dp has just made such an offensive statement....

[inbetweener]

I am so angry.

We were having a conversation about an article in the paper about babies and all of a sudden he pipes up with " well I think a DNA test should be offered as standard as soon as your baby is born " Wtf !!!!!

I asked him why and he said that it would stop a lot of men being fooled and forced to bring up another man's child !

I have just flown into a rage and we have had a massive row. He seems not to see how fucking offensive that is. I can't get through to him that that suggests there is no trust !! He said, yeah but it eliminates doubt !!!!!
What !!!
Am I wrong to be so offended ? And wondering where my dh is and who this Dick is in his place !!

at people thinking that DNA tests will become routine for all newborns. I guess British society is heading towards becoming one big Jeremy Kyle show then.

CaoNiMa yes but who has said that in this thread?

OP have you been letting him watch Jeremy Kyle again?

"women's rights and/or feelings don't come into this, don't you see? Men have to be protected from devious witches like us."

" this is just another stick to beat women with"

'The OP's DH's view is offensive, because it expresses the view that a woman is just a vehicle for a man's seed.'

there really is some crap flying around on this thread.

I darent ever let him watch Jeremy Kyle. As soon as the whole paternity episodes start he just starts ranting about how angry he would be " if someone did that to him ". Oh really you don't say, I'd never habe guessed that was your point of view !!
Anyway, thanks everyone for your input. Dh swears it wasn't a dig at me, I personally still think its a shit view to have but hey Ho.

Mega, I was thinking more about Dna testing for genetic vulnerabilities and so on, not routine paternity testing!

What SGM just said.
I think you are completely right to be upset OP, especially in the circumstances you describe.

As for his arguments, they appear to originate in the idea that women lying about paternity of their children is common and being truthful is not. When the situation is in fact the other way round. A few might lie, most do not.

Relatinships should be mutual

I would also think this should be mutual trust
However if you go down the route of mistrust should this not also be mutual?

If a woman must have a dna test on her child each time she gives birth to deter or prevent her infidelity,
Should a man not also have a cotton bud shoved up his urethra (STI Test) every six months to deter or prevent his infidelity?!

Second thoughts, the NHS should fund lie detectors in every GP's surgery :)
Problem solved :)

Well there are plenty of fab men who are KNOWINGLY bringing up another man's child so I would be offended if the implication was that if the kid wasn't his then he wouldn't bother. i think what it really means that it is a good way to find out if the woman has been cheating but it IS offensive to suggest it.

YANBU op.

Practically the whole history of misogyny boils down to men's paranoia about other men's sperm impregnating the women they consider their own, owned breeding stock. This is just the most modern version.

IMO men should get the fuck over it and understand that it's not just spunking that makes a father.

I find this thread odd really. There seems to be an awful lot of assumption that even if there is a real chance that the baby is not his, the man should just shut up and get on with it, and he is some kind of nasty bastard if he doesn't. In circumstances where a woman has covered up an affair or mistakenly attributed paternity to a specific man, and her partner brings up a child as his own for 15 years and then finds out, he would usually feel an emotion not unlike a bereavement of sorts - it would be devastating.

I wonder how different the responses here would be if it was the woman who wanted DNA testing? Let's say she had been casually dating two or three men over a period of a few weeks and genuinely didn't know who the father of an unplanned baby was, and she came on here saying 'AIBU to expect all three of them to take paternity tests so I can pin one of them down to do the decent thing by his child? None of them are willing to do it - are they all selfish wankers, avoiding their responsibility?'

I think she'd get a resounding yes, to be honest. And yet how is that different to the hypothetical woman being defended on this thread who doesn't see why the man should have a right to ask for a DNA test, or question the validity of what she says? He should just believe her when she says 'you are the father.' Why do these things only ever work one way? Of course 99% of the time there will be no doubt to start with, but I dislike the assumption from some of you on here that the woman has the right to know for sure, but the man does not.

Well there are plenty of fab men who are KNOWINGLY bringing up another man's child so I would be offended if the implication was that if the kid wasn't his then he wouldn't bother.

As an adoptee, I find it quite disgusting that a man should only be expected to raise his blood child.

IMO men should get the fuck over it and understand that it's not just spunking that makes a father.

Of course plenty of men knowingly and willingly bring up someone else's child (as do plenty of women) but surely that should be a circumstance based on choice and acceptance, not lies or evasiveness?

Imagine you were given the wrong baby to take home from the maternity ward and you felt something was not right so after a few days you queried it and were told 'what does it matter? You've got that baby now. Just keep that one and stop making a fuss.'

I see no reason why DNA should not be taken as a matter of course at birth, on every baby whether its parentage is in doubt or not. It just negates the need for long protracted arguments and denials and court battles and accusations and heartache futher down the road.

Having said all that, I can understand why the OP feels angry at her OH's comments, but only if she is feeling personally mistrusted by him - I see no problem with his thoughts in a general sense.

And in response to the person upthread who said in ten years on MN they can not remember a single incident of a woman not knowing who the father of her baby was, well I had a period of about three years in my early twenties where, had I become accidentally PG, I would have been very hard pressed to say for sure who the father was. There were three on/off regular boyfriends who came and went and often sometimes overlapped, interspersed with a few one-off flings.....and for most of that time I suspect I could not have said hand on heart I knew for sure, if I had been playing fast and loose with contraception, or if I had had a genuine pill failure, (even harder to pin down than occasionally neglecting to use a condom - at least you stand a chance of an educated guess with that) and I am sure that that is not AT ALL an unusual scenario.

