Men Unknowingly Raising Another Man's Child

[Severin]

"Research suggests that, as cases of teenage pregnancies, sexual infidelity and multiple partners increase, 1 in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man?s child.

With improvements in genetic testing, thousands of fathers every year are discovering that ?their? child is someone else?s. A study by scientists from Liverpool John Moores University concludes that 4 per cent of all men are unwittingly bringing up a child they have not fathered.

The researchers, led by Mark Bellis, of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool, analysed a wide range of international studies, looking at estimates of paternal discrepancy between 1950 and 2004.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, show that rates of cases where a father was not the biological father of his child ranged from 1 per cent in some studies to as many as 30 per cent. Experts generally agree that the rate is below 10 per cent. The Liverpool team said that their meta-analysis suggests a 4 per cent rate, meaning that about one in 25 families could be affected.

?For any father, identifying that the child they are raising as their biological progeny is actually sired by another man can have substantial health consequences,? the researchers said.

?Such knowledge can also destroy families, affecting the health of the child and mother as well as that of any man who is ultimately identified as the biological parent.?

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Bearing in mind, some of these might be genuine mistakes. But there are also many women who lie about who got them pregnant so to choose a better father figure/husband, or to hide infidelity. And at the heart of this is not just fathers who are raising someone else's child, but children who do not know their true parentage - a basic human right as far as I'm concerned. This can lead to traumatic psychological issues, and prevent them from knowing what health risks they might be genetically disposed towards - so lack of knowledge of true parentage could prove fatal for the child.

Questions -

1. If men could somehow trick a woman into raising another woman's child, how would they feel? Would they feel the man deserved punishment, even legal consequences?

1. If one if four families are affected, would you agree that compulsory DNA testing should be used on all new births? Again, imagine if it was women who were unwittingly bringing up another woman's child.

1. Do you agree that it is one of women's greatest responsibilities to be honest about whose child they are carrying, and any woman that lies about it is committing a hugely immoral act?

So does that mean They put our posts back, my first ever deletion, don't know if I should be proud or horrified :)

I think in all custody cases and all cases were ss are looking to remove a child or put a child on the at risk in my view its important to establish exactly if the parents are the parents, and to be honest I work with ss and have lots of cases were ss want to remove the child and place them with the father

Then the mother smugly say well she can't live with him because he is not her real dad.

Even had cases were mother or the father were not the real parents of the child and they are privately fostering a pretending its their child

This is old news. I've been teaching about these studies for years. I've always found that research from evolutionary psychology topics make the papers for all the wrong reasons. Its just a bit of sensationalism and makes people go 'ooh how dreadful'. Its always been the case that some men have been hoodwinked in the same way that some men ditch their families. Oh and yes the studies I use range from 1.4% to 20% - we tend to chuckle about which towns the data was taken!