Well as prospective adoptive father... In some ways... Yes. That was part of our adoption training. To learn that many adoptees want to know their biological mom and dad and suffer greatly if they're not able. An adoptive father can provide all the emotional support in the world and the day to day fathering, but he can't provide the biology, whereas a biological one can provide both the day to day fathering and the bio connection.
It's not a popular sentiment... But it was required as part of our certification in california. When separated from mom and dad, they call it the primal wound, but our society accepts separating children from one parent without any of the guilting they require adoptive parents to go through.
From a purely empirical standpoint, in aggregate, biological father's are the least likely to hurt or kill their children. Both adoptive father's and step father's are more likely to. Says nothing about individuals, but as a society it would behoove the powers that be to ensure most kids are raised by bio parents. And by far most states adopt this approach, even to the point of absurdity.
Agreed, everything is possible, but how likely to happen with someone who is not your child (either biological or adopted), as you said it is very rare indeed...
Hiding that one or both parents are not the biological parents from the child is one thing. A child finding out about that, while serious, not that devastating and a pretty common event.
The father not knowing that the child is not his is a different ball of wax. The mother will always know the child is hers or not (baby switching in hospitals and other rare events excepted). What percentage of children have fathers that are not their biological fathers and the father doen't know it? I have no idea, but this fact being discovered via DNA is going to really hurt a lot of relationships from each discovery.
When conceiving children biologically, if you do not have reason to believe your partner has had sex with other men, the natural assumption is that the child is yours.
Also, family resemblances do exist. Their absence doesn't disprove parentage, but their presence is evidence for it.
When adopting, if you were not sexually active prior to adoption and have not donated sperm, you can be certain the child is not biologically yours. Even if you were active or a donor, you can still be very confident the kid is likely not yours.
I think adoption is a wonderful thing and I am not trying to undercut it, but it seems entirely possible to me that those differences could impact the bond between a father and child.
I wonder if the same chemical switch that he talks about gets flipped if you adopt a child, or marry a single parent and thus become a step-parent. If so, I wonder how young the child has to be for that to happen.
You can't just brush it off and say it isn't a problem. Having 3 biological parents is incredibly rare and could have weird social effects for the child. It is an ethical concern if it affects how they relate to other people.
We're getting flooded with assumptions that the dad knew he had a kid.
Could have been a 1 night stand and he never knew. Of course him and mom could be super religious and swore to each other they're virgins. Or for extra stress, mom 1.0 is mom 2.0's best friend or ex roommate or co worker or something. I dated two roommates in university (not at the same time) and they both knew it, but eventually it was just too stressful and I was spun out of orbit.
(edited for another possibility: One spouse thinks 18 years of child support is a great idea and the other disagrees. Not exactly the first time financial stress collapses a marriage)
Another peculiarity about the story is it has a fixation on:
"people discover their parents aren't their parents"
Well assuming no adoption, birth mom usually is mom, although much more often her husband isn't kids genetic father. It would be quite impressive although possible I guess to discover your birth mom isn't your genetic mom. Maybe an epic fail or record keeping at the fertility clinic, I guess. Statistically it sounds much more likely you'll find out mom's husband isn't dad more than you'll find out birth mom isn't mom.
Donating sperm such that anyone can come and use it to impregnate herself. The biological father doesn't know who his offspring are, they are not assigned to him in paperwork, resulting in potential inbreeding down the line. Not to mention that many of said offspring have an innate desire to find out who their real father is, meaning it has a psychological affect on them.
This behavior is extremely selfish from both sides, the sperm donor (getting money in return), and the recipient. Who ends up suffering as a result of this are the offspring produced, and potentially society as a whole down the line as we will have yet another psychological issue to deal with, and other things we don't know about so far.
Yes! Especially several years later. Stupid shit happens, to all of us. And if the kid has 'adopted' the father, then for many years it will be outright traumatic to cut the relationship and trust if that kid just because if some test. Oh, not my DNA, then I don't love you? How narcissistic of a father would that be? Joseph of Nazareth would like to have a word, too...
No, there should be very good and compelling reasons to request a DNA test.
If the other parent doesn't consent to an adoption it usually can't happen. Then you either have to raise the child directly through your labor (custody) or indirectly through your labor (child support).
There are lots of people raising children against their will with no mechanism to relieve them of that duty, even if they revoke consent to raise the child in any form.
I'm still not grokking the trauma. It's a cliche, but impregnating someone doesn't make you a parent, in the sense that's relevant to your comment. It's investing the time, attention, emotional and financial resources that grants one that status.
If I learned that my dad was not actually traveling on business but instead tending to his alternate family, that would be sad. If I learned that he had biological offspring that he had no material (otherwise) connection with/to, I'd simply shrug.
I'm not convinced. Is there evidence that the parent/child bonding only occurs if you share DNA? My personal experience suggests otherwise, especially given that my mother was adopted.
Yeah, I think that's true. I consider myself utterly incompetent for this task, and yet I've ended up with eight step-children over the years. It sucks for all concerned, but something is usually better than nothing.
When George figured out his dad had conceived this child before getting married — that the child was not the result of adultery — he was excited. "I thought it was the coolest genetics story, my own personal genetics story. I wasn't particularly upset about it initially, until the rest of the family found out, and their reaction was different."
His mother and sister could not handle the information, and his father went against their wishes, dedicating himself to reconnecting with his estranged son. "Years of repressed memories and emotions uncorked and resulted in tumultuous times that have torn my nuclear family apart. We're not anywhere close to being healed yet, and I don't know how long it will take to put the pieces back together."
Adoption is different if done properly. The adopted child should not in anyway be implied or declared to be of the same bloodline as the adopting parents, otherwise we'll end up with the same issue seen here. It's also important that the child know that they're adopted from early on, and not hide that fact.
Whereas artificial insemination is literally having the woman carry another man's child, it goes against conservative values (would they let another man sleep with the woman to impregnate her if there weren't artificial insemination?)
This is something that really upsets me as a father to multiple children.
Is it even possible for a biological father to do this? I've been meaning to google but I'm afraid of seeing the results.
I always assumed this would be limited to step parents, but Im afraid the truth is darker than i thought possible
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