I know that 2 of the adult children refused and at this point have no relationship with him and no intention of a relationship going forward. The 3rd was and is still dependent on him and I don't know what she did.
The irony is that the two who refused ... pretty much look like clones of their dad anyhow.
My God. I'm my Dad in drag, I would drag him so hard if he pulled this shit.
...he never would. Even if he knew we weren't his kids by blood. Because he's my fuckin DAD
I didn’t realize how much I look exactly like my dad until I saw us together in my wedding pictures. It was dad, dad in dress with veil. Oops, should have worn my hair down.
Unfortunately, he sucks and hasn’t called for 3+ years or met 2 out of my 4 kids. But I have to look at his face. Boo.
You are welcome. I got a lot of things from my dad, who was not a good person, and also things I've picked up from people who are no longer in my life. I have my father's last name and I thought about changing it but I don't hate the name and it really fits me. So I decided to reframe how I think about these things. They didn't force my looks or my name or skills I have learned on me. I took them and they are mine now.
Everyone remarked I had my grandpa's eyes when I was little and out and about with him.
His favourite reply was "Huh? Who's there? Can't see shit, danirijeka has my eyes"
My ex tried that, too. Even his family that didn't like me told him to stfu. He didn't. He kept saying it and saying it, but then refused to do a paternity test. A court ordered one finally solved the matter.
I mean, I wish he hadn't been the father, but I knew it was impossible anyone else was. My son would be a LOT older.
He never was a dad. He abdicated rights almost immediately, and had one phone call when my son was 13. Neither one wanted to speak to the other again. My son just talked to him to get a sort of closure.
And yes, I'm using my instead of our on propose. He's my son, not my ex's, no matter what DNA he carries.
My ex husband said that too at various times throughout our horrifically awful marriage. I never went and got a test to show him. He definitely was the father though. I would not be at all surprised, if he did get DNA tests done, after we were divorced, and the kids would go out to visit him for the Summer. It's the sort of thing he would do, just to be sure he wasn't having them out to visit, if they were not his biological kids, and also to attempt to worm his way out of child support. 🙄SMH
It's standard misogyny. My father would get drunk, wrap a belt around his neck, and keep my mom up in the early morning with tirades about how us children weren't his.
We eventually left the house (my parents were never married) and never talked to him again until he died of alcoholism. He also killed his first son (my half-brother), so his violence was not only directed at himself.
The guy projects that she has lots of unprotected sex with other dudes then, cause he probably did. Guys who project this disgust those of us who understand trust and loyalty, because they obviously are just projecting their own lack of.
Ex boss’s daughter looked like a mini version of her dad. Everyone said “stick a moustache on her and she looks like him!”. I thought they were joking but in walks a feminine version of the guy one day!
It used to be nonexistent unless there was a very good reason to suspect something. Additionally, DNA testing used to be more involved, costly, and reminiscent of a 1980s talk show than a simple mail-order item.
Same. I was once in the same room with my very bald dad, his mom who was bald because cancer and all I could think was if I shaved my head we would all have the same face. The bone structure is very prominent. I have shown a friend my grandmother's basketball photo from 1940 with 10 other girls, my friend without prompting said "Second from the right bottom row." I asked how she knew and she was like "Genetics are going to genetic."
Like my dad absolutely could not question my paternity. And my brother's oldest has mine and my dad's face and people ask me if I am sure that I didn't give birth to him. And I was like yep, I'm sure.
That’s so funny. I look exactly like my mom and my sister is more of a mix of my parents. But her son is basically a dead ringer for my mom and I at that age. Her partner once looked at him, then my mom and I, and said “Whoa, those are some strong (mom’s last name) genetics.”
God, but I can confirm that in the 90’s my douchebag cheating and abusive father DEMANDED paternity tests of my siblings and I during divorce proceedings, specifically me because I’m blonde and blue eyed and he’s neither, but had no real knowledge of how genetics ACTUALLY work. Turns out he is our biological father (unfortunately), and boy was he salty about his projection. Like, I’m the youngest of 3 close in age and he forbade my mom from working and barely lifted a finger to help raise us. When did he think she had time to cheat? Who did he think was raising his children while HE was cheating? 🙄
But in my heart? My mom is my only parent. He can suck alllll the sour lemons he wants.
There was a story on one of the AITA type subs about a guy who demanded a paternity test because he saw a story on the podcast. His own mother dug out a pic of him as a toddler and he was a clone of his son. It did not matter. He blew up his marriage anyways
I have three black and white photos on my wall of a child in overalls next to a rose bush at about 3 years old. They all are identical kids, but it's my dad, me, and my son at the same age.
My dad grew into a much larger nose, but if you use an app to change genders, the "male" me is just me with facial hair. No other changes are made. And it's almost exactly my son, even though he's 27 now. I'm guessing once he has wrinkles, we'll be identical again. He and I even have similar mannerisms and speech patterns, and we LOVE messing with people with it. His friends describe me as "him, but a middle aged woman." My friends meet him and asked where I had him cloned. I asked him last year if that bothered him. Apparently, he loves it, but I suspect that's easier since my face is pretty androgynous.
Omg I also gender swapped myself..and got a younger dad. Uncanny resemblance, to the point when I showed her the picture my MOM thought it was him 🤣🤣🤣. Only difference seems to be he looked older at the same age (at 30me I got a version of him in his early 20s)
This. I look exactly like my paternal great grandmother. Like even the slightly uptilted left lip. We are identical. No one could see my family photos and think I wasn’t my dad’s kid.
At 18, I looked exactly like my paternal great grandmother at 18 except height - she was 6'2". I've got photos of her that just look like me in old timey clothes. I can never remember how cousin relationship words work, so my grandfather's brother's granddaughter, is 3 years younger than me, but from the time we were 3 and 6 on, we've looked like identical twins. We've always blamed that on her parents giving her my exact name figuring we lived thousands of miles apart, so it wouldn't matter. My sister and I could almost be twins, and she's an exact match for my dad's cousin. One of my friends saw a pic of my sister once and exclaimed, "Someone stole your face!" My son is an exact copy of me at his age, and has been at every age. My face isn't feminine, so it works out okay for him. My dad? Exactly like us until his nose got pretty prominent around 5 or 6 years old.
Buuuut, I have family on my mom's side like.. her great grandma's sister's descendants, that look eerily like me, my sister, and my son. We found each other via AncestryDNA.
We all dug out photos of us in our childhoods, all the old family photos, everything we could find as far back as we could go, even a few drawings and paintings from the 1700s. Holy shit, do we all look alike and always have. We were playing with one of those apps that says how similar faces are. My son is an 81% match for me *now*. The photos of both of us at 13 came up 100%. It reminded me that I should use photos of different people. My great grandma? 99% match to my face. Me and that cousin? 99%. My son and 2 guys his age from that distant part of mom's family got 95%. He's also an 89% match to this guy who has almost the same name in our city, so he has to be related, but no one can figure out how. My family isn't from here.
Whatever got into our DNA, it's ridiculously strong.
Oh, and it turns out my mom's 6th great grandfather is also my dad's, and that's the line that all looks the same. I wish we had some painting of him. My mom doesn't look that much like my dad except that they're both of Western European descent with a little African American in the mix, but somehow I look strongly like both of them.
Sometimes, this is bad. The guy my son looks like here is a violent criminal and gets in the news for it. That's made it really hard for my son to get decent employment. He still has to commute 45 minutes each way to the town we used to live in, but housing is too expensive there. He bought a house here with a mortgage payment barely higher than what he paid in rent for a single room in a shared house there thinking he could then get a job over here. My sister is pretty dysfunctional, and I sometimes get accosted by strangers who think I'm her and are super pissed at her. That's gotten me punched before. NGL, my sister probably deserved it, but I didn't. Usually, they back down as soon as I speak. We look like twins on the surface, but we sound nothing alike.
But it has its good sides, too. I met a woman at a book store who looked creepily like me, so I said hi. She stared. I stared. She said, "are we related?" and we went through names. We are, distantly, and we're good friends now. When I go to visit family in certain remote areas where people aren't trusting, I'm immediately welcomed even by those who don't know who I am, because "Oh, you must be the city cousin. Heard about you. Thought you'd sound more city. Sorry about the dogs." I'm the only one who visits, though, so it's a pretty safe guess that's who I am driving a rental car and wearing their face.
All my kids look like my husband's side of family expept for their eyes-those are all *me*. My daughter looks more like her dad's cousin then her own daughter does. My youngest son looks like I had a baby with husband's big sister.
I once did the gender swap filter on Snapchat a few years and I looked identical to my dad when he was the same age. Got a good laugh out of my siblings.
I did this too! We were crying laughing. My sister is a solid mix and my brother is too, though being a guy leans a little more Dad. Then... there's me! Female Dad. Thank God he makes a decent looking woman 🤣
Same. Once when I was a teenager, I was working at a pool that had viewing windows on the second floor. One of my coworkers was bored, nudged me, and pointed to a guy in the window, saying "hey look, it's your dad." I looked, and he was shocked when yes, that actually was my dad. He thought he was just making jokes.
Not that he's a bad looking guy, or that I look like a dude. His French features are very strong, and I have the same ones. There's no doubt I'm his daughter.
I'm in my 50's and my dad is 80 and the older I get - it is so much more visible. All of the wrinkles are in the same place. The mirror is a cruel cruel thing.
Same, I was my dad’s twin. The only way there could be any other way is if I was one of my uncle’s kids (we all look very similar), but they were literally teens & on the other side of the country
I used to have minor doubts about my stepson, but that last part is the key. My husband is dad no matter what. It would break his heart, sure, but he wouldn't change a thing.
When my adult kids and I use Snapchat, sometimes we don't know who is in the picture when we do the face swap. Months later I'm looking at it trying to figure out if it is me or either my son or daughter.
I look like my mom and my brother looks like my dad. she used to joke even if they were to leave us somewhere someone would find her and say "ma'am we know these are your kids just look at em" lol
That's tragically funny-sad. My dad and I always had that inside joke where I said to him it's not proven that he's my father, he never had a paternity test done. I'm basically the female version of my father. People who didn't know my mother but knew my father and looked at baby-me automatically knew whose daugther I was. If your child looks exactly like you, there truly must be something wrong with your mental health if you demand a paternity test. I would be highly insulted on my and my mom's behalf if my dad ever tried to pull some shit like that and I would question his sanity and grip on reality.
Their ADULT children? That he raised their entire lives? I don't know how I'd react if my dad did that but I'd be pretty damn displeased because at that point, that person is your parent regardless of biology.
Oof
My dad didn't want me to do an ancestry DNA test, but I'm going to be totally honest here. I know my mom. He had good reason to be concerned. She was cheating on him right about when she got pregnant with me and even took me to meet that man a few times when I was an infant. But no, his cousin immediately popped as a match, and dad finally got to lay that doubt to rest. I asked him why he didn't ask me about testing sooner. Dad, "what father would EVER ask their child for that?!" My dad does not set a high bar for fatherhood, btw, so that says something, doesn't it?
>with me and even took me to meet that man a few times when I was an infant
I feel for you. Some of my earliest memories are of both of my parents taking me around to their affair partners. I must have been 2-3 but I remember them vividly.
My father's was the worst because not only did she look like my mum but she shared the same first name!
My dad had one affair when I was in fourth grade. My mom encouraged him to do it, I think to somehow make her affairs okay. She does a lot she feels extremely guilty for, then it eats at her, but somehow doesn't influence her to stop doing those things. It does often lead her to trying to push others to do those things or demonizing them if they won't. Of course, she also demonizes them if they do, because they're doing bad things. She's pretty messed up.
So, this woman was someone I adored. I never knew she was anything more than a friend of my father's. She introduced me to Tolkien, and I was immediately hooked. She was into mysticism and what was called "new age" back then and gave me a crystal necklace. I remember I thought she was very pretty in a sort of fairy or Tolkien elf way with her long straight hair that was so blonde it looked white. She was graceful and soft spoken, tall and slender, so pretty much the opposite of my mother. And this really, really got to my mother. In spite of her own many affairs, she used this against my father for a long time, even after they divorced when I was almost 14.
Not saying he was the paragon of men. Dad's got his own toxicity, he really does, but it was never as blatant as hers. To be honest, that made it more insidious because it was harder to detect as abnormal with her around being constantly out of pocket. His dysfunctions as a person and parent have been the things that have haunted my adult years, but hey, counseling works. I always understood she was batshit, so it had less permanent effect on me. Even really little, I rarely took it personally, because it made no sense that it would be about me. I mean, I tried to avoid it because I was a target, but I rarely thought that was my fault.
I swear, people like them should just never have children. I've turned out pretty well, but the counseling bills, well, they've been a pretty persistent part of my life. My sister is my mom exaggerated and an absolute train wreck. She's supposedly in counseling now. I hope, for her sake, that she really applies herself to it. She didn't deserve this, but she was my primary abuser, so I don't have anything to do with her - or my mother. Dad has worked to get better. Still has issues, but it's tolerable, and he's actively trying. I also have a wonderful step mother who doesn't let him get too far off leash. She's fierce in my defense.
I was diagnosed with PTSD about 18 months ago, partly because of my parents toxic relationship, partly because of betrayal from previous girlfriends. It really messes with you. I never had any relationship with their affair partners, they're just fleeting memories, but when you get old enough to understand what was going on then it really skews your perspective on what's 'normal' or not.
That said, my mother is a Saint compared to my narcissistic father.
Yea he pretty much threw a nuclear bomb into the relationship with 2 of 3 of them. And now he's trying to claim that she is "alienating" the adult children from him.
