In the UK if you have doubts you are the father of a child, have a DNA test. A company which works with ITV show "Jeremy Kyle" is providing the home paternity tests for just £4.99 and a £99 lab fee.

altmehere · 2014-10-06T14:37:57+00:00

http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2010/10/an-instrument-of-choice.html

Dicentra steers us to the musings of Melanie McDonagh and a feminist rationale for fraud, dishonesty and extortion.

It begins thus,

It’s a wise child, they say, that knows its own father.

The subject being pondered is DNA paternity testing and its consequences. Given what follows, you may want to bear that opening sentence in mind.

For the entire course of human history, men have nursed profound, troubling doubts about the fundamental question of whether or not they were fathers to their own children; women, by contrast, usually enjoyed a reasonable level of certainty about the matter. Now, a cotton-wool swab with a bit of saliva, plus a small fee, less than £200, can settle the matter. At a stroke, the one thing that women had going for them has been taken away,

The one thing?

the one respect in which they had the last laugh over their husbands and lovers.

I hadn’t realised parenthood was about having the last laugh. Clearly, I need to brush up on the etiquette of modern mating. But surely paternity tests merely level the playing field in a matter of some gravity? What mama knows (and doesn’t say), papa can now find out. In terms of paternity, is that really such a crushing injustice?

DNA tests are an anti-feminist appliance of science, a change in the balance of power between the sexes that we’ve hardly come to terms with. And that holds true even though many women have the economic potential to provide for their children themselves… In making paternity conditional on a test rather than the say-so of the mother, it has removed from women a powerful instrument of choice.

Choice that may include deception and extortion.

Uncertainty allows mothers to select for their children the father who would be best for them.

Suckering former lovers? Not a problem. Mama wants a selection box. Depriving a child and its actual father of a chance to know each other is also apparently fine. Because uncertainty allows it. Feminism, so conceived, seems to entail the right to a little moral sleight of hand. But hey, choice!

The old situation, in which women presented men with a child, and the man either did the decent thing and offered support, or made a run for it, allowed women a certain leeway… Paternity was ambiguous and it was effectively up to the mother to name her child’s father, or not… Many men have, of course, ended up raising children who were not genetically their own, but really, does it matter?

Answers on a postcard please.

2014-10-06T15:03:24+00:00

In the UK we do not have the idea or concept of ever paying for a child which is not biologically yours if you do not want to.

All payments and fatherhood hinges on the biological link that can be tested with DNA.

It works well for both men and women.

Somewhere a man will be on the hook to pay for the child. It is just that in the UK that man will be the biological father and not a presumed father.

2014-10-06T14:58:07+00:00

I have read of some fathers DNA testing whether they are a parent on the quiet.

Armed with the knowledge they are not the father they then cut off payments and request a test organised by the court.

Which just confirms the original result.

2014-10-06T13:43:38+00:00

Any man with parental responsibility can test their child without the mothers consent, if needs be. If you are paying child support or are on the birth certificate you will have parental responsibility. Do not rely on the mother doing the test since there have been many cases where the mother has lied about the results.

mtrucker · 2014-10-06T16:09:54+00:00

heard in uk illegal to get paternity without mother consent, have to be married or on bc

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