For me it was not an issue as I always would have terminated in those circumstances, but not everyone is me.

Hilly that was me and in the circumstances you describe most women may choose to have a termination. I have never heard of a woman carrying on with a pregnancy not knowing who the father is.

As SGM said, this issue is all about women's infidelity. It assumes, by mandatory testing (which just to make sure you understand would be compulsory DNA testing just to make sure you are not lying and the baby is his) that most women are liars. The Guardian article I linked to actually proved that of the men who go for DNA tests, only 0.2% were not the father. But you still think that DNA testing should be mandatory? To humiliate all women just after they have given birth to protect the 0.2% of men who are not the father?

It also presumes that women deliberately lie when it fact they may wholeheartedly believe that their partner IS the father.

Yes men have a right to know IF they are suspicious. What men do not have is the right to subject every single woman who gives birth to the humiliation of having their babies tested just in case they are lying.

"The BBC online survey, achieving a massive 46,000 responses, further suggests that when it comes to married couples, men are more likely to cheat than women.

A shocking one in five married men who engaged with the survey admitted to straying, whilst only one in 10 women admitted to be being unfaithful to their husbands."

So exactly WHO are the ones most likely to be unfaithful?

"A shocking one in five married men who engaged with the survey admitted to straying, whilst only one in 10 women admitted to be being unfaithful to their husbands."

All that tells us is that more men admitted to cheating. Doesn't mean more actually did...

True of course, that would fit in nicely with the assumption that most women are just good liars.

If an individual person wants a DNA test then surely they could arrange that for themselves without the need to have every other mother and baby being tested too?

I also disagree with the idea that it should be lumped in with all the other post-natal testing like weighing, heel prick tests etc. The difference is that those tests are for the benefit of the mother and the baby. Why on earth should they also undergo testing that is for the benefit of someone else?

My children all had their blood groups tested for soon after birth. This was done due to the risk of complications caused by my own blood being rhesus negative. I was happy to have this done as this was necessary for the the baby's health, my health, and the health of any future babies. If someone had suggested that this was also a way to show that dh was more likely to be the father (they all had his blood type) I would have been furious like the OP.

And how exactly would the hospital staff go about explaining the tests?

"I'm just going to swab the baby's cheek/take some blood, Mrs Coppertop. It's a routine check we do so nothing to worry about. We just want to make sure that you haven't been cheating on Mr Coppertop."

To every man who feels tricked into his partner getting pregnant, then be responsible for your own contraception.
Use a condom.
I can't stand the attitude that so many men think the woman should be responsible,.
Put something on it in the words of Jeremy Kyle.
Sorted.

Isn't it something that would be worth putting up with for the benefit of those fathers who have been cuckolded?

As a guy, I wouldn't personally have any issues if it was routine for men to take a lie-detector test of his faithfulness upon the birth of his child. It would be no real inconvenience for me, but might allow some fraction of women the benefit of knowing their partner has cheated.

Something worth putting up with for the 0.2% of men who have been deceived you mean?

So every single mother, exhausted after giving birth, should be humiliated into having a compulsory DNA test done on her baby for the sake of 0.2%

Do you not realise that to make it compulsory for every single baby born, what that says about society's attitudes towards women?

Goes with the "are you sure it's yours?" question that male friends and relatives may ask the soon-to-be new dad. Had that from DH's cousin - no fucking clue why he would even have thought that it could be anyone else's! - we didn't speak for some time.

Seems to be a standard unthinking sort of response without considering the fallout from it - and I'm not condoning it in any way, they should think about the fallout! It's not funny, it's not a joke - it is suggesting that the woman carrying your friend/relative's child is in fact a cheater. But they don't see it that way, apparently.

Lie detector testing is a whole other can of worms, and yes they are notoriously unreliable. I think if someone requests a DNA test then either it's a man who disputes paternity and thinks his partner has been unfaithful (and I agree if I were the woman in question and I had not been unfaithful I would that level of mistrust hard to accept going forward) or, it's a woman trying to prove to a reluctant man that he is the father and he needs to step up and do the right thing by the baby.

I absolutely disagree that mandatory DNA swabbing on all children at birth comes from an automatic POV that the woman is an unfaithful liar or a cheat trying to trick a man into 'fathering' a child who is not his. Why should it be about proving non-paternity in a small percentage of men, rather than about nailing all the feckless men who walk away scott free and manage to deny/ignore the existence of a child who is theirs? Surely it benefits more honest women than merely acting as a vehicle for 'catching out' dishonest ones?

Also there are long term medical benefits to having a correct DNA on file, to save going up blind alleys when diagnosing/treating hereditary conditions etc.

Hilly, those feckless men who deny paternity still don't cough up even when it has been proved the baby is theirs. As far as that goes, it wouldn't make an iota of difference.

Having standard DNA testing is a different argument rather than having them primarily to test whether or not the baby is the fathers. I am against that too, fully. But for different reasons.