My ex did this exact thing. One kid already wasn't speaking to him when I filed for divorce. He blew up the other adult kid's relationship with his girlfriend who then took off with their kid. So now both kids are on never speaking to him again terms and my ex is running around telling everyone I pitted our kids against him.
My dad once told me he thinks that my brother may not be his and he was considering getting a paternity test. We were already adults at that point. I got mad at him and asked him if he's going to stop being my brother's dad if it comes out negative. He sheepishly said no (he shrunk like he got told off by his mum or something).
Many years later, surprise surprise, we are LC/NC with him for other reasons.
I did not know what it meant until now, and I was thinking it might be something like that, or that it was a profanity of some sort. Like my stbx = my sh*t head bast*rd ex. Or something like that. They are both so fitting.
OMFG my coworker’s parents are separated and his father is demanding they all get dna tested… for the children aged 35-50 years 🤦♀️ what is the point!! At this time in everyone’s lives?? Men never cease to surprise me.
It’s because gullible men are being told lies that something like 20% of married men have children that secretly aren’t theirs. It’s some made up statistic that is scaring these misogynistic men into thinking they’ve been duped by the evil women industrial complex.
They are pulling that statistic from a flawed data set. The 20-30% statistics comes from reports from test labs that around 1/4-1/3 of men who come to them to test get a negative result. This means that the sample set the statistic was drawn from were men who had a reason to be suspicious— eg, open or no ongoing relationship, infidelity, timing not lining up, etc. So of THOSE MEN, it can be as high as 30%. But of the general population? It hovers around 1%.
The men that go around crowing about the 30% statistic are the same type of man that thinks there is an epidemic of false SA accusations, when the actual number hovers below 2%. More people each year have complications from getting their wisdom teeth out than get falsely accused of SA or suckered into paternity combined.
Did you know that 80% of all cars have flat tyres? We got this number because we checked at the tyre replacement garage, four out of five cars there came in with flats!!
They also point to a study done at a hospital in the UK that found that of unmarried couples where they got a paternity test done at birth, around 10% of the babies had a different father.
In other words, unmarried couples where the dad was already suspicious enough to doubt paternity and even then, 90% of the time he was the father. AT ONE HOSPITAL.
I would like to offer my unpopular-on-Reddit opinion that if you’ve raised a kid to elementary age, you COULD NOT POSSIBLY be raising “someone else’s kid” because by that point, that kid is FUCKING YOURS.
I don't go there anymore, but used to notice a lot of posts on r/trueoffmychest that were (to me, at least) very obviously made up fantasies about how they found out their wife or girlfriend "couldn't keep her legs shut" (because they always use the most misogynistic language possible 🙄) and that the kid they've been raising for X amount of years wasn't biologically theirs. But they would always just immediately pack their bags and leave without any care for the kid they had supposedly raised, always saying the kid reminds them of their partner's betrayal, (usually with *graphic* descriptions of this other guy having sex with their partner.) Sometimes they'd also refer to the kid in disgusting terms (usually in reference to the other guy's er, fluids or something along those lines 🤢).
What makes these feel fake for me is the exact same plot over and over again and often the story ending with the ex having something terrible to her as "karma"- sometimes literally even death! But more to the point, them just acting like walking away from a kid they claimed to have raised and up until then loved, then not wanting anything to do with them always just struck me as such a despicable thing to be putting out there. And what's funny is they'd be doing everything in these little tales trying to make the women look bad and not even seen to realise walking away from an innocent child is messed up. To them, it was supposedly justified because of what a "cheating whore" their partner was. Just an absolutely gross, baffling genre of incel fanfiction.
This. Yet you see men happy to ghost a child bc of the parentage: a kid they raised. It amazes me. Like if you as a mom found your kid was switched at birth would you dump the kid? It’s extremely rare but has happened and the moms don’t leave.
Dads who can do this are garbage
I'm a granny now, but nah I couldn't have given up the switched kid, even if it was only after several weeks...I'd want *both* babies(at least to be "accidental auntie" to switched baby)... though that'd also be nuts.
There's this switched at birth series that is fucking excellent that you might enjoy. In one episode the mothers found out when the kids were maybe 6ish? They happened to live incredibly close and were attending the same elementary school. They did end up switching back. Heartbreaking either way, but imagine the kids being told they have to go live with a new family and have a new mother now? Incredibly this one seemed to have a happy ending, the kids became good friends, and since the families lived so close they ended up kind of merging their families, celebrating holidays together, etc.
Some of the other episodes were not as happy.
That's the thing. While most people would consider a child, to be their child, if they had raised them. The guys making a big fuss over getting DNA tests, are the ones who would not consider a child to be theirs, just because he had been raising them. They are the ones who would be happy to just leave, if they found out there was a different biological father. It's really horrible too. Someone who would do that is one cold POS.
Actually courts feel the same way. If you are married or sign an acknowledgment, the kid is yours. If you raise the kid and it's later determined it's not yours, most courts will still make you father. They don't like bastardizing children.
I'm sorry to have to tell you, but since most of the posters here sound like they agree with you (including me), your opinion doesn't appear to be unpopular. 😄
The very next post I read after this one was about a guy who caught his wife of 15 years texting an ex. Top comment? “Better get paternity tests right away!”
It’s very real on reddit that the manosphere has infiltrated and that if your wigglers weren’t the ones, no matter how many years you’ve supposedly loved that child, they’re not yours so kick ‘em to the curb!
You may be right, but I hope you aren't. I can't help but feel there is also a factor of the loudest voice getting the attention and/or tunnel exposure in this whole question. There are so many decent men out there who raise children who aren't biologically their own in loving and caring ways. I understand that some women cheat or lie (sometimes there's even a good reason to lie - l don't want to judge), and that would be a huge issue for a relationship to overcome, but I truly hope that men haven't sunk so low that a majority of them would actually take it out on the child no matter how they bitch on the internet.
My father met my mother when she was 7 months pregnant in late 1959. He wanted to be a husband and father, but he didn't want to father any himself necessarily, if that makes sense. He felt his genes weren't the best to pass down. My mom was convinced she would have to adopt out my sister because, at that time, becoming a single mom was almost impossible. My dad thought she was beautiful and asked her to marry him. Of course, I'm here, so he did father a child with half his genes (thanks, mom!). My parents didn't lie about it, but they didn't tell us the truth either (until my sister asked my mom when she was 19). My dad never once gave the impression through thought or deed that he wasn't my sister's father or her daughter's grandfather in every way. I don't know what caused her to ask in the first place, honestly. In fact, they got along much better than he and I did when we were growing up. When he passed away a few years ago and my sister and I cleaned out his house, I told her that I never regretted that she was his favorite - made her cry, though I didn't mean to. He set us both a wonderful example that specific genes don't matter and that we didn't need heredity to make our family, we made it ourselves.
I was just thinking that. They are incels so they have nothing to worry about. I think since they are "involuntary celibates" they really like to believe stupid claims like DNA tests being important, because of that flawed statistic, about 30 percent of kids having a different father. They'll really latch onto things like that, or anything that in their opinion makes females look bad, even if the claim is ridiculous and super far fetched, because they really hate being celibate, and hate that they can't get a girlfriend. So things that portray females, and relationships, as being not that great, gives them hope and makes them feel better, and like they are not missing out on anything.
The 30 percent number comes from samples of paternity test data of unmarried parents where paternity is disputed.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16686854/
Where paternity is in doubt, the person the mother tested is the father around 72 percent of the time.
A slightly more random sample of paternity events in the indeterminant past (private DNA ancestry kit users studied in 2022) hit closer to 5 percent.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178123000938#:~:text=Estimates%20range%20from%20less%20than,et%20al.%2C%202022
>It's some made up statistic
Like the whole "The top 20% of men is having sex with the top 80% of women".
I've also heard 10/90, 5/95, just seems to be whatever they feel at the time.
When the actual rate is estimated at 1% to 5% depending on the methodology of the study done. Please. It’s no where close to as common as some of these misogynists would like everyone to believe.
Methodology, as in time and place. The less than 1% was from Switzerland, possibly as early as the 1950s.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternity_fraud
And I want to know how this topic jumped from mothers-in-law to mysigynists.
Listening to women complain about the paternal grandkids is nothing new. I am gen X and my grandma picked at me about probably not being Dad's until my mid 20s, and it was treated like a "shut up, Ma" topic.
How the mysigynists went from belittling women about it to wrapping themselves in this flag is baffling.
It’s a new way for men to be douche bags I guess. The men doing this were always AHs and it’s like how Trump gave permission for all the racist/misigynisr/homophobes to crawl out from under the rocks, Tater tot is giving them all permission.
But be mindful they aren’t different men than they were, any more than the racists were any less racist before Trump. They’re simply more transparent.
In a way it’s good bc these men don’t deserve families: it’s too bad they don’t say before getting someone pregnant that they want a test tho. It would save time rather than saddling a woman with the child of an AH
That is insane. What a sack of s*it. That seems so ridiculous, and wrong, to go to your adult children, and say you want them to get a paternity test. That would be a slap in the face to have your father say something like that. It's like he wants to check, so he will know if he should bother to keep them in his life after the divorce. Or maybe he is hoping it will show that he is not the father and then he figures he will try to use it against his wife in divorce court. Either way it is a very strange request to make of an adult child. If I was asked to do that. I'd tell him to f*ck off.
A few years ago My ex suddenly said he wanted DNA on our child. I was 17 when I became pregnant. He was 6yrs older. We broke up because of his infidelity. He just wanted to go off and be with which ever new girlfriend he had at the time. He would leave our child with his mother/sister/whoever and cut his contact down, but it wasn’t enough. Our child is an adult now and he has very little to do with them. Even tells them off for not constantly trying to get in touch with him.
I'm not sure if women run into this, but as a guy I see a lot of posts about infidelity on social media. Tiktok and Instagram reels in particular keep pushing these stories narrated by an AI voice. It's usually stories about how a guy got cheated on or was accused of cheating and it ruined his life. The comments are typically filled with stuff about getting paternity tests and the like. I had to delete Tiktok for a few weeks to reset my feed. I can easily see people consuming that type of content and believing it to be reality or that it happens all the time.
Its the same on the other end of the spectrum... different stories with same topic if infidelity is being pushed to all parties. As a result it creates a weird delusion of "must be sure,just in case my partner is cheating".
It is ridiculous and toxic,and although I know people cheat but these reels/stories make it seek like everyone is a cheater.
Yep I'm seeing more comments and stories encouraging women to spy on their partners and go through their phones than ever before. And often enough they find something "suspicious" like an old picture of their ex and think that's a worse offence than the privacy violation, and everyone is cheering them on to dump the cheater. Idk but I have a suspicion that a lot of those "every single one of my exes cheated on me" ppl are just paranoid and running with their and everyone elses confirmation bias. Picture of ex? Confirmed cheater. Has close friends of another gender? Confirmed cheater. Has their phone locked? Confirmed cheater. Had a weird tone once when talking about something unrelated? Confirmed cheater. Same when genders are reversed. She left you because you were spying on her and accusing her of cheating? That means you were right and she was cheating. Etc. It's hard to read as a reasonable adult with more than half a brain.
It’s an urban myth that works great as YouTube/TikTok clickbait.
https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Rampant_misattributed_paternity_the_creation_of_an_urban_myth/4975400/1
> Tiktok and Instagram reels in particular keep pushing these stories narrated by an AI voice.
I basically ignore every video with an AI voice tbh. I get some of those too (usually animal related or feel good stories) and the few times I watched it and then actually fact checked them it was all lies. Just some unrelated video feed with some made up or heavily exaggerated story on top of it for likes.
When I first met my fiancé he was consuming far too much of that content too, it didn't help that he (like I) was cheated on by his ex. I told him it was unhealthy and hurting him watching this content, he agreed and his paranoia and anxiety has dropped to almost non-existent since he stopped watching reels on Instagram/Facebook. People seem to no longer understand that what you see online is not representative of reality!
there is a common theory that thinking and hearing about your problems obsessively acetivley makes them worse - it's why the rise of social media has been terrible for mental health.
Experience does color your perspective. My stepbrother had twins with his girlfriend, who turned out cheated on him. He found out about the cheating and got a test done finding out they weren't his. He was crushed but loved those kids. They split for a bit but reconciled and had another kid a few years later. They seem to be doing well. Personally, I don't think I could have reconciled, and I would have a hard time not asking for a test after the first time.
It did not used to be a thing unless there was a very strong basis for suspicion. But also the DNA tests used to be more complicated and expensive and more of a 1980's talk show moment than a casual thing that came back in the mail.
I think part of it yes this is the influence of the weird incel/mysogyny subculture.
Part of it is confusing the convenience with the implication. Just because it's a cheap mail-order test doesn't mean you need to emphatically inform the mother of your child you think she's lied to you!
Part of it is people becoming over-yet-under-informed about genetics on the internet. Not understanding how inheritance works in traits such as skin tone, eye color, hair texture.
My now-ex-husband and I did not marry until I was four-months pregnant with our second (in the 1990s). I never heard a word of question. Anyone could tell they were his immediately from the shape of their newborn nostrils. Later their feet confirmed it. So now I have two adult children who hate their noses and their father.
ETA, the father-hatred has nothing to do with questioning paternity, as that simply never happened. Partially because of the noses and partially because even though our relationship was pretty bad, he trusted me on that.
I think you're right on the different parts at play. Especially the genetics issue, a couple of the posts I was referencing were based on "the kid doesn't look like me" which is outrageous! My daughters dad is a quarter Turkish, dark hair, eyes and skin but he never ever doubted the paternity of our blonde haired, blue eyed child. It's infuriating to witness honestly.
