Men who are unaware their child isn’t biologically theirs

[K8ate]

Hearing stories and seeing various online statistics, the average percentage of men who are unaware that their child isn’t biologically theirs ranges from 10% upwards.
Surely these figures can’t be accurate?

I think they aren't accurate and given that we don't have mandatory paternity testing any statistics drawn from that area will be heavily influenced by selection bias. Other things like genealogical DNA testing won't come with any descriptors of whether a man knows the children are his or not, so data from those sources could be influenced by blended families, etc.

I personally believe that the figure is greater than 10% but unless we start DNA testing at birth we will never know the exact number.

My obstetrician said it was about 10%. I am negative blood type and so is my husband. So I didn’t need anti d shots. But the policy is to give every preg negative blood anti d shots regardless of husbands blood type because of so many babies that are not the husbands they can’t take the risk.

Well, it happened to my DH - his ex announced she was pregnant, they got engaged, baby was born, they raise child together for a year before the ex leaves him for another man. Various things are said in arguments so he has a DNA test and behold, child is not his. She leaves and refuses to let him see the child. She goes on to DNA test another 3 men who are also not the father (she sent DH copies, but quite sure why).

It's taken 14 years and about £1500 to get him off the birth certificate because she was playing silly buggers and trying to claim child maintenance last year. Fortunately CSA delayed the claim because we had the DNA test to prove the case, but we still had to pay solicitors to get him off the BC because she wouldn't sign anything and threatened us that we were harrassing her by asking for a signature (a single email).

I've kept everything in a folder just in case the child appears one day wanting to know who he is and why he removed himself from the BC.

So I'd say it's rare and the woman would have an idea even if the man doesn't.

How are they estimating it? Where are the figures from?

and then are we breaking it down?

How many actually know it might be not be theirs/ definitely not theirs? As an example?

A family member had split with his wife and they were both seeing other people, she got pregnant they got back together. They both pretended the child was his. Then they split up again and he claimed he didn’t know the child wasn’t his to get his name of the birth certificate. But he admitted he was fully aware.

There’s a thread going at the moment where the Ops husband split with his girlfriend when she was pregnant and she was with someone else when the baby was born, that man is possibly on the BC. The husband is concerned now 30 years later that his child might have claim on his estate.

I am of the mind that it happens. I have no clue whether 10% is accurate or not. But I also don’t think it will be as clear cut in every single case.

But you wouldn’t know. If there was mandatory DNA testing at birth, very few women would keep it a secret so the number would drop right down

No idea of the % but this has just reminded me of a conversation at work a few years back where, when this exact thing was discussed, a male colleague wondered aloud how many women weren’t the mother of their child in the same way… then went very quiet when he thought about the logistics of that 😂

I know two men in this position. It's horrible knowing the secret and they're completely unaware.

Without DNA testing, I guess no man can ever be 100% sure a baby is his. I know 100% that our children are my DH’s but he can’t know 100% because he doesn’t follow me around. He’s never doubted it and they all look like him. 😂

I'd have thought 5-10%, not surprised at all tbh.

Wasn't there a study done that had to be stopped for ethical reasons due to so many men not being the biological father?

Surely women wouldn’t sign up to a study testing this if there was even a tiny risk the baby wasn’t his? 🤦‍♀️

Poor children

Poor men too

The very high figures of "parental discrepency" tend to come from those fathers that have a paternity test and so there are already concerns about paternity.

If you're at all interested in genealogy and tracing your family tree, then coming across this sort of thing does happen. It is often described as an "NPE" (non-paternity event or not parent expected).

There was a recent study that surveyed 23,000 people who used the DNA services of one of the big websites and they found that around 3% of the participants discovered an unexpected biological parent.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean that the father was unaware, just that the adult child who took the DNA test was unaware. Also, in a very small number of cases it turned out that they had been adopted or were donor-conceived and never told of this.

This may be the sort of "real" upper limit for this as those fathers suspicious about their paternity may be more inclined to check it out which gives rise to those higher figures in other studies

Link to the 2022 study in American Journal of Human Genetics:

"Family secrets: Experiences and outcomes of participating in direct-to-consumer genetic relative-finder services"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929722000131

I know a couple where the wife had a thing with her husband's mate off and on for some time. The husband knew, it would blow up and die down until eventually he put his foot down and said they needed to cut him out. She has a baby a few months after that and this boy grows up to be the absolute DOUBLE of the affair friend. It's never talked about...!

Flip side of the same coin, but I was privy to a conversation where a number of army lads admitted doing swabs for their friends to ensure there was no match and no claim for child maintenance.

It was a repugnant reflection of their stance that all women were slut golddiggers and you would be just funding her lifestyle till the 'kid' was 18.

If the tests were for "peace of mind" - the type they sell in Home Bargains - that's feasible.

For for the CSA / court standard tests they have to have photo ID and the swab is done by a doctor who works under contract to the CSA.

DH redid the test last year as the original one wasn't up to proof (it was a peace of mind test).

There is a simple solution - wear a condom every time and for men to campaign for a birth control pill.

They don't want to do either if these things do they though. Don't have much sympathy with them to be honest. It's always women's fault!

There was a TV programme recently where a guy had innocently sent off his dna to heritage dna. It had come back that he was half Portuguese. His mum had had a holiday affair and the dad had no idea he wasn't the real dad. I felt sorry for him as they seemed to just expect him to accept it.

Failed O-level biology I assume...

What percentage then do people think it is? I know of a few.

This is very surprising to my mind. I imagined 2% maximum across the entire planet.

So did I 😂

The 10% figure comes from large scale studies of men who share the same surname (one that they know to have a single origin, and they know when this was). If 100% of boys has the surname of their biological father then all these men would share the same Y chromosome. They used statistical tests to work out that 10% of men were not the biological son of the man whose surname they had taken.

HOWEVER.... There are many different reasons who this happens - adoption, a child taking their stepfather's name, children born out of wedlock who take their mother's name, etc, etc. It's completely untrue to extrapolate and say that 10% of men were being lied to about the child they think is theirs. Unfortunately it's one of those urban myths that's hard to shake off, though a really misogynistic one that implies a lot more women have affairs and lie about their child's origins than likely actually do.