Paternity Test – A Social Revolution
The availability of the paternity test has sparked a social and parenting revolution.
Today’s family is very different from that of fifty years ago. Diversity in family makeup, together with a change in the relative roles of mother and father may have made us feel more independent and in control, but have also contributed to a significant change in the fabric of our family lives. For example:
- Forty percent of marriages end in divorce
- Couples often live together and have children without marrying
- Same-sex couples can legally marry and have children
- Some are putting off having children until their late thirties
- There is still a high percentage of teenage pregnancy and motherhood
- Women are choosing to have children through sperm donation, with no father directly involved
Advances in social acceptance and in medical science mean that women, particularly, have more choice about how they live. More woman now have careers and put off having children until later in life. They can have children outside of a relationship or they can find themselves as single parents following divorce or separation.
Does a child need a father?
Some claim that fatherhood is now less important than ever – men are marginalised because women don’t always depend on them for financial support so they become reduced to being sperm donors with no position in family life. Like everything, however, fatherhood is multi-faceted:
- Fathers can take additional leave from work to spend with their children at birth
- Flexible working allows fathers to spend more time with their family
- More fathers stay at home whilst the mothers go to work
- Fathers are often chased for child support payments following the breakdown of a partnership
- Fathers have to rely on the mother for confirmation of paternity
A man who is told by the mother that he is the father of their children will naturally love and care for those children, without doubting her and, until recently, there was no way for him to challenge the mother’s claim with any real accuracy.
All of this has been the result of increasing availability of paternity tests. Within a few days of taking a paternity test, the father can be certain about parentage one way or the other, which may either liberate him from a costly process, or destroy the relationship he has already built up with his children. A paternity test can give a father the evidence he needs to gain access to his child, or on the other hand , it can shatter his illusions about his family. There are some men who are as desperate to be fathers as other men are desperate for not to be, which is not that much different from fifty years ago – except now they have the power to find out about their responsibilities without a shadow of a doubt. |