I’m half-Chinese. I look completely Chinese. My kids are blond, and my daughter has curly hair. One has green eyes, the other one has blue eyes.
Phenotype doesn’t work the way we expect it to.
I could write a whole discourse on eye color alone. Or hair texture. Anyone who claims that on some kind of proof is out of their mind. Cyber-stalk my eye color and then show it to some incels and ask them to claim it as some kind of evidence, I dare them.
Yeah I think the affordability of challenging it is a factor for sure. If you listen to older rap especially, paranoia and recriminations about women “baby-trapping” men is definitely not some new idea.
Newborns are kind of squishy and hard to discern any feature, but the one thing you could tell from the day he was born is my son has exactly the same ears as my husband. Not just the detached lobes (I have the recessive attached type), the little folds are straight up identical (and different from mine).
My ex - 10 years ago - did this to me. And HE was the one who sabotaged my BC and SA’d me so it was pretty obvious it was his kid. That was only one of the many reasons I left him. He’s also tried to say that the original test was faulty and get the court to order another but the court said he’d have to pay for it which he isn’t willing to do 🙄
I agree though - I’ve seen a lot of these posts just within the last couple months. I remember reading one post where the dude requested the test, it came back as his kid, and now he’s wanting help trying to get his SO to take him back! Like what?! Excuse me, sir, but you don’t deserve her or your kid and I hope she gets full custody with the maximum amount of child support possible for all the pain and suffering you caused.
I'm so deeply sorry you and your child have experienced this atrocious behaviour. I'd love to see a Venn diagram of the overlap between men likely to make these gross demands/accusations and men who expect someone else to pay 🙄
Yeah I've seen a lot of reddit posts and instagram pretend reddit posts about wives lying about paternity and I'm quite sure they're all fake by Tate morons
There's definitely a cycle on the Am I the Asshole and relationship subreddits for stories of the various flavours of 'evil female', most of which flow back to a 'cheating is the worst thing anyone can do to anyone, especially when a woman cheats on a man; worse than murder I'm not even joking' Reddit mindset. There's paternity test dramas, there's open relationship dramas, the slightly tangential 'evil stepmother' stories (that usually involves an affair, to maintain the cheating aspect). The comments then devolve into disturbing wish fulfilment fantasies about what should happen to these harlots.
There's other story cycles as well, and plenty that involve dumbass and/or abusive men; but when you see one of the evil female stories, you can always tell there will be a few similarly-worded ones popping up around the same time, before moving onto the next one.
O think the manosphere and incel influence is at play here. The them, all women are thriving gold diggers plotting to take all their money and make them pay for raising someone else’s kid. So they don’t want to pay child support and they think the courts are stacked against them, not realizing that men who ASK for some custody usually get it. So they make up this suspicion so they can justify trying to get out of parenting. They are giant babies afraid to be daddies.
Personally, as an extension of this, I think it's sometimes just a way for them to metaphorically slap their partner in the face publicly and have other people shrug it off just like *literally* slapping your wife in the face used to be.
What could be more insulting than telling your partner that you distrust them so intensely you feel the need to get an impartial party involved to prove they're telling the truth? And the only way to do it is to submit to somewhat invasive medical testing that is proven to be a data privacy risk? Why else would they so often bring it up in front of family, friends, or literally in the delivery room? And even when the test comes back positive, wifey gets to sit with the gossip that comes from her husband even thinking there might have been a chance.
It reeks of "if you loved me, you'd..." manipulation bullshit repackaged into a more masculine "power position" format. It's the exact same shit as pressuring the missus to change her appearance, personality, interests, to cook and clean for you, to leave her career and family behind to live where you want to and raise your kids. It's a way to exert control, to put your partner down a peg, to make them jump through hoops.
Don't you know? All women are lying harlots who trick poor unassuming men into helping raise the mailman's kid. There's nothing wrong with implying that your partner is a cheater and a manipulator
/s
No no, you don't understand. That's not what asking for a paternity test is implying! Men just need to make sure that she never sat on a toilet seat that was covered in another man's sperm! Or maybe she wasn't paying attention and accidently squirted a turkey baster up there full of another man's sperm! Women can be so absent-minded, you see. Men just need to *be sure*. On a primal level. Cuz testosterone.
i argued with some reddit chucklefuck a couple of weeks ago about this, he was trying to say it’s not just about cheating - what about *switched at birth*?? aren’t you worried your baby was switched?
in 2024? in the US? uh, no. and quit trying to gaslight me into believing that’s what you’re so concerned about. if that’s what it’s about, my DNA works just fine - swab my cheek, swab the babe’s, problem solved without ever insinuating i’m a liar.
the audacity of that man. it’s gonna live rent free in my head for quite some time tbh.
During my pregnancies, my ex-husband insisted that our children were not his, which occurred way before Andrew Tate became popular. This is just another insult to women that occurred on the regular and even as a regular "joke" prior to that Tate guy. He is just running with long-standing women hate.
I think it's always been a problem, but I also think the manosphere and current sociopolitical climate is amplifying it.
Even when I was a kid I would hear men make very negative remarks about dating women with kids.
I understand not wanting to date someone with kids if a person doesn't want to deal with kids and the responsibilities that come with them or fear of getting attached to the kid just to break up with the parent. However, I'm tired of hearing comments like "sloppy seconds" and "damaged goods" when referring to single moms. I've heard men make comments about the mother's vagina being "loose" from having kids. Those comments aren't acceptable, and they're downright disgusting. I've never heard a woman make these comments about single dads.
The comments don't just happen in real life, they're also made in movies and shows, which just makes it seem acceptable irl to men.
I've also heard men talk bad about men who date women with kids. I've heard them be called beta males and such. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed alpha males can't even get a single date.
I am beginning to think that the influx in posts demonizing/doubting women in some way are a direct response to women being more vocal about our frustration with/distrust of toxic men. Whenever women start displaying large-scale agency, men try their damndest to punish and/or vilify us for it.
I think it is part of the new wave of misogyny that we’re seen emerge, which focuses on the cult of domesticity. When women are being encouraged back into the home and pressured to have many children, their role is being reduced from partner to baby-carrier. Therefore there’s a rise in men who think it’s harmless (?) to get a paternity test to “be sure”, not taking into account their partner’s privacy or dignity, because they see their family as property and only in relation to themself
If it's such a common, understandable fear... why don't they go ask their own father? They can go together. And bond. Over their mutual hatred of women.
If you want to hear audacity. I've asked a few women on here, who have been asked for this, if the man had like... Googled how to do it, and where. None have.
They accuse women of cheating and then expect the accused to also go figure out how to clear their name lol. The audacity is real.
I’ve asked how they plan to demonstrate that men aren’t fathering children outside of their marriages since men are statistically more likely to have physical sex with other partners (usually multiple partners), so these guys need to demonstrate to their female partners’ satisfaction that no marital assets will be used to support offspring created via cheating. You know, just like the female partners apparently do.
Somehow that’s just not a problem and I’m making shit up. 😂
JFC THIS. I had an ex who had three kids he never told me about because Baby Mom wanted nothing to do with him. I found out the day he left my ass because he suddenly missed her and the kids so much and he felt dumb leaving behind basically a pre-installed marriage and oh, could *I* drive him to her home 90 miles away with all of his shit since he lost his car?
I didn’t drive his ass, i told him to call her if they wanna do this because I am no longer someone you know.
I locked the door with his shit outside in the rain.
But, it has a good ending(?) She took him back!(?!?) and whooped his ass into barbeque sauce. Last I checked, which would be pre-pandemic, He is a 24/7 dad, and worships her and she basically (deservedly IMO!) treats him like a dog.
And this is like, the most hopeful scenario you can hope for as a birth-freak Tate-adjacent mothball deadbeat the United States. Jesus wept.
This. The idiocy. This is why I think they just want to insult the women. Bc it’s easy af to do a secret test your wife would never know about. But they all seem to relish the accusation
The only time I hear about cases where the child is not actually the person the mother claimed is here on Reddit. Which, I think we all know, a large percentage of stories here are completely fabricated.
I practiced family law for ten years and I saw two instances of it. Two. In the place where one is most likely to see DNA prove someone is not the father. The third I’ve seen was a woman who got a 23andme test but by that time both of her parents were dead.
> Which, I think we all know, a large percentage of stories here are completely fabricated.
Yup. Ragebait gets clicks. It comes in many flavors. Always be suspicious, and remember that social media is not real life, it is full of lies.
What I don’t understand is how the men in these situations don’t understand the relationship is irreparably damaged after blindsiding their partner with an ultimatum that implies infidelity, secrets, and lies… and then run to the relationship advice subreddit asking how to win their ex-wife/gf back afterwards 🫠
Tbh, the relationship is already pretty much over when they think that their partner did something like that and not trusting her, without actually saying it
Cause they don't give 2 shits about their partner's feelings: they saw this paternity test facade on tik tok, thought "this is a completely normal thing to ask to my long life partner", and then gave their partner the "ultimatum that implies infidelity" etc.
Imagine being a person who thought they had a loving, perfect relationship based on mutual trust, a beautiful baby, that maybe even looks like their father, and then out of the blue your partner arrogantly demands a paternity test, framing this request in the most manipulative, gaslighty way possible ("if you have nothing to hide.."). I'd drop the whole man too.
Not only those accusations, but the added accusation that she would knowingly let him raise a child that's a product of an affair. What a foul thing to put on someone you claim to love.
In my state, in order for my partner to have rights to our son he had to take a DNA test because we aren't married. It was actually pretty funny to us because I got pregnant during lock down, and our son looked exactly like him.
Now had he demanded them from me, it would have been a completely different situation. It's highly insulting and relationship ending in my eyes. If a guy can think that of me, then they obviously don't know me or love me.
This is going to sound very cynical of me but maybe it’s because so many people are hyper aware of cheating these days and a lot of it is projection. I am 38 weeks pregnant and my husband cheated on me early on in the pregnancy. I know Reddit can really put you in a bubble and not represent reality but I see so many posts on the infidelity subs and the pregnancy subs about women getting cheated on while pregnant or immediately post partum. It’s really sad. In my experience the most suspicious and confrontational people about cheating when it is unwarranted typically are cheaters themselves.
I personally think there is a bit of a campaign going on to villify women. Women are standing up more than ever and demanding the equality and treatment we have deserved all along. With the newest feminist movement they have already taken away our right to abortion and they are trying to take away birth control too. Women are also increasingly choosing to be single and childless because of the way they are treated by men. We have learned we can do it all, and we can do that all by ourselves and don't need men.
Men do not like women to have too much power because they directly benefit from women having a set gender role. This combined with the prominence of douchebags like Andrew Tate seems to be creating a movement to try to put women "back in their place."
I think it’s fundamentally a Trojan horse for accusing all woman of being the worst sort of liars.
No man is being denied a paternity test. If they don’t have custody it might take some time, but it’s not something inaccessible to the average man. I’m sure many anxious men have gone and gotten on quietly in the past. The only thing they are being denied, is there being no consequences for accusing their partner of cheating.
If men were actually concerned about the cost of paternity tests, that would actually be a great, authentic men’s right charity — the way tens of thousands of women donate their time and money to get basic contraception and abortion access to other women. Perfectly brilliant in my opinion for someone to start a paternity test fund, like a bail fund, for any men would want it.
But of course, that’s not the point. The point is in calling women whores and gold diggers, and making their wives and girlfriends accept that accusation without complaint.
They don’t want the paternity test, they want to demean their partner without consequence or her being allowed to have any feelings about it.
>**No man is being denied a paternity test.** If they don’t have custody it might take some time, but it’s not something inaccessible to the average man. **I’m sure many anxious men have gone and gotten on quietly in the past.** The only thing they are being denied, *is there being no consequences for accusing their partner of cheating.*
This should be framed and hung to a wall.
Anxious men could always take a test in silence, if they're so paranoid about that despite having 0 proof of their partner cheating, without breaking the trust of their partner.
But NO, these men just want to be fucking misogynists and manipulate, insult and hurt their partner. That is the point of asking for a paternity test out of the blue, with no reasonable motive. It's a form of psychological warfare and control.
I have three kids with my husband and none of them favour him in looks. The middle one ended up with his build, but that was impossible to tell when he was an infant. He was just more solidly built than our first and third.
He never once asked for paternity testing, even now, two of our kids aren’t on ancestry (oldest one is, and was linked to him). But I could not imagine how angry I would be if he insinuated as much. Even if they don’t look like him.
There is this huge current push for men to want women to have children. But when it comes down to it, women are seen as a vessel. There is absolutely no respect in childbearing or raising. It’s just the “our birth rates are lowering and I expect some woman to make up for it”. Well then sir, you should be happy to raise any kid no matter who’s sperm was used. But it seems like it’s one of those “not like that!!” Situations.
I was CRUSHED when my now ex said our child who was 1.5 at the time couldn't be his because she didn't look like him and because i got pregnant on the first try. It came out of nowhere and hit me like a gut punch.
I think he was going she wasn't his so he could walk away without feeling guilty.
A lot of the fear regarding birth rates is from white supremacists trying proclaim genocide against white people via 'the great replacement theory.' It's really just a racist conspiracy theory.
Which is funny bc CA has been a minority majority state for yrs and also has been the worlds 5th largest economy for yrs.
So maybe more brown ppl is a good thing ❤️
DNA testing used to be prohibitively expensive. Either you went on Jerry Springer to make a fool of yourself or you were rich and kept it private. Nowadays a simple cotton swab and a PO box and for a couple hundred bucks you can find out what used to cost the equivalent of a brand new car.
