kids without knowing it (apparently about 10% last time I read about it, also on HN) and since raising kids to adulthood is very expensive and so if the men could easily find out their kids are not their own, then the man can legally opt-out of that financial responsibility then the French sta…

> then the French state/taxpayer has to pick up the tab for the mother's adultery Why not the biological father? That would make sense.

In theory, yes. In practice, it would mean finding and forcing all potential fathers to do the tests. Hard to imagine anyone would agree to that.

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#88

Post by alchemist1e9 »

ggm wrote: post #84
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t read anything in the article related to nurture vs nature. Can you explain why you mention it?

don't you think the rate of non-family births plays to the balance between acquired and inherited aspects of existence?

but the article has nothing to do with traits and never discussed anything related to acquired or inherited. the comment just seems unconnected to me.

Also the conclusion is that the rate of unrelated children is remarkably low not high.

Re: How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?

#90

Post by dang »

cess11 wrote: post #33
cess11 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you kidding? It's a political pamphlet, many scientists have aimed criticism at it.

In my headcanon the downvotes are from dudes that read The Selfish Gene in high school and got some feeling of epiphany, and now did a bit of web searching that angered them. Dawkins is a radical genetic reductionist, this book is his defense of this position. In the face of criticism he has moved on from the conclusions he presents in it towards a focus on phenotype reminiscent of older biological paradigms. One obv…

Can you please edit out swipes and putdowns from your posts here? Your comment contains some interesting information and would be much better without that first sentence.

We've had to ask you this more than once recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42605019

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42554816

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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