On Tennessee

There’s a bill now in Tennessee to force paternity tests before any father’s name is scribed across a birth certificate. Assume they don’t intend to put infertile men whose female partners have used donated sperm through this process. Assume they scrawl John Doe when the father is unknown or the mother has chosen to make him so. Stick with the men who showed up for the birth and want to participate in parenting and partnering and the regular nuclear package.

Somewhere between 10 and 35% of these men are not their babies’ biological fathers. It depends, but those are the scientific estimates. There are a lot of reasons women fail to disclose to their partners that a child is not his, which include women being raped (including by their own family members). When I was interviewing in southern Ontario last year for a study about newborn genetic testing, I learned that immigrant women fear losing sponsorship if (consensual or not) sexual indiscretion was discovered.

The argument for tying up any loose ends between biological and experiential paternity is the weak Kantian conviction that the child has a right to know. That their mother is a cheater or a victim? That their daddy was cuckolded? And that their biological “father” is not in the picture/ is violent/ is a relative of their mother (gross)/ etc. Really…what does knowing that help, besides undermining the authoritative and familial aura of both parents, potentially destroying their intimacy with each other, and inviting the state into the bedroom with a surveillance team?

Some secrets are only for discovery in mothy grandma attic treasure trunk pillages of secret love letters and tear-stained leather-bound diaries, much later in life when we’ve all had our own brushes with infidelity and tend towards compassion and empathy.

See news article: http://www.wsmv.com/news/15436238/detail.html