How should we deal with misattributed paternity? A survey of lay public attitudes

AskingToFeminists · 2022-02-26T23:45:51+00:00

While the article is interesting, I would take the results with a grain of salt, given that the survey was taken by only 200 people, a majority of whom were women (64.5%), and only a tiny proportion of whom ( 11.5%) were not college educated. Not exactly the most representative sample.

I might even go on a limb and suggest that college educated women might skew toward a certain ideological bent that is not the most inclined to consider men, their opinion, their issues or their right as very important, for exemple.

Which might affect quite a bit the overall results.

Particularly given how they then discuss how there's such a big difference in how each gender view the issue.

I mean, take this conclusion they have :

a significant finding in our study is that the majority of our respondents maintained that it should ultimately be left to the mother to decide what to do.

This finding would be much less significant if they had a majority of male répondants, who favor much more the option of informing no matter the wishes of the mother.

It seems that what the study actually found is "women tend to seek to protect women's interests, men tend to seek to protect men's interests, and so if you ask a majority of women what should be done, a majority of respondents will tell you to protect women's interests.

Hardly groundbreaking, hardly surprising, but also quite different from what they actually claim.

The issue being that they give their conclusion in term of "proportion of the respondents", rather than "we assume that the sample accurately represents the demographics, and then estimate what the general populations opinion would be" which is much more nuanced in its results.

Then, there's often the feminist claim that men should have no say in women's maternity choices (ex abortion), and it could be interesting to wonder whether we should really care that much about women's opinions when it comes to informing men about paternity.

After all, in this scenario, the woman is a liar, cheating her partner and abusing his trust, and demanding the medical establishment enables her. We generally don't wonder about the opinion of conmen on whether we should inform their mark that they're being conned. I find surprising that so many people consider asking the opinion of the cheating wife on whether her husband should be informed that she's been caught red-handed. But well...

UnHope20 · 2022-02-26T22:37:33+00:00

Background: Increasing use of genetic technologies in clinical and research settings increases the potential for misattributed paternity to be identified. Yet existing guidance from the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Biomedical and Behavioral Research and the Institute of Medicine (among others) offers contradictory advice. Genetic health professionals are thus likely to vary in their practice when misattributed paternity is identified, and empirical investigation into the disclosure of misattributed paternity is scarce.

Given the relevance of this ethical dilemma and its significance to users of genetic services, this study aimed to investigate the attitudes of lay people with regard to the disclosure of misattributed paternity.

Results: There was no clear majority support for many of the options surveyed across different contexts, with only six out of ten scenarios displaying some general consensus.

Men were more likely to support scenarios where the father is informed of paternity. Importantly, participants' views varied according to whether the desires of the father were previously expressed, suggesting that perceptions of the permissibility of a clinician's action will depend on the interests of all parties affected.

This has been an ongoing debate among bioethicists. But I'm more interested in the specific nature of this study. That being an examination of people's attitudes toward disclosure of paternity to the father in cases of cuckoldry.

Why is it that men are more likely to favor disclosure? Are they projecting their own desires onto the situation? Or is this more related to ethical preferences based on cognitive style? Or some other reason?

If anyone has any more research on men's opinions about disclosure, please share.

[Full Article Available]

Title	How should we deal with misattributed paternity? A survey of lay public attitudes
Author	UnHope20
Upvotes	7
Comments	3
Date	February 26, 2022 10:34 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Male_Studies
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Male_Studies/comments/t28yot/how_should_we_deal_with_misattributed_paternity_a/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Male_Studies/how-should-we-deal-with-misattributed-paternity-a.1215988 https://theredarchive.com/post/1215988

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