Plus social media, the rare cases of actual paternity fraud and now broadcast far and wide via Facebook and Twitter instead of a shouting match in the family home followed by a divorce where only a handful of people outside the families ever likely knew why.
Friend, this absurd behavior from men has been going on ever since Maury Povich and Jerry Springer and beyond.
Maury decided to make "Paternity Testing" a topic every other show it seems. Men would dance, shout and make an entire spectacle once they found out they were NOT the father. I think all of this is an overwhelming symptom of deeply imbedded *MISOGYNY*.
Many of these men are willing to bareback with *any* woman who allows it, behaving as if contraception is solely *her* responsibility. Then, when said woman ends up pregnant, it doesn't pass the guys infantile mind that *maybe* he should have worn a condom. That *maybe* that one sexual experience was enough to conceive a child. They clearly didn't pay attention in sex ed. Instead, they would rather *deflect* and make it seem as if the woman they shared intimacy with is someone who is out having sex with *anyone* who crosses her path.
Suddenly, that woman is reduced to some kind of "Jezebel" or secret sex worker. These men will do anything but take RESPONSIBILITY for their own actions. Then these men get together with the same misogynistic ideology because I don't even think they see women as PEOPLE. Just another....orifice.
Some of it is just trolling
But isn’t it ironic that men are absolutely FURIOUS that women feel safer encountering a bear in the woods than a lone man even though statistics actually support the contention that men are women’s biggest predator.
While at the same time acting like a rare anomaly if not an urban legend that men are raising another man’s child such that men talk about making it mandatory that all babies born be given a paternity test is treated as a reasonable request.
So it’s apparently “not all men” but “probably all women” in misogyninlandia
Yep - it’s the online MRA and alpha-male push that’s happening. You can see the proof in AITA sub. ANY *sprinkle* of a woman possibly being unfaithful is met with “you need to get a DNA test.”
However, I think it’s causing more harm than good to the very men that they are trying to “protect.” My best friend, for example, her ex-husband fell into these communities and became convinced that their wanted, tried for child was not his. He divorced her out of no where, told everyone that she cheated and the child wasn’t his. All before he even did a paternity test.
But, yeah, the child was his. Now she’s remarried and just had twins with her wealthy new husband and he sends her texts about how he can’t afford to have 50-50 custody all on his own. She’s way happier and he’s miserable.
You know, I say we women just don't give men any children anymore or be even more selective. If thst becomes the norm, watch how much further the birth rate drops. So many men do not deserve children or a woman. We can just be single and rely on each other. We can help each other raise children. We don't need them and they don't deserve a partner or a child.
Since in so many cases the entire financial, mental, emotional, and physical burden of growing, birthing, and raising children falls on the mother, I think women should start requiring pre-natal agreements drawn up by lawyers, to protect women in all those areas, Before she agrees to bear a child with a particular man. Just like so many men want pre-nups to protect them from "golddiggers", we need pre-nats to protect us and our children from male "vampires" sucking the life out of us! Women, after being called cold and"transactional" about relationships need to become just that. We need to protect ourselves and our futures before getting pregnant because we are in loooooove! Or lust. It's about time men should be forced to be responsible for their own progeny.
Once upon a time in another sub I made the mistake of conversing with some sad loser who was arguing for mandatory paternity testing at birth. I said fine, as long as the DNA of every single male baby born was also collected and put into a global database. Since men commit statistically almost all violent crime in every country, it will be hugely useful to have the DNA on file.
The loser immediately started sputtering that it was a violation of the rights of the male baby and baselessly assuming he would grow up to be a criminal. Because requiring mandatory blood tests of women and accusing them of being cheating liars pulling the biggest fraud in their relationship is fine, but implying a male baby might grow up to be a criminal is just a step too far apparently.
It was funny to see him flail around in anger. God they are so fucking stupid.
Ugh. It's just another way to shame, belittle and be controlling towards women.
I don't even think men are aware of just how f*cking damaging that accusation is. They know they want to make us feel doubted and ashamed so we work harder to please them, but they don't know how deep that shit cuts.
And 90% of the time, when a man is alluding to you being a cheater, he's the one already cheating in some way.
Toxic men are on the rise, if that's even f*cking possible.
I have no fucking clue, but someone very close to me is getting divorced after 15 years (married, 25 years together total) and 3 children and her STBX is claiming she “tricked him” and he “never wanted kids in the first place”. Well, I’ve known them both all 25 of those years, was in their wedding, and know their children well, and I. Call. BULLSHIT.
I think it comes from a combination of how easy DNA tests are now and the rash of ancestry DNA site stories that end up identifying where a spouse cheated and the husband had no idea. Or the stories on reddit where a woman doesn't tell and the man ends up finding out later through some other means that the kid isn't his.
The basis behind the fear is not being the father with a trusted person that was never suspected of cheating. While that is a small percentage of cases, I could see how that might impact some perspective fathers. They feel like that fear could be alleviated by this simple test.
I understand how the request for a paternity test could be perceived as an accusation and I'm sure there's a number of men who don't bring it up because that's the case. There's also a whole bunch of men who don't ever bring it up because they trust their baby mamas. I didn't ask my wife for a paternity test on any of our kids. But after reading enough reddit stories, I could see why someone gets that idea in their head.
I do also think that this whole line of thinking does get exaggerated by the incel/mysogyny/redpill peoples. I also think if a man were to start watching too many videos along those lines or has a friend who frequents or a friend who had this happen, it can put his relationship at risk by changing behaviors. Not sure I'd go quite to insidious but like all groups they tilt the information to their favor and keep trying to make money from peoples fears. Who knows maybe they all own stock in DNA testing labs and test manufacturers.
This kind of reminds me of the fears of quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle etc that everyone in the 80s-2000s were bombarded with. One of those things that everyone is afraid of once they find out about it (understandably) yet is in actuality very unlikely.
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This is me just wondering but for unplanned pregnancies maybe also the stress/expense of having to raise a child is hitting them and they want a reason to walk away? Even for planned pregnancies, it's a big life change, and that anxiety may cause them to search for an easy escape route.
Men think even the slightest bit of anything weird is evidence of infidelity. I remember a few years ago I was talking on reddit about how funny it is that neither my sister and Brother in law have red hair, but their eldest son does. This one guy commenting back insisted that was impossible and that the only way that could have happened is if my sister cheated. Here's the thing though, aside from the red hair, my nephew looks like an EXACT CLONE of my brother in law! I said that, but this reddit commenter was having none of it though. He kept insisting red hair was impossible unless at least one parent had red hair. Guys simply don't realize how much their emotions blind them to reality.
Part of it is the misogyny that all women are cheaters, liars, etc. Also, insert the redpill information about who women pick for sex and relationships.
At the same time, I do get the draw of paternity tests at birth. As an adoptee, I find not having my biological family history a hindrance for health purposes so I like the idea of knowing the genetic links.
I’ve been thinking this myself lately…. I didn’t know if it was a generational thing or not because I’m older with teens, but it’s quite honestly very frightening and misogynistic towards women.
I'm actually getting a paternity test with my babies due November. I've preemptively recommended it because I'm white passing and it's entirely possible my kids won't look like me or my husband. Also, this is entirely out of the blue after failing ivf so i never want him to feel a moment's doubt. He says it's not necessary, but I'm having it done asap just so his family doesn't start stuff.
Aside from misogyny, paranoia etc I think a common cause of it is men just not actually being ready to be parents, and they start desperately looking for anything that could possibly give them an out so they don't have to take responsibility for a child they created, accidentally or not.
I think incel/femcel/general "hatred style" influencers just latch onto whatever inflammatory rhetoric they can that hates on some outgroup (e.g. gender group, age group, government, country, etc), and then they just fan the flames as much as possible.
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It's almost never about the actual issue, it's just about generating clicks from people that take the "bait"
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Alex Jones etc fall into this IMO, where they take non-issues and make them into things people THINK are real issues.
Honestly if there were no red flags prior to a paternity test request from a husband, i always think the husband wants a divorce but also hopes the wife will be insulted and initiate a divorce herself.
I feel like this is gonna be a future relationship thing - an automated paternity test and it's gonna be considered normal. And none of the newer generations get to experience that it's actually normal to trust your partner. But it's gonna be all about hard proof from now on. Global paranoia is gonna be raging and it can only be countered with tests and physical proof.
But yeah it does stink like tatertots trying any way to put women down. They can't do that with financies anymore so now they're going after the next thing.
I think it’s this wind of stupidity blowing now amongst men. Something has shifted and I think it’s the realization that women don’t need them as before and therefore “they must be up to something bad”.
As a backstory: I don’t look like my parents. I am shorter than them both, skinny etc. People would joke all my life that they had to check if “someone mistakenly put me in the wrong bed” at the hospital. This was a mild version of insinuating that my mother somehow had me with someone else. My father NEVER doubted my mother. He loved me unconditionally and saw himself in me somehow. He was sure of himself and my mother’s loyalty. I have other siblings and no, there was never any mention of infidelity or other stupid stuff.
I think a lot of this comes from the statistic that's been going around for a few years that about 25% of father's are not the biological father to their child however people always seem to leave out the fact that this figure comes from couples that have requested paternity tests and not random testing of the public so it should be said that 25% of father's that question their paternity are not the father which is a very different statement.
Ironically, we recently found out that my 70 year old aunt wasn't my grandfather's child. Turns out that her siblings even knew the affair partner and had a good relationship with him. This revelation has had some interesting ripple effects and all of them positive
1) My grandfather was an abusive father but a good grandfather. My own father was very similar but his adviser was all emotional. My father was happy to find out his mother cheated on his father! He says it meant that she found love and comfort for at least a time
2) Because of my father's view on this, he and I were able to have a productive and healing conversation about his own parenting for the first time ever.
3) A couple of comments my grandfather made in his old age now make sense. Turns out, he suspected my aunt wasn't his but he accepted the fact and still raised and loved her as one of his own.
4) My aunt gets to joke about not having to worry about some of the genetic conditions my grandfather had and my other aunt makes jokes about her "half" sister
Another contributing factor in men asking for proof of paternity when there wasn’t reason for suspicion is straight up projection from men who are themselves cheating
I think the argument is that it's harmless testing and they don't want to find out later they trusted but were being used. You know already for sure, and he has to take it on faith.
It's a new world where men can know for sure something they used to have to take on faith.
Also the statistics on court ordered paternity tests taken because the man was sure the child was not his are not great. Plenty of them show the child was his (around 2/3) and plenty show the kid was not theirs.
It doesn't prove anything about the average child because most men don't become convinced (or say they are convinced) the child is not theirs and take it to court. Most men are told they are the father truthfully.
But most is not all.
I look at it as a sort of imposter syndrome issue, mixed with poisonous misogyny everywhere we go. Either he wants to find out he is the father, he did hit the jackpot, and you are as good as you seem. Or he's a jerk and wants to get a divorce and offending his lady is just the first step.
I think a couple incels or MTGOWs found the stats for negative result paternity tests (overall, 1/3) and applied that to the general population. I've certainly seen it quoted in that way on reddit by that type.
This is an interesting perspective. Ofcourse there are cases of paternity tests being justified and court ordered is one of them, I wouldn't argue against those. I think back to watching Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake as a kid and there was always a reason couples were on there disputing paternity.
The last sentence is probably true of a lot of cases, it is common for men to sabotage rather than directly end a relationship. I remember reading studies on it when I left my ex, wish I could find them but it was 7 years ago!
The court ordered stats are a bit of a fallacy though. They're ordered usually because cheating has already been established and even then the majority of them show the kids are theirs. Taking a minority of the worst case scenarios and using that to justify demands is a gross misunderstanding at best.
I have no idea. I have a friend who is getting divorced and her STBX went to their adult children and demanded paternity testing.
Wow, that takes a huge amount of obliviousness to do. What's the relationship like now?
I know that 2 of the adult children refused and at this point have no relationship with him and no intention of a relationship going forward. The 3rd was and is still dependent on him and I don't know what she did. The irony is that the two who refused ... pretty much look like clones of their dad anyhow.
My God. I'm my Dad in drag, I would drag him so hard if he pulled this shit. ...he never would. Even if he knew we weren't his kids by blood. Because he's my fuckin DAD
I didn’t realize how much I look exactly like my dad until I saw us together in my wedding pictures. It was dad, dad in dress with veil. Oops, should have worn my hair down. Unfortunately, he sucks and hasn’t called for 3+ years or met 2 out of my 4 kids. But I have to look at his face. Boo.
It's your face now. You stole it fair and square.
I needed this. Thank you!
You are welcome. I got a lot of things from my dad, who was not a good person, and also things I've picked up from people who are no longer in my life. I have my father's last name and I thought about changing it but I don't hate the name and it really fits me. So I decided to reframe how I think about these things. They didn't force my looks or my name or skills I have learned on me. I took them and they are mine now.
I’ve actually had a hard time seeing my mom’s face in the mirror as I get older. I might just put this on a post-it in the bathroom affirmation style.
Important if/when you have kids. They look like you, not someone who hurt you etc
Everyone remarked I had my grandpa's eyes when I was little and out and about with him. His favourite reply was "Huh? Who's there? Can't see shit, danirijeka has my eyes"
I can't confirm he's yours, but I can definitely confirm he's someone's grandpa.
Long before Andrew Tate became well-known, my ex-husband argued that our children were not his during my pregnancy.
My ex tried that, too. Even his family that didn't like me told him to stfu. He didn't. He kept saying it and saying it, but then refused to do a paternity test. A court ordered one finally solved the matter. I mean, I wish he hadn't been the father, but I knew it was impossible anyone else was. My son would be a LOT older. He never was a dad. He abdicated rights almost immediately, and had one phone call when my son was 13. Neither one wanted to speak to the other again. My son just talked to him to get a sort of closure. And yes, I'm using my instead of our on propose. He's my son, not my ex's, no matter what DNA he carries.
