Paternal Fraud

Paternity fraud or ‘Paternal discrepancy’ is when a woman deliberately misidentifies/incorrectly identifies a man to be the biological father of her child. The key word for me here is “deliberately”. I guess my next question is why? Why do women deliberately withhold the truth from their partners? Do they not think about the beautiful innocent child? To many, this is an unimaginable act. It is evil, cruel, and wicked.

 The startling truth remains we are all LIARS. its almost like a part of our day to day activity. From little white lies to sinister ones, and the reason given for lying is usually to ‘protect our loved ones’; but are we really? The reality is we lie because we want to control the perception other people have of us. We want to maintain our “status”; we lie because we want to protect our own selfish interest and to control others.

 Research shows that small lies makes it easier to tell bigger ones and when you add self-justification you start to believe the lies yourself. Nobody certainly knows why a woman would want another man to father her child or children. There can be innumerable arguments for and against this motion; and it is important to understand from the persons perspective.

Exploring the different reason might help us understand to an extent but not condone the behaviour. Let us not forget the woman and the man is not just affected by this but the family at large and I am talking the extended family and friends. A lot of people including the child or children’s friends and school etc. this goes further than just the family, but we need to understand there would be emotional breakdown and as well as mental for those most affected.  This is you now understanding your identity, what you have grown up to know and believe is not really yours. It is just unimaginable. Let us not forget exploring the different reasons does not excuse the act. The following below may be some of the reasons.

Newly married couples- a lot of newly married couples, even though are in love and cannot wait to be married to their chosen partner, usually get cold feet closer to the wedding. Some decide to have a last encounter with their ex’s before being “permanently tied down” to their husbands. This last ‘fling’ would usually lead to pregnancy and because the timing is so close and they are now married, automatically the pregnancy becomes the husbands without hesitations. The woman would know or in some cases might be unsure who the pregnancy belongs to, but in the name of “saving my marriage” the woman buries the secret and keeps it to herself.

Male infertility- this is when a man has low sperm production, abnormal sperm function or blockages that prevent the delivery of sperm. Illnesses, injuries, chronic health problems, lifestyle choices and other factors can play a role in causing male infertility. After a woman has been with a partner for a while and has been unable to get pregnant, she might decide to have an affair with someone else and to her surprise gets pregnant for this person etc so decides to keep it making her partner believe the pregnancy belongs to him.

The truth is there is an untold number of men that are unknowingly raising children that are not biologically their own. In 2008 The telegraph newspaper printed a similar story and quoted, “0ne in 50 British fathers unknowingly raises another man’s child”. This cannot be the same for every country as the numbers would vary.

 In recent years, Paternal discrepancy has become immensely popular, and reality tv shows have been made from them such as ‘The Jeremy Kyles show’ with its famous line being ‘You are not the father’. There are also other tv shows around this subject especially In the US such as ‘Jerry Springer’ etc.

I believe nobody starts with the intention to hurt the people they care about, and life has a funny way of turning out differently than we plan for. One thing we need to understand is to always tell the truth no matter how badly it hurts.