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’m not sure how my birth dad could have put a condoms on his wifes bosses penis to be fair.

Read about sperm competition - it is fascinating. We're just animals.

Although not from the present generation, so quite a bit earlier, but very much the same thing happened to one of my mum's cousins.

My mum's cousin gave birth when she was 17 but the father disappeared from the scene. Her daughter was then raised as her sister (her mum was 49 at the time).

She then got married two years later to an entirely different guy and had a son quite quickly after the marriage. The really weird thing though is that they ended up living just a couple of hundred yards up the road from where her parents (and her unacknowledged daughter) lived.

My mum told me that it caused all sorts of problems when her cousin (or, actually, she was a 1st cousin once removed) found out in later life that the woman she grew up thinking to be her mother was actually her grandmother and that her big sister was actually her real mother.

"...whether older siblings had been aware etc,"

In this case, yes, apparently.

Maybe the friend agreed to be a surrogate?

You are arguing that married stops cheating particularly from women but from other posters experience it clearly doesn't and it never has.

BTW I have family members divorced due to cheating and others where both clearly cheated but there were not immediate divorces....

You can't just put down a name you like unless you are married/in a civil partnership the other partner has to come to register the birth.

If you deliberately invite a man who isn't the biological father to register the birth with you then it is a criminal offence though you have to be caught first.
(There has been a case of that in the last few years.)

Basically a birth certificate records the "legal" parents which may not be the biological parents.

I think the original data came from Blood Transfusion centres which provided ante natal testing.

We had some ante-natal testing.

However not everyone does as they don't need to so the samples in the UK aren't random.

The mother may have been pregnant from a rape and be trying to protect her partner and child from that knowledge.

She may be unsure herself of who the father is.

It's not always a "really shitty thing to do".

Doesn't
She may be unsure herself of who the father is.
(unless its rape)

Fall under "really shitty thing to do"

She might well have thought "it's more likely to be Steve's than Dave's, I've had a period since I shagged Dave" but mistaken the implantation bleeding for a period.

I think, in such a case - and if you're talking about the male 'friend' (strange way of showing it), he would be a sperm donor, not a surrogate - the woman's husband would have been fully aware of it.

Also, sperm donors generally provide the sperm in a plastic container; it isn't normal for them to have sex with the woman, especially without her husband's knowledge.

What a truly nasty thing for them both to do to her husband and son.

I had one of mine in a large inner city hospital. I had the anti D issue. I didn't need it as both me and DH were 0-. They tried to insist I had it to the point of bullying me and said in this area 20% of pregnancies had a different father to the established partner. I was so,what incredulous about this but a friend who became a midwife confirmed that in this area at least that was correct when they had done a study...not sure how!

I still find it hard to believe really

You aren’t sure how because that’s impossible to prove.

They could say that 20% of the people going for dna tests find out the child isn’t theirs.

That doesn’t mean that 20% of all pregnancies, in that area, have the incorrect father.

Alot of the people going for DNA tests, likely have reason to believe the child isn’t theirs. Hence why it seems so high.

and what are they classing as the area? Does the closest place that does SNA test also cover the exact same area.

Very concerned about doctors and midwife’s that don’t know how data works.

I can see their cold statistically-based thinking, but what they're basically saying is "in spite of your declarations to the contrary, you may have been cheating on your husband". That definitely leaves a nasty taste, when you know you've been 100% faithful.

That 20% chance, albeit high, is reduced to an assured 0% for any woman who hasn't cheated (or been a victim of rape, of course).

"Rates vary between studies from 0.8% to 30% (median 3.7%, n = 17)."

So, 4% is about 1 in every 25.
From an older BMJ article.
https://jech.bmj.com/content/jech/59/9/749.full.pdf?casa_token=SZIp1jchfWYAAAAA:cIwuL3bXVRqNuxGRrhV7YPteFqkSS6dIYtd5IYgYOrGJAJMjR-VXPFqcSVj2YsddEHBivKHrNqE

You must be in an area with lots of genetic diseases where they test the mother and father, and the baby again soon after birth.

This is also why there are still some men think that genetic diseases that are proven to be recessive are dominant, and blame the child's mother for their child having it.

What the manosphere calls alpha seed, beta need.

Many women biologically want the alpha genes but a provider to raise the kids.

It was ‘in development’ at least 50 years ago; I’m now 70 and still it’s not available. That must speak volumes!

I was describing recessive genes and used eye colour as an example, when I was told I was wrong. She gave the example of blue eyed parents with a brown eyed child, and I started to disagree and instead acknowledged it might skip a generation.
Sometimes allowing ignorance is better.

Actually eye colour is one common genetic trait that people think follows the Mendelian pattern of inheritance and it doesn't. So blue eyed parents can have a brown eyed child but they are much more likely to have a child whose eyes are blue, green, grey or even hazel.

There are genetic disorders/diseases that are very common in certain populations that do follow the Mendelian pattern of inheritance. This is what hospitals will be doing prenatal testing of the parents for and that's why they know that the father isn't the biological father.

I was not arguing that...? Infact I specifically said marriage doesn't stop cheating.

What I'm saying is that in relationships there are often temporary split ups. Or overlaps early on when the woman may be seeing more than one man. Those are situations where pregnancies happen. Then relationships may restart with both parties unaware there's a bun in the oven.

It's more likely illegitimate children happen in these cases. Not from people cheating in marriage.

Getting married before having babies, limits the liklihood of these events.

I volunteered for a COVID vaccine study. I'm single and hadn't had sex in over a year. They still made me take a pregnancy test on site before they'd enrol me onto the study.

Some people aren't honest with medical staff so the medics have to treat you like you might be lying or mistaken for your safety. It's nothing personal.

I know of two people this happened to. One was after he’d split from his wife and wanted access, she refused then dropped the bombshell the kids weren’t his. Neither of them. They were his best mates!!!! And the other is a relative. He took his wife on jezza as he thought the youngest wasn’t his…. They tested all 3 and once again all of them weren’t his. In fact they had 3 different dads! I think it’s beyond cruel to lie to a partner a child is theirs but even worse to let a child believe someone is their dad when they aren’t. In any situation!

Don't really follow this? If a couple are actively trying for a child and the woman is having an affair, she gets pregnant by the man she's having an affair with, then it's still the man's fault??

Is it her partners responsibility to make sure her bit on the side wears a condom? You need to explain more