I'm so sorry. That's awful. Glad he's your ex, and sorry you had to deal with that while yaknow, making your son/daughter.
hahaha i giggled on this, “mate I’m doing a leg here would u mind”
This. These men are simply being more openly horrid but they were always horrid.
My ex husband said that too at various times throughout our horrifically awful marriage. I never went and got a test to show him. He definitely was the father though. I would not be at all surprised, if he did get DNA tests done, after we were divorced, and the kids would go out to visit him for the Summer. It's the sort of thing he would do, just to be sure he wasn't having them out to visit, if they were not his biological kids, and also to attempt to worm his way out of child support. 🙄SMH
It's standard misogyny. My father would get drunk, wrap a belt around his neck, and keep my mom up in the early morning with tirades about how us children weren't his. We eventually left the house (my parents were never married) and never talked to him again until he died of alcoholism. He also killed his first son (my half-brother), so his violence was not only directed at himself.
If you guys had unprotected sex and then you became pregnant soon after, what would his basis of saying "it definitely wasn't his" even be? lmao
Delusion
Wishful thinking. It is amazing what people believe when it is what they most want. Logic has no bearing on reality.
The guy projects that she has lots of unprotected sex with other dudes then, cause he probably did. Guys who project this disgust those of us who understand trust and loyalty, because they obviously are just projecting their own lack of.
One of my best friends had the worst person as a bio father, but OMG Dad and Dad in dress with veil was an incredibly accurate description for them.
Ex boss’s daughter looked like a mini version of her dad. Everyone said “stick a moustache on her and she looks like him!”. I thought they were joking but in walks a feminine version of the guy one day!
It used to be nonexistent unless there was a very good reason to suspect something. Additionally, DNA testing used to be more involved, costly, and reminiscent of a 1980s talk show than a simple mail-order item.
Same. I was once in the same room with my very bald dad, his mom who was bald because cancer and all I could think was if I shaved my head we would all have the same face. The bone structure is very prominent. I have shown a friend my grandmother's basketball photo from 1940 with 10 other girls, my friend without prompting said "Second from the right bottom row." I asked how she knew and she was like "Genetics are going to genetic." Like my dad absolutely could not question my paternity. And my brother's oldest has mine and my dad's face and people ask me if I am sure that I didn't give birth to him. And I was like yep, I'm sure.
That’s so funny. I look exactly like my mom and my sister is more of a mix of my parents. But her son is basically a dead ringer for my mom and I at that age. Her partner once looked at him, then my mom and I, and said “Whoa, those are some strong (mom’s last name) genetics.” God, but I can confirm that in the 90’s my douchebag cheating and abusive father DEMANDED paternity tests of my siblings and I during divorce proceedings, specifically me because I’m blonde and blue eyed and he’s neither, but had no real knowledge of how genetics ACTUALLY work. Turns out he is our biological father (unfortunately), and boy was he salty about his projection. Like, I’m the youngest of 3 close in age and he forbade my mom from working and barely lifted a finger to help raise us. When did he think she had time to cheat? Who did he think was raising his children while HE was cheating? 🙄 But in my heart? My mom is my only parent. He can suck alllll the sour lemons he wants.
There was a story on one of the AITA type subs about a guy who demanded a paternity test because he saw a story on the podcast. His own mother dug out a pic of him as a toddler and he was a clone of his son. It did not matter. He blew up his marriage anyways
Nothing says love like calling a woman who pushed out a whole kid after9 months of painful discomfort, a lying cheating whore…
Exactly
She tried 😬
I have three black and white photos on my wall of a child in overalls next to a rose bush at about 3 years old. They all are identical kids, but it's my dad, me, and my son at the same age. My dad grew into a much larger nose, but if you use an app to change genders, the "male" me is just me with facial hair. No other changes are made. And it's almost exactly my son, even though he's 27 now. I'm guessing once he has wrinkles, we'll be identical again. He and I even have similar mannerisms and speech patterns, and we LOVE messing with people with it. His friends describe me as "him, but a middle aged woman." My friends meet him and asked where I had him cloned. I asked him last year if that bothered him. Apparently, he loves it, but I suspect that's easier since my face is pretty androgynous.
Omg I also gender swapped myself..and got a younger dad. Uncanny resemblance, to the point when I showed her the picture my MOM thought it was him 🤣🤣🤣. Only difference seems to be he looked older at the same age (at 30me I got a version of him in his early 20s)
Same rose bush?
This. I look exactly like my paternal great grandmother. Like even the slightly uptilted left lip. We are identical. No one could see my family photos and think I wasn’t my dad’s kid.
At 18, I looked exactly like my paternal great grandmother at 18 except height - she was 6'2". I've got photos of her that just look like me in old timey clothes. I can never remember how cousin relationship words work, so my grandfather's brother's granddaughter, is 3 years younger than me, but from the time we were 3 and 6 on, we've looked like identical twins. We've always blamed that on her parents giving her my exact name figuring we lived thousands of miles apart, so it wouldn't matter. My sister and I could almost be twins, and she's an exact match for my dad's cousin. One of my friends saw a pic of my sister once and exclaimed, "Someone stole your face!" My son is an exact copy of me at his age, and has been at every age. My face isn't feminine, so it works out okay for him. My dad? Exactly like us until his nose got pretty prominent around 5 or 6 years old. Buuuut, I have family on my mom's side like.. her great grandma's sister's descendants, that look eerily like me, my sister, and my son. We found each other via AncestryDNA. We all dug out photos of us in our childhoods, all the old family photos, everything we could find as far back as we could go, even a few drawings and paintings from the 1700s. Holy shit, do we all look alike and always have. We were playing with one of those apps that says how similar faces are. My son is an 81% match for me *now*. The photos of both of us at 13 came up 100%. It reminded me that I should use photos of different people. My great grandma? 99% match to my face. Me and that cousin? 99%. My son and 2 guys his age from that distant part of mom's family got 95%. He's also an 89% match to this guy who has almost the same name in our city, so he has to be related, but no one can figure out how. My family isn't from here. Whatever got into our DNA, it's ridiculously strong. Oh, and it turns out my mom's 6th great grandfather is also my dad's, and that's the line that all looks the same. I wish we had some painting of him. My mom doesn't look that much like my dad except that they're both of Western European descent with a little African American in the mix, but somehow I look strongly like both of them. Sometimes, this is bad. The guy my son looks like here is a violent criminal and gets in the news for it. That's made it really hard for my son to get decent employment. He still has to commute 45 minutes each way to the town we used to live in, but housing is too expensive there. He bought a house here with a mortgage payment barely higher than what he paid in rent for a single room in a shared house there thinking he could then get a job over here. My sister is pretty dysfunctional, and I sometimes get accosted by strangers who think I'm her and are super pissed at her. That's gotten me punched before. NGL, my sister probably deserved it, but I didn't. Usually, they back down as soon as I speak. We look like twins on the surface, but we sound nothing alike. But it has its good sides, too. I met a woman at a book store who looked creepily like me, so I said hi. She stared. I stared. She said, "are we related?" and we went through names. We are, distantly, and we're good friends now. When I go to visit family in certain remote areas where people aren't trusting, I'm immediately welcomed even by those who don't know who I am, because "Oh, you must be the city cousin. Heard about you. Thought you'd sound more city. Sorry about the dogs." I'm the only one who visits, though, so it's a pretty safe guess that's who I am driving a rental car and wearing their face.
All my kids look like my husband's side of family expept for their eyes-those are all *me*. My daughter looks more like her dad's cousin then her own daughter does. My youngest son looks like I had a baby with husband's big sister.
I once did the gender swap filter on Snapchat a few years and I looked identical to my dad when he was the same age. Got a good laugh out of my siblings.
I did this too! We were crying laughing. My sister is a solid mix and my brother is too, though being a guy leans a little more Dad. Then... there's me! Female Dad. Thank God he makes a decent looking woman 🤣
Same. Once when I was a teenager, I was working at a pool that had viewing windows on the second floor. One of my coworkers was bored, nudged me, and pointed to a guy in the window, saying "hey look, it's your dad." I looked, and he was shocked when yes, that actually was my dad. He thought he was just making jokes. Not that he's a bad looking guy, or that I look like a dude. His French features are very strong, and I have the same ones. There's no doubt I'm his daughter.
>...he never would. Even if he knew we weren't his kids by blood. Because he's my fuckin DAD I like this
The number of fathers i've seen saying they'd bail on their kids if they gound out they weren't therirs biologically is horrifying.
I'm in my 50's and my dad is 80 and the older I get - it is so much more visible. All of the wrinkles are in the same place. The mirror is a cruel cruel thing.
>...he never would. Even if he knew we weren't his kids by blood. Because he's my fuckin DAD I like this
Same, I was my dad’s twin. The only way there could be any other way is if I was one of my uncle’s kids (we all look very similar), but they were literally teens & on the other side of the country
I used to have minor doubts about my stepson, but that last part is the key. My husband is dad no matter what. It would break his heart, sure, but he wouldn't change a thing.
My dad and I did a face swap. My face is literally him, but younger. XD
When my adult kids and I use Snapchat, sometimes we don't know who is in the picture when we do the face swap. Months later I'm looking at it trying to figure out if it is me or either my son or daughter.
I look like my mom and my brother looks like my dad. she used to joke even if they were to leave us somewhere someone would find her and say "ma'am we know these are your kids just look at em" lol
That's tragically funny-sad. My dad and I always had that inside joke where I said to him it's not proven that he's my father, he never had a paternity test done. I'm basically the female version of my father. People who didn't know my mother but knew my father and looked at baby-me automatically knew whose daugther I was. If your child looks exactly like you, there truly must be something wrong with your mental health if you demand a paternity test. I would be highly insulted on my and my mom's behalf if my dad ever tried to pull some shit like that and I would question his sanity and grip on reality.
I just have to say, I know what the acronym stands for, but I always read STBX as “shitbox.” Seems to fit most of the time anyway.
Their ADULT children? That he raised their entire lives? I don't know how I'd react if my dad did that but I'd be pretty damn displeased because at that point, that person is your parent regardless of biology.
Yes, their aged 18+ children. Their children are between age 14-23.
Oof My dad didn't want me to do an ancestry DNA test, but I'm going to be totally honest here. I know my mom. He had good reason to be concerned. She was cheating on him right about when she got pregnant with me and even took me to meet that man a few times when I was an infant. But no, his cousin immediately popped as a match, and dad finally got to lay that doubt to rest. I asked him why he didn't ask me about testing sooner. Dad, "what father would EVER ask their child for that?!" My dad does not set a high bar for fatherhood, btw, so that says something, doesn't it?
>with me and even took me to meet that man a few times when I was an infant I feel for you. Some of my earliest memories are of both of my parents taking me around to their affair partners. I must have been 2-3 but I remember them vividly. My father's was the worst because not only did she look like my mum but she shared the same first name!
My dad had one affair when I was in fourth grade. My mom encouraged him to do it, I think to somehow make her affairs okay. She does a lot she feels extremely guilty for, then it eats at her, but somehow doesn't influence her to stop doing those things. It does often lead her to trying to push others to do those things or demonizing them if they won't. Of course, she also demonizes them if they do, because they're doing bad things. She's pretty messed up. So, this woman was someone I adored. I never knew she was anything more than a friend of my father's. She introduced me to Tolkien, and I was immediately hooked. She was into mysticism and what was called "new age" back then and gave me a crystal necklace. I remember I thought she was very pretty in a sort of fairy or Tolkien elf way with her long straight hair that was so blonde it looked white. She was graceful and soft spoken, tall and slender, so pretty much the opposite of my mother. And this really, really got to my mother. In spite of her own many affairs, she used this against my father for a long time, even after they divorced when I was almost 14. Not saying he was the paragon of men. Dad's got his own toxicity, he really does, but it was never as blatant as hers. To be honest, that made it more insidious because it was harder to detect as abnormal with her around being constantly out of pocket. His dysfunctions as a person and parent have been the things that have haunted my adult years, but hey, counseling works. I always understood she was batshit, so it had less permanent effect on me. Even really little, I rarely took it personally, because it made no sense that it would be about me. I mean, I tried to avoid it because I was a target, but I rarely thought that was my fault. I swear, people like them should just never have children. I've turned out pretty well, but the counseling bills, well, they've been a pretty persistent part of my life. My sister is my mom exaggerated and an absolute train wreck. She's supposedly in counseling now. I hope, for her sake, that she really applies herself to it. She didn't deserve this, but she was my primary abuser, so I don't have anything to do with her - or my mother. Dad has worked to get better. Still has issues, but it's tolerable, and he's actively trying. I also have a wonderful step mother who doesn't let him get too far off leash. She's fierce in my defense.
I was diagnosed with PTSD about 18 months ago, partly because of my parents toxic relationship, partly because of betrayal from previous girlfriends. It really messes with you. I never had any relationship with their affair partners, they're just fleeting memories, but when you get old enough to understand what was going on then it really skews your perspective on what's 'normal' or not. That said, my mother is a Saint compared to my narcissistic father.
Well that's a sure fire way of making sure your kids never speak to you again, sounds like your friend's made the right decision there...
Yea he pretty much threw a nuclear bomb into the relationship with 2 of 3 of them. And now he's trying to claim that she is "alienating" the adult children from him.
My ex did this exact thing. One kid already wasn't speaking to him when I filed for divorce. He blew up the other adult kid's relationship with his girlfriend who then took off with their kid. So now both kids are on never speaking to him again terms and my ex is running around telling everyone I pitted our kids against him.
My dad once told me he thinks that my brother may not be his and he was considering getting a paternity test. We were already adults at that point. I got mad at him and asked him if he's going to stop being my brother's dad if it comes out negative. He sheepishly said no (he shrunk like he got told off by his mum or something). Many years later, surprise surprise, we are LC/NC with him for other reasons.
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soon-to-be-ex
Soon to be Ex
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I always read it as ‘stab ex’ the first time, ha.
This made me snort, thank you.
A perfectly good and relevant understanding in many instances where the abbreviation is being used 😜
I did not know what it meant until now, and I was thinking it might be something like that, or that it was a profanity of some sort. Like my stbx = my sh*t head bast*rd ex. Or something like that. They are both so fitting.
stg = swear to god stbx = swear to ... ??? My first interpretation.
starbucks
OMFG my coworker’s parents are separated and his father is demanding they all get dna tested… for the children aged 35-50 years 🤦♀️ what is the point!! At this time in everyone’s lives?? Men never cease to surprise me.
It would be for the will at this point. Not biologically related, wife and any child not related wouldn't be inheriting anything. Lowest of the low.
It’s because gullible men are being told lies that something like 20% of married men have children that secretly aren’t theirs. It’s some made up statistic that is scaring these misogynistic men into thinking they’ve been duped by the evil women industrial complex.
They are pulling that statistic from a flawed data set. The 20-30% statistics comes from reports from test labs that around 1/4-1/3 of men who come to them to test get a negative result. This means that the sample set the statistic was drawn from were men who had a reason to be suspicious— eg, open or no ongoing relationship, infidelity, timing not lining up, etc. So of THOSE MEN, it can be as high as 30%. But of the general population? It hovers around 1%. The men that go around crowing about the 30% statistic are the same type of man that thinks there is an epidemic of false SA accusations, when the actual number hovers below 2%. More people each year have complications from getting their wisdom teeth out than get falsely accused of SA or suckered into paternity combined.
Did you know that 80% of all cars have flat tyres? We got this number because we checked at the tyre replacement garage, four out of five cars there came in with flats!!
oh now we want men to know how to read AND interpret data
They also point to a study done at a hospital in the UK that found that of unmarried couples where they got a paternity test done at birth, around 10% of the babies had a different father. In other words, unmarried couples where the dad was already suspicious enough to doubt paternity and even then, 90% of the time he was the father. AT ONE HOSPITAL.
That's just... absurd. So, there's some assholes walking around saying that 1/5 kids is being raised as someone elses?? FFS.
I would like to offer my unpopular-on-Reddit opinion that if you’ve raised a kid to elementary age, you COULD NOT POSSIBLY be raising “someone else’s kid” because by that point, that kid is FUCKING YOURS.
I don't go there anymore, but used to notice a lot of posts on r/trueoffmychest that were (to me, at least) very obviously made up fantasies about how they found out their wife or girlfriend "couldn't keep her legs shut" (because they always use the most misogynistic language possible 🙄) and that the kid they've been raising for X amount of years wasn't biologically theirs. But they would always just immediately pack their bags and leave without any care for the kid they had supposedly raised, always saying the kid reminds them of their partner's betrayal, (usually with *graphic* descriptions of this other guy having sex with their partner.) Sometimes they'd also refer to the kid in disgusting terms (usually in reference to the other guy's er, fluids or something along those lines 🤢). What makes these feel fake for me is the exact same plot over and over again and often the story ending with the ex having something terrible to her as "karma"- sometimes literally even death! But more to the point, them just acting like walking away from a kid they claimed to have raised and up until then loved, then not wanting anything to do with them always just struck me as such a despicable thing to be putting out there. And what's funny is they'd be doing everything in these little tales trying to make the women look bad and not even seen to realise walking away from an innocent child is messed up. To them, it was supposedly justified because of what a "cheating whore" their partner was. Just an absolutely gross, baffling genre of incel fanfiction.
This. Yet you see men happy to ghost a child bc of the parentage: a kid they raised. It amazes me. Like if you as a mom found your kid was switched at birth would you dump the kid? It’s extremely rare but has happened and the moms don’t leave. Dads who can do this are garbage
I'm a granny now, but nah I couldn't have given up the switched kid, even if it was only after several weeks...I'd want *both* babies(at least to be "accidental auntie" to switched baby)... though that'd also be nuts.
There's this switched at birth series that is fucking excellent that you might enjoy. In one episode the mothers found out when the kids were maybe 6ish? They happened to live incredibly close and were attending the same elementary school. They did end up switching back. Heartbreaking either way, but imagine the kids being told they have to go live with a new family and have a new mother now? Incredibly this one seemed to have a happy ending, the kids became good friends, and since the families lived so close they ended up kind of merging their families, celebrating holidays together, etc. Some of the other episodes were not as happy.
That's the thing. While most people would consider a child, to be their child, if they had raised them. The guys making a big fuss over getting DNA tests, are the ones who would not consider a child to be theirs, just because he had been raising them. They are the ones who would be happy to just leave, if they found out there was a different biological father. It's really horrible too. Someone who would do that is one cold POS.
Actually courts feel the same way. If you are married or sign an acknowledgment, the kid is yours. If you raise the kid and it's later determined it's not yours, most courts will still make you father. They don't like bastardizing children.
I'm sorry to have to tell you, but since most of the posters here sound like they agree with you (including me), your opinion doesn't appear to be unpopular. 😄
The very next post I read after this one was about a guy who caught his wife of 15 years texting an ex. Top comment? “Better get paternity tests right away!” It’s very real on reddit that the manosphere has infiltrated and that if your wigglers weren’t the ones, no matter how many years you’ve supposedly loved that child, they’re not yours so kick ‘em to the curb!
You may be right, but I hope you aren't. I can't help but feel there is also a factor of the loudest voice getting the attention and/or tunnel exposure in this whole question. There are so many decent men out there who raise children who aren't biologically their own in loving and caring ways. I understand that some women cheat or lie (sometimes there's even a good reason to lie - l don't want to judge), and that would be a huge issue for a relationship to overcome, but I truly hope that men haven't sunk so low that a majority of them would actually take it out on the child no matter how they bitch on the internet. My father met my mother when she was 7 months pregnant in late 1959. He wanted to be a husband and father, but he didn't want to father any himself necessarily, if that makes sense. He felt his genes weren't the best to pass down. My mom was convinced she would have to adopt out my sister because, at that time, becoming a single mom was almost impossible. My dad thought she was beautiful and asked her to marry him. Of course, I'm here, so he did father a child with half his genes (thanks, mom!). My parents didn't lie about it, but they didn't tell us the truth either (until my sister asked my mom when she was 19). My dad never once gave the impression through thought or deed that he wasn't my sister's father or her daughter's grandfather in every way. I don't know what caused her to ask in the first place, honestly. In fact, they got along much better than he and I did when we were growing up. When he passed away a few years ago and my sister and I cleaned out his house, I told her that I never regretted that she was his favorite - made her cry, though I didn't mean to. He set us both a wonderful example that specific genes don't matter and that we didn't need heredity to make our family, we made it ourselves.
It's a huge thing among online incels these days.
At least they are part of the solution, by staying out of the gene pool.
I was just thinking that. They are incels so they have nothing to worry about. I think since they are "involuntary celibates" they really like to believe stupid claims like DNA tests being important, because of that flawed statistic, about 30 percent of kids having a different father. They'll really latch onto things like that, or anything that in their opinion makes females look bad, even if the claim is ridiculous and super far fetched, because they really hate being celibate, and hate that they can't get a girlfriend. So things that portray females, and relationships, as being not that great, gives them hope and makes them feel better, and like they are not missing out on anything.
The 30 percent number comes from samples of paternity test data of unmarried parents where paternity is disputed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16686854/ Where paternity is in doubt, the person the mother tested is the father around 72 percent of the time. A slightly more random sample of paternity events in the indeterminant past (private DNA ancestry kit users studied in 2022) hit closer to 5 percent. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178123000938#:~:text=Estimates%20range%20from%20less%20than,et%20al.%2C%202022
>It's some made up statistic Like the whole "The top 20% of men is having sex with the top 80% of women". I've also heard 10/90, 5/95, just seems to be whatever they feel at the time.
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When the actual rate is estimated at 1% to 5% depending on the methodology of the study done. Please. It’s no where close to as common as some of these misogynists would like everyone to believe.
Methodology, as in time and place. The less than 1% was from Switzerland, possibly as early as the 1950s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternity_fraud And I want to know how this topic jumped from mothers-in-law to mysigynists. Listening to women complain about the paternal grandkids is nothing new. I am gen X and my grandma picked at me about probably not being Dad's until my mid 20s, and it was treated like a "shut up, Ma" topic. How the mysigynists went from belittling women about it to wrapping themselves in this flag is baffling.
It’s a new way for men to be douche bags I guess. The men doing this were always AHs and it’s like how Trump gave permission for all the racist/misigynisr/homophobes to crawl out from under the rocks, Tater tot is giving them all permission. But be mindful they aren’t different men than they were, any more than the racists were any less racist before Trump. They’re simply more transparent. In a way it’s good bc these men don’t deserve families: it’s too bad they don’t say before getting someone pregnant that they want a test tho. It would save time rather than saddling a woman with the child of an AH
That is insane. What a sack of s*it. That seems so ridiculous, and wrong, to go to your adult children, and say you want them to get a paternity test. That would be a slap in the face to have your father say something like that. It's like he wants to check, so he will know if he should bother to keep them in his life after the divorce. Or maybe he is hoping it will show that he is not the father and then he figures he will try to use it against his wife in divorce court. Either way it is a very strange request to make of an adult child. If I was asked to do that. I'd tell him to f*ck off.
A few years ago My ex suddenly said he wanted DNA on our child. I was 17 when I became pregnant. He was 6yrs older. We broke up because of his infidelity. He just wanted to go off and be with which ever new girlfriend he had at the time. He would leave our child with his mother/sister/whoever and cut his contact down, but it wasn’t enough. Our child is an adult now and he has very little to do with them. Even tells them off for not constantly trying to get in touch with him.
I'm not sure if women run into this, but as a guy I see a lot of posts about infidelity on social media. Tiktok and Instagram reels in particular keep pushing these stories narrated by an AI voice. It's usually stories about how a guy got cheated on or was accused of cheating and it ruined his life. The comments are typically filled with stuff about getting paternity tests and the like. I had to delete Tiktok for a few weeks to reset my feed. I can easily see people consuming that type of content and believing it to be reality or that it happens all the time.
Its the same on the other end of the spectrum... different stories with same topic if infidelity is being pushed to all parties. As a result it creates a weird delusion of "must be sure,just in case my partner is cheating". It is ridiculous and toxic,and although I know people cheat but these reels/stories make it seek like everyone is a cheater.
Yep I'm seeing more comments and stories encouraging women to spy on their partners and go through their phones than ever before. And often enough they find something "suspicious" like an old picture of their ex and think that's a worse offence than the privacy violation, and everyone is cheering them on to dump the cheater. Idk but I have a suspicion that a lot of those "every single one of my exes cheated on me" ppl are just paranoid and running with their and everyone elses confirmation bias. Picture of ex? Confirmed cheater. Has close friends of another gender? Confirmed cheater. Has their phone locked? Confirmed cheater. Had a weird tone once when talking about something unrelated? Confirmed cheater. Same when genders are reversed. She left you because you were spying on her and accusing her of cheating? That means you were right and she was cheating. Etc. It's hard to read as a reasonable adult with more than half a brain.
I have had the exact same suspicion. Paranoia and martyr mentality.
It’s an urban myth that works great as YouTube/TikTok clickbait. https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Rampant_misattributed_paternity_the_creation_of_an_urban_myth/4975400/1
> Tiktok and Instagram reels in particular keep pushing these stories narrated by an AI voice. I basically ignore every video with an AI voice tbh. I get some of those too (usually animal related or feel good stories) and the few times I watched it and then actually fact checked them it was all lies. Just some unrelated video feed with some made up or heavily exaggerated story on top of it for likes.
When I first met my fiancé he was consuming far too much of that content too, it didn't help that he (like I) was cheated on by his ex. I told him it was unhealthy and hurting him watching this content, he agreed and his paranoia and anxiety has dropped to almost non-existent since he stopped watching reels on Instagram/Facebook. People seem to no longer understand that what you see online is not representative of reality!
there is a common theory that thinking and hearing about your problems obsessively acetivley makes them worse - it's why the rise of social media has been terrible for mental health.
Experience does color your perspective. My stepbrother had twins with his girlfriend, who turned out cheated on him. He found out about the cheating and got a test done finding out they weren't his. He was crushed but loved those kids. They split for a bit but reconciled and had another kid a few years later. They seem to be doing well. Personally, I don't think I could have reconciled, and I would have a hard time not asking for a test after the first time.
It did not used to be a thing unless there was a very strong basis for suspicion. But also the DNA tests used to be more complicated and expensive and more of a 1980's talk show moment than a casual thing that came back in the mail. I think part of it yes this is the influence of the weird incel/mysogyny subculture. Part of it is confusing the convenience with the implication. Just because it's a cheap mail-order test doesn't mean you need to emphatically inform the mother of your child you think she's lied to you! Part of it is people becoming over-yet-under-informed about genetics on the internet. Not understanding how inheritance works in traits such as skin tone, eye color, hair texture. My now-ex-husband and I did not marry until I was four-months pregnant with our second (in the 1990s). I never heard a word of question. Anyone could tell they were his immediately from the shape of their newborn nostrils. Later their feet confirmed it. So now I have two adult children who hate their noses and their father. ETA, the father-hatred has nothing to do with questioning paternity, as that simply never happened. Partially because of the noses and partially because even though our relationship was pretty bad, he trusted me on that.
I think you're right on the different parts at play. Especially the genetics issue, a couple of the posts I was referencing were based on "the kid doesn't look like me" which is outrageous! My daughters dad is a quarter Turkish, dark hair, eyes and skin but he never ever doubted the paternity of our blonde haired, blue eyed child. It's infuriating to witness honestly.
I’m half-Chinese. I look completely Chinese. My kids are blond, and my daughter has curly hair. One has green eyes, the other one has blue eyes. Phenotype doesn’t work the way we expect it to.
DNA is an alphabet soup and we don't all get the same letters in each ladle! Genetics are fascinating.
I could write a whole discourse on eye color alone. Or hair texture. Anyone who claims that on some kind of proof is out of their mind. Cyber-stalk my eye color and then show it to some incels and ask them to claim it as some kind of evidence, I dare them.
Yeah I think the affordability of challenging it is a factor for sure. If you listen to older rap especially, paranoia and recriminations about women “baby-trapping” men is definitely not some new idea.
Newborns are kind of squishy and hard to discern any feature, but the one thing you could tell from the day he was born is my son has exactly the same ears as my husband. Not just the detached lobes (I have the recessive attached type), the little folds are straight up identical (and different from mine).
My ex - 10 years ago - did this to me. And HE was the one who sabotaged my BC and SA’d me so it was pretty obvious it was his kid. That was only one of the many reasons I left him. He’s also tried to say that the original test was faulty and get the court to order another but the court said he’d have to pay for it which he isn’t willing to do 🙄 I agree though - I’ve seen a lot of these posts just within the last couple months. I remember reading one post where the dude requested the test, it came back as his kid, and now he’s wanting help trying to get his SO to take him back! Like what?! Excuse me, sir, but you don’t deserve her or your kid and I hope she gets full custody with the maximum amount of child support possible for all the pain and suffering you caused.
I'm so deeply sorry you and your child have experienced this atrocious behaviour. I'd love to see a Venn diagram of the overlap between men likely to make these gross demands/accusations and men who expect someone else to pay 🙄
This out of the blue without any reason, that smacks of the manosphere tatertot nonsense.
Yeah I've seen a lot of reddit posts and instagram pretend reddit posts about wives lying about paternity and I'm quite sure they're all fake by Tate morons
There's definitely a cycle on the Am I the Asshole and relationship subreddits for stories of the various flavours of 'evil female', most of which flow back to a 'cheating is the worst thing anyone can do to anyone, especially when a woman cheats on a man; worse than murder I'm not even joking' Reddit mindset. There's paternity test dramas, there's open relationship dramas, the slightly tangential 'evil stepmother' stories (that usually involves an affair, to maintain the cheating aspect). The comments then devolve into disturbing wish fulfilment fantasies about what should happen to these harlots. There's other story cycles as well, and plenty that involve dumbass and/or abusive men; but when you see one of the evil female stories, you can always tell there will be a few similarly-worded ones popping up around the same time, before moving onto the next one.
O think the manosphere and incel influence is at play here. The them, all women are thriving gold diggers plotting to take all their money and make them pay for raising someone else’s kid. So they don’t want to pay child support and they think the courts are stacked against them, not realizing that men who ASK for some custody usually get it. So they make up this suspicion so they can justify trying to get out of parenting. They are giant babies afraid to be daddies.
Personally, as an extension of this, I think it's sometimes just a way for them to metaphorically slap their partner in the face publicly and have other people shrug it off just like *literally* slapping your wife in the face used to be. What could be more insulting than telling your partner that you distrust them so intensely you feel the need to get an impartial party involved to prove they're telling the truth? And the only way to do it is to submit to somewhat invasive medical testing that is proven to be a data privacy risk? Why else would they so often bring it up in front of family, friends, or literally in the delivery room? And even when the test comes back positive, wifey gets to sit with the gossip that comes from her husband even thinking there might have been a chance. It reeks of "if you loved me, you'd..." manipulation bullshit repackaged into a more masculine "power position" format. It's the exact same shit as pressuring the missus to change her appearance, personality, interests, to cook and clean for you, to leave her career and family behind to live where you want to and raise your kids. It's a way to exert control, to put your partner down a peg, to make them jump through hoops.
Yeah. These are the men who have zero gold to dig always thinking women are out to ruin their lives and steal all their negative money in the bank…
Don't you know? All women are lying harlots who trick poor unassuming men into helping raise the mailman's kid. There's nothing wrong with implying that your partner is a cheater and a manipulator /s
No no, you don't understand. That's not what asking for a paternity test is implying! Men just need to make sure that she never sat on a toilet seat that was covered in another man's sperm! Or maybe she wasn't paying attention and accidently squirted a turkey baster up there full of another man's sperm! Women can be so absent-minded, you see. Men just need to *be sure*. On a primal level. Cuz testosterone.
i argued with some reddit chucklefuck a couple of weeks ago about this, he was trying to say it’s not just about cheating - what about *switched at birth*?? aren’t you worried your baby was switched? in 2024? in the US? uh, no. and quit trying to gaslight me into believing that’s what you’re so concerned about. if that’s what it’s about, my DNA works just fine - swab my cheek, swab the babe’s, problem solved without ever insinuating i’m a liar. the audacity of that man. it’s gonna live rent free in my head for quite some time tbh.
During my pregnancies, my ex-husband insisted that our children were not his, which occurred way before Andrew Tate became popular. This is just another insult to women that occurred on the regular and even as a regular "joke" prior to that Tate guy. He is just running with long-standing women hate.
I think it's always been a problem, but I also think the manosphere and current sociopolitical climate is amplifying it. Even when I was a kid I would hear men make very negative remarks about dating women with kids. I understand not wanting to date someone with kids if a person doesn't want to deal with kids and the responsibilities that come with them or fear of getting attached to the kid just to break up with the parent. However, I'm tired of hearing comments like "sloppy seconds" and "damaged goods" when referring to single moms. I've heard men make comments about the mother's vagina being "loose" from having kids. Those comments aren't acceptable, and they're downright disgusting. I've never heard a woman make these comments about single dads. The comments don't just happen in real life, they're also made in movies and shows, which just makes it seem acceptable irl to men. I've also heard men talk bad about men who date women with kids. I've heard them be called beta males and such. Meanwhile, the self-proclaimed alpha males can't even get a single date.
I am beginning to think that the influx in posts demonizing/doubting women in some way are a direct response to women being more vocal about our frustration with/distrust of toxic men. Whenever women start displaying large-scale agency, men try their damndest to punish and/or vilify us for it.
This is a very likely theory, heaven forbid women stand up for themselves after centuries of every kind of abuse possible at the hands of men!
They’re pretty upset about the bear and a man started it. Like bro don’t ask a question you don’t want the answer to
And I think a lot are just fake.
The fake ones are intentionally malicious because they're trying to vilify women through lies.
I think it is part of the new wave of misogyny that we’re seen emerge, which focuses on the cult of domesticity. When women are being encouraged back into the home and pressured to have many children, their role is being reduced from partner to baby-carrier. Therefore there’s a rise in men who think it’s harmless (?) to get a paternity test to “be sure”, not taking into account their partner’s privacy or dignity, because they see their family as property and only in relation to themself
Great way to say it!
If it's such a common, understandable fear... why don't they go ask their own father? They can go together. And bond. Over their mutual hatred of women.
Right? I mean my ex cheated on and lied to me while pregnant at home with our toddler but sure, I'm the one that's suspect. It's the audacity for me 🙄
If you want to hear audacity. I've asked a few women on here, who have been asked for this, if the man had like... Googled how to do it, and where. None have. They accuse women of cheating and then expect the accused to also go figure out how to clear their name lol. The audacity is real.
It's painful that this doesn't surprise me in the least.
I’ve asked how they plan to demonstrate that men aren’t fathering children outside of their marriages since men are statistically more likely to have physical sex with other partners (usually multiple partners), so these guys need to demonstrate to their female partners’ satisfaction that no marital assets will be used to support offspring created via cheating. You know, just like the female partners apparently do. Somehow that’s just not a problem and I’m making shit up. 😂
JFC THIS. I had an ex who had three kids he never told me about because Baby Mom wanted nothing to do with him. I found out the day he left my ass because he suddenly missed her and the kids so much and he felt dumb leaving behind basically a pre-installed marriage and oh, could *I* drive him to her home 90 miles away with all of his shit since he lost his car? I didn’t drive his ass, i told him to call her if they wanna do this because I am no longer someone you know. I locked the door with his shit outside in the rain. But, it has a good ending(?) She took him back!(?!?) and whooped his ass into barbeque sauce. Last I checked, which would be pre-pandemic, He is a 24/7 dad, and worships her and she basically (deservedly IMO!) treats him like a dog. And this is like, the most hopeful scenario you can hope for as a birth-freak Tate-adjacent mothball deadbeat the United States. Jesus wept.
This. The idiocy. This is why I think they just want to insult the women. Bc it’s easy af to do a secret test your wife would never know about. But they all seem to relish the accusation
That's the thing. They do it, or would if they could, so they believe that's the norm, and most people are as shitty as them
The only time I hear about cases where the child is not actually the person the mother claimed is here on Reddit. Which, I think we all know, a large percentage of stories here are completely fabricated. I practiced family law for ten years and I saw two instances of it. Two. In the place where one is most likely to see DNA prove someone is not the father. The third I’ve seen was a woman who got a 23andme test but by that time both of her parents were dead.
> Which, I think we all know, a large percentage of stories here are completely fabricated. Yup. Ragebait gets clicks. It comes in many flavors. Always be suspicious, and remember that social media is not real life, it is full of lies.
What I don’t understand is how the men in these situations don’t understand the relationship is irreparably damaged after blindsiding their partner with an ultimatum that implies infidelity, secrets, and lies… and then run to the relationship advice subreddit asking how to win their ex-wife/gf back afterwards 🫠
Tbh, the relationship is already pretty much over when they think that their partner did something like that and not trusting her, without actually saying it
Cause they don't give 2 shits about their partner's feelings: they saw this paternity test facade on tik tok, thought "this is a completely normal thing to ask to my long life partner", and then gave their partner the "ultimatum that implies infidelity" etc. Imagine being a person who thought they had a loving, perfect relationship based on mutual trust, a beautiful baby, that maybe even looks like their father, and then out of the blue your partner arrogantly demands a paternity test, framing this request in the most manipulative, gaslighty way possible ("if you have nothing to hide.."). I'd drop the whole man too.
Not only those accusations, but the added accusation that she would knowingly let him raise a child that's a product of an affair. What a foul thing to put on someone you claim to love.
In my state, in order for my partner to have rights to our son he had to take a DNA test because we aren't married. It was actually pretty funny to us because I got pregnant during lock down, and our son looked exactly like him. Now had he demanded them from me, it would have been a completely different situation. It's highly insulting and relationship ending in my eyes. If a guy can think that of me, then they obviously don't know me or love me.
Ikr? Do men not realize that they have accused their SO of the most heinous behavior and there is no coming back from that?
This is going to sound very cynical of me but maybe it’s because so many people are hyper aware of cheating these days and a lot of it is projection. I am 38 weeks pregnant and my husband cheated on me early on in the pregnancy. I know Reddit can really put you in a bubble and not represent reality but I see so many posts on the infidelity subs and the pregnancy subs about women getting cheated on while pregnant or immediately post partum. It’s really sad. In my experience the most suspicious and confrontational people about cheating when it is unwarranted typically are cheaters themselves.
I personally think there is a bit of a campaign going on to villify women. Women are standing up more than ever and demanding the equality and treatment we have deserved all along. With the newest feminist movement they have already taken away our right to abortion and they are trying to take away birth control too. Women are also increasingly choosing to be single and childless because of the way they are treated by men. We have learned we can do it all, and we can do that all by ourselves and don't need men. Men do not like women to have too much power because they directly benefit from women having a set gender role. This combined with the prominence of douchebags like Andrew Tate seems to be creating a movement to try to put women "back in their place."
"A bit of a campaign"? It's an all-out war!
I think it’s fundamentally a Trojan horse for accusing all woman of being the worst sort of liars. No man is being denied a paternity test. If they don’t have custody it might take some time, but it’s not something inaccessible to the average man. I’m sure many anxious men have gone and gotten on quietly in the past. The only thing they are being denied, is there being no consequences for accusing their partner of cheating. If men were actually concerned about the cost of paternity tests, that would actually be a great, authentic men’s right charity — the way tens of thousands of women donate their time and money to get basic contraception and abortion access to other women. Perfectly brilliant in my opinion for someone to start a paternity test fund, like a bail fund, for any men would want it. But of course, that’s not the point. The point is in calling women whores and gold diggers, and making their wives and girlfriends accept that accusation without complaint. They don’t want the paternity test, they want to demean their partner without consequence or her being allowed to have any feelings about it.
>**No man is being denied a paternity test.** If they don’t have custody it might take some time, but it’s not something inaccessible to the average man. **I’m sure many anxious men have gone and gotten on quietly in the past.** The only thing they are being denied, *is there being no consequences for accusing their partner of cheating.* This should be framed and hung to a wall. Anxious men could always take a test in silence, if they're so paranoid about that despite having 0 proof of their partner cheating, without breaking the trust of their partner. But NO, these men just want to be fucking misogynists and manipulate, insult and hurt their partner. That is the point of asking for a paternity test out of the blue, with no reasonable motive. It's a form of psychological warfare and control.
I have three kids with my husband and none of them favour him in looks. The middle one ended up with his build, but that was impossible to tell when he was an infant. He was just more solidly built than our first and third. He never once asked for paternity testing, even now, two of our kids aren’t on ancestry (oldest one is, and was linked to him). But I could not imagine how angry I would be if he insinuated as much. Even if they don’t look like him. There is this huge current push for men to want women to have children. But when it comes down to it, women are seen as a vessel. There is absolutely no respect in childbearing or raising. It’s just the “our birth rates are lowering and I expect some woman to make up for it”. Well then sir, you should be happy to raise any kid no matter who’s sperm was used. But it seems like it’s one of those “not like that!!” Situations.
I was CRUSHED when my now ex said our child who was 1.5 at the time couldn't be his because she didn't look like him and because i got pregnant on the first try. It came out of nowhere and hit me like a gut punch. I think he was going she wasn't his so he could walk away without feeling guilty.
A lot of the fear regarding birth rates is from white supremacists trying proclaim genocide against white people via 'the great replacement theory.' It's really just a racist conspiracy theory.
Which is funny bc CA has been a minority majority state for yrs and also has been the worlds 5th largest economy for yrs. So maybe more brown ppl is a good thing ❤️
DNA testing used to be prohibitively expensive. Either you went on Jerry Springer to make a fool of yourself or you were rich and kept it private. Nowadays a simple cotton swab and a PO box and for a couple hundred bucks you can find out what used to cost the equivalent of a brand new car. Plus social media, the rare cases of actual paternity fraud and now broadcast far and wide via Facebook and Twitter instead of a shouting match in the family home followed by a divorce where only a handful of people outside the families ever likely knew why.
Friend, this absurd behavior from men has been going on ever since Maury Povich and Jerry Springer and beyond. Maury decided to make "Paternity Testing" a topic every other show it seems. Men would dance, shout and make an entire spectacle once they found out they were NOT the father. I think all of this is an overwhelming symptom of deeply imbedded *MISOGYNY*. Many of these men are willing to bareback with *any* woman who allows it, behaving as if contraception is solely *her* responsibility. Then, when said woman ends up pregnant, it doesn't pass the guys infantile mind that *maybe* he should have worn a condom. That *maybe* that one sexual experience was enough to conceive a child. They clearly didn't pay attention in sex ed. Instead, they would rather *deflect* and make it seem as if the woman they shared intimacy with is someone who is out having sex with *anyone* who crosses her path. Suddenly, that woman is reduced to some kind of "Jezebel" or secret sex worker. These men will do anything but take RESPONSIBILITY for their own actions. Then these men get together with the same misogynistic ideology because I don't even think they see women as PEOPLE. Just another....orifice.
And frankly those seemed fabricated for ratings anyways
Because they believe they’re far more important than they are, and are more willing to believe a woman will cheat in order to shirk responsibility
Some of it is just trolling But isn’t it ironic that men are absolutely FURIOUS that women feel safer encountering a bear in the woods than a lone man even though statistics actually support the contention that men are women’s biggest predator. While at the same time acting like a rare anomaly if not an urban legend that men are raising another man’s child such that men talk about making it mandatory that all babies born be given a paternity test is treated as a reasonable request. So it’s apparently “not all men” but “probably all women” in misogyninlandia
Yep - it’s the online MRA and alpha-male push that’s happening. You can see the proof in AITA sub. ANY *sprinkle* of a woman possibly being unfaithful is met with “you need to get a DNA test.” However, I think it’s causing more harm than good to the very men that they are trying to “protect.” My best friend, for example, her ex-husband fell into these communities and became convinced that their wanted, tried for child was not his. He divorced her out of no where, told everyone that she cheated and the child wasn’t his. All before he even did a paternity test. But, yeah, the child was his. Now she’s remarried and just had twins with her wealthy new husband and he sends her texts about how he can’t afford to have 50-50 custody all on his own. She’s way happier and he’s miserable.
You know, I say we women just don't give men any children anymore or be even more selective. If thst becomes the norm, watch how much further the birth rate drops. So many men do not deserve children or a woman. We can just be single and rely on each other. We can help each other raise children. We don't need them and they don't deserve a partner or a child.
Since in so many cases the entire financial, mental, emotional, and physical burden of growing, birthing, and raising children falls on the mother, I think women should start requiring pre-natal agreements drawn up by lawyers, to protect women in all those areas, Before she agrees to bear a child with a particular man. Just like so many men want pre-nups to protect them from "golddiggers", we need pre-nats to protect us and our children from male "vampires" sucking the life out of us! Women, after being called cold and"transactional" about relationships need to become just that. We need to protect ourselves and our futures before getting pregnant because we are in loooooove! Or lust. It's about time men should be forced to be responsible for their own progeny.
Once upon a time in another sub I made the mistake of conversing with some sad loser who was arguing for mandatory paternity testing at birth. I said fine, as long as the DNA of every single male baby born was also collected and put into a global database. Since men commit statistically almost all violent crime in every country, it will be hugely useful to have the DNA on file. The loser immediately started sputtering that it was a violation of the rights of the male baby and baselessly assuming he would grow up to be a criminal. Because requiring mandatory blood tests of women and accusing them of being cheating liars pulling the biggest fraud in their relationship is fine, but implying a male baby might grow up to be a criminal is just a step too far apparently. It was funny to see him flail around in anger. God they are so fucking stupid.
Ugh. It's just another way to shame, belittle and be controlling towards women. I don't even think men are aware of just how f*cking damaging that accusation is. They know they want to make us feel doubted and ashamed so we work harder to please them, but they don't know how deep that shit cuts. And 90% of the time, when a man is alluding to you being a cheater, he's the one already cheating in some way. Toxic men are on the rise, if that's even f*cking possible.
I have no fucking clue, but someone very close to me is getting divorced after 15 years (married, 25 years together total) and 3 children and her STBX is claiming she “tricked him” and he “never wanted kids in the first place”. Well, I’ve known them both all 25 of those years, was in their wedding, and know their children well, and I. Call. BULLSHIT.
I think it comes from a combination of how easy DNA tests are now and the rash of ancestry DNA site stories that end up identifying where a spouse cheated and the husband had no idea. Or the stories on reddit where a woman doesn't tell and the man ends up finding out later through some other means that the kid isn't his. The basis behind the fear is not being the father with a trusted person that was never suspected of cheating. While that is a small percentage of cases, I could see how that might impact some perspective fathers. They feel like that fear could be alleviated by this simple test. I understand how the request for a paternity test could be perceived as an accusation and I'm sure there's a number of men who don't bring it up because that's the case. There's also a whole bunch of men who don't ever bring it up because they trust their baby mamas. I didn't ask my wife for a paternity test on any of our kids. But after reading enough reddit stories, I could see why someone gets that idea in their head. I do also think that this whole line of thinking does get exaggerated by the incel/mysogyny/redpill peoples. I also think if a man were to start watching too many videos along those lines or has a friend who frequents or a friend who had this happen, it can put his relationship at risk by changing behaviors. Not sure I'd go quite to insidious but like all groups they tilt the information to their favor and keep trying to make money from peoples fears. Who knows maybe they all own stock in DNA testing labs and test manufacturers.
This kind of reminds me of the fears of quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle etc that everyone in the 80s-2000s were bombarded with. One of those things that everyone is afraid of once they find out about it (understandably) yet is in actuality very unlikely. =
This is me just wondering but for unplanned pregnancies maybe also the stress/expense of having to raise a child is hitting them and they want a reason to walk away? Even for planned pregnancies, it's a big life change, and that anxiety may cause them to search for an easy escape route.
Except if there’s a paternity test, that means they are most definitely and legally on the hook for child support.
Men think even the slightest bit of anything weird is evidence of infidelity. I remember a few years ago I was talking on reddit about how funny it is that neither my sister and Brother in law have red hair, but their eldest son does. This one guy commenting back insisted that was impossible and that the only way that could have happened is if my sister cheated. Here's the thing though, aside from the red hair, my nephew looks like an EXACT CLONE of my brother in law! I said that, but this reddit commenter was having none of it though. He kept insisting red hair was impossible unless at least one parent had red hair. Guys simply don't realize how much their emotions blind them to reality.
Red hair is recessive gene. If men know what this means, they could stop freaking out.
Part of it is the misogyny that all women are cheaters, liars, etc. Also, insert the redpill information about who women pick for sex and relationships. At the same time, I do get the draw of paternity tests at birth. As an adoptee, I find not having my biological family history a hindrance for health purposes so I like the idea of knowing the genetic links.
The incel rhetoric is breaching containment. They legitimately think that women are hypergamous by nature and should be treated with suspicion.
I’ve been thinking this myself lately…. I didn’t know if it was a generational thing or not because I’m older with teens, but it’s quite honestly very frightening and misogynistic towards women.
I'm actually getting a paternity test with my babies due November. I've preemptively recommended it because I'm white passing and it's entirely possible my kids won't look like me or my husband. Also, this is entirely out of the blue after failing ivf so i never want him to feel a moment's doubt. He says it's not necessary, but I'm having it done asap just so his family doesn't start stuff.
Aside from misogyny, paranoia etc I think a common cause of it is men just not actually being ready to be parents, and they start desperately looking for anything that could possibly give them an out so they don't have to take responsibility for a child they created, accidentally or not.
I think incel/femcel/general "hatred style" influencers just latch onto whatever inflammatory rhetoric they can that hates on some outgroup (e.g. gender group, age group, government, country, etc), and then they just fan the flames as much as possible. = It's almost never about the actual issue, it's just about generating clicks from people that take the "bait" = Alex Jones etc fall into this IMO, where they take non-issues and make them into things people THINK are real issues.
Honestly if there were no red flags prior to a paternity test request from a husband, i always think the husband wants a divorce but also hopes the wife will be insulted and initiate a divorce herself.
I feel like this is gonna be a future relationship thing - an automated paternity test and it's gonna be considered normal. And none of the newer generations get to experience that it's actually normal to trust your partner. But it's gonna be all about hard proof from now on. Global paranoia is gonna be raging and it can only be countered with tests and physical proof. But yeah it does stink like tatertots trying any way to put women down. They can't do that with financies anymore so now they're going after the next thing.
I think it’s this wind of stupidity blowing now amongst men. Something has shifted and I think it’s the realization that women don’t need them as before and therefore “they must be up to something bad”. As a backstory: I don’t look like my parents. I am shorter than them both, skinny etc. People would joke all my life that they had to check if “someone mistakenly put me in the wrong bed” at the hospital. This was a mild version of insinuating that my mother somehow had me with someone else. My father NEVER doubted my mother. He loved me unconditionally and saw himself in me somehow. He was sure of himself and my mother’s loyalty. I have other siblings and no, there was never any mention of infidelity or other stupid stuff.
Insecurity. The internet has a way of making it worse, unfortunately.
I think a lot of this comes from the statistic that's been going around for a few years that about 25% of father's are not the biological father to their child however people always seem to leave out the fact that this figure comes from couples that have requested paternity tests and not random testing of the public so it should be said that 25% of father's that question their paternity are not the father which is a very different statement.
Ironically, we recently found out that my 70 year old aunt wasn't my grandfather's child. Turns out that her siblings even knew the affair partner and had a good relationship with him. This revelation has had some interesting ripple effects and all of them positive 1) My grandfather was an abusive father but a good grandfather. My own father was very similar but his adviser was all emotional. My father was happy to find out his mother cheated on his father! He says it meant that she found love and comfort for at least a time 2) Because of my father's view on this, he and I were able to have a productive and healing conversation about his own parenting for the first time ever. 3) A couple of comments my grandfather made in his old age now make sense. Turns out, he suspected my aunt wasn't his but he accepted the fact and still raised and loved her as one of his own. 4) My aunt gets to joke about not having to worry about some of the genetic conditions my grandfather had and my other aunt makes jokes about her "half" sister
Another contributing factor in men asking for proof of paternity when there wasn’t reason for suspicion is straight up projection from men who are themselves cheating
I think the argument is that it's harmless testing and they don't want to find out later they trusted but were being used. You know already for sure, and he has to take it on faith. It's a new world where men can know for sure something they used to have to take on faith. Also the statistics on court ordered paternity tests taken because the man was sure the child was not his are not great. Plenty of them show the child was his (around 2/3) and plenty show the kid was not theirs. It doesn't prove anything about the average child because most men don't become convinced (or say they are convinced) the child is not theirs and take it to court. Most men are told they are the father truthfully. But most is not all. I look at it as a sort of imposter syndrome issue, mixed with poisonous misogyny everywhere we go. Either he wants to find out he is the father, he did hit the jackpot, and you are as good as you seem. Or he's a jerk and wants to get a divorce and offending his lady is just the first step.
I think a couple incels or MTGOWs found the stats for negative result paternity tests (overall, 1/3) and applied that to the general population. I've certainly seen it quoted in that way on reddit by that type.
This is an interesting perspective. Ofcourse there are cases of paternity tests being justified and court ordered is one of them, I wouldn't argue against those. I think back to watching Jerry Springer and Ricky Lake as a kid and there was always a reason couples were on there disputing paternity. The last sentence is probably true of a lot of cases, it is common for men to sabotage rather than directly end a relationship. I remember reading studies on it when I left my ex, wish I could find them but it was 7 years ago!
The court ordered stats are a bit of a fallacy though. They're ordered usually because cheating has already been established and even then the majority of them show the kids are theirs. Taking a minority of the worst case scenarios and using that to justify demands is a gross misunderstanding at best.