tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/paternity-9988/articlesPaternity – The Conversation2023-08-23T09:01:57Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2103542023-08-23T09:01:57Z2023-08-23T09:01:57ZFertility is becoming a workplace issue but employer support can create winners and losers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542291/original/file-20230811-23-ftk7sw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C34%2C5708%2C3199&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
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<p>Since the world’s first human baby was born by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in the UK in 1978, over 10 million IVF babies have been <a href="http://www.eshre.eu/Press-Room/Resources">born globally</a>. Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have also <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/Clinical+Reproductive+Science-p-9781118975954">become even more sophisticated</a>, now including egg-freezing and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI).</p>
<p>But alongside these new fertility possibilities, the technology has also brought challenges. Access to publicly funded fertility treatment is not universal, and success rates are limited. This means many people globally are forced to pay privately – if they can afford it – often for multiple cycles of treatment. This can equate to <a href="https://www.fertilityclinicsabroad.com/ivf-costs/">tens of thousands of pounds</a>. </p>
<p>For some, it might also mean travel overseas. Inequalities in access and care in the UK have been linked to factors such as patient <a href="http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/90977/1/Smietana_Introduction-making-and-breaking.pdf">sexual orientation</a>, <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32760816/">ethnicity</a>, age and weight.</p>
<p>Infertility is a disease of the reproductive system affecting one in six people, or around <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/04-04-2023-1-in-6-people-globally-affected-by-infertility#:%7E:text=Large%20numbers%20of%20people%20are,care%20for%20those%20in%20need.">17.5% of the global adult population</a>, according to the World Health Organization. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542294/original/file-20230811-4652-hn8w80.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>This article is part of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/womens-health-matters-143335">Women’s Health Matters</a>, a series about the health and wellbeing of women and girls around the world. From menopause to miscarriage, pleasure to pain the articles in this series will delve into the full spectrum of women’s health issues to provide valuable information, insights and resources for women of all ages.</em></p>
<p><em>You may be interested in:</em></p>
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<p>As well as medical issues, sexual orientation or lack of a partner can affect the ability to conceive. But despite its prevalence among the working age population, and the considerable <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3383794/">psychological and social tolls</a> it can bring, discussion of infertility has historically been silenced in public discourse and in the workplace. </p>
<p>Until recently, employers’ attention to reproductive journeys has been limited to mainly maternity provisions. This has been mandated by employment legislation in many countries for some time. </p>
<p>But changing social attitudes, advances in technology and business pressures have increased the attention being paid to fertility treatment by many employers in the developed world. This is often driven by business logic: supporting staff through IVF and the like will help with recruitment, performance, retention and engagement.</p>
<h2>Supporting different fertility journeys</h2>
<p>Indeed, employer interest in fertility treatment appears to have originated in Silicon Valley in the US. Apple and Facebook introduced fertility benefits (paid IVF and egg freezing) in 2014 as a weapon in the “war for talent”. This was controverisal, however, with companies accused of essentially trying to bribe women into <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/commentisfree/2017/apr/26/its-not-a-perk-when-big-employers-offer-egg-freezing-its-a-bogus-bribe#:%7E:text=5%20years%20old-,It">delayed childbearing</a>. </p>
<p>In the UK, the focus is generally on wellbeing. Workplace benefits often centre on fertility policies and time off, flexibility and workplace adjustments. But only 3% of employers said they offer such provisions to a significant extent in a <a href="https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/comms/news/ahealth-wellbeing-work-report-2022_tcm18-108440.pdf">2022 survey</a>. This puts fertility, alongside menstruation, bottom of the list of wellbeing supports aimed at certain employee groups.</p>
<p>Arguably, the emergence of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170231155752">employer interest</a> in assisted fertility technology has furthered “reproductive stratification”. <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227872369_Conceiving_the_New_World_Order_The_Global_Politics_of_Reproduction">Research on this issue</a> defines this as when “some categories of people are empowered to nurture and reproduce, while others are disempowered” </p>
<p>Among the minority of employers that offer fertility-related policies and support, it tends to be aimed at permanent, highly valued staff in countries in the global north such as the US, UK and Japan. And so, large proportions of the world’s workforce are missing out. </p>
<p>Migrants and workers in precarious employment also miss out on other things that help with reproductive journeys. This can include job security, protection from dismissal, decent wages, access to sick leave, access to maternity and paternity provisions, and well-trained and supported line managers.</p>
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<img alt="Pad on desk showing handwritten egg freezing calculations, beside glasses, a pen and some other notebooks." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/542296/original/file-20230811-6955-2pufm4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Calculating the costs of IVF.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Linaimages/Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>When policies are in place, they are not always inclusive of all employees and all fertility journeys. Our <a href="https://www.mmu.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-06/ComplexFertilityJourneysResearchProjectReport.pdf">research</a> shows policies often neglect partners and non-normative families (same-sex couples and those pursuing motherhood alone). They often focus on a set number of days off for treatment cycle(s). This may not be sufficient and also fails to consider the needs of staff where treatment is unsuccessful.</p>
<p>And even when employees can access fertility treatments via progressive employment provisions, they often end up being penalised via discrimination or <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gwao.12953">negative career consequences</a>. We found this during a study in which participants reported having to go part-time, switch career focus, leave jobs, or were just generally disadvantaged at work after embarking on a fertility journey. </p>
<p>Similar findings have been reported in international studies and surveys by campaign groups such as <a href="https://fertilitymattersatwork.com/fertility-struggles-the-impact-to-careers/">Fertility Matters at Work</a> and <a href="https://pregnantthenscrewed.com/one-in-four-women-undergoing-fertility-treatment-experience-unfair-treatment-at-work/#:%7E:text=As%20the%20new%20report%20shows,unfair%20treatment%20as%20a%20result.">Pregnant then Screwed</a>. Since women are most likely to experience these negative career consequences, this means increased take-up of fertility treatment could further existing gendered inequalities in the workplace.</p>
<h2>A more equitable future</h2>
<p>To fully optimise the hope created by ARTs, governments around the world should expand publicly funded provisions as much as possible (bearing in mind other healthcare commitments) and ensure equitable access and care. Employment legislation should also protect workers from discrimination on the grounds of accessing ARTs and allow suitable time off. </p>
<p>There is some hope. The UK parliament is currently considering a <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3235">private members’ bill</a> to allow people to take time off work for appointments and treatment, but unfortunately it hasn’t made much progress to date.</p>
<p>A few other countries have <a href="https://ub-deposit.fernuni-hagen.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/mir_derivate_00002197/Koslowski_et_al_Leave_Policies_2021.pdf">already taken action</a>, however. Malta legislates for 100 hours’ paid IVF leave (per cycle, up to three cycles) split between the “receiving person” and their partner. Korea provides three days’ leave per year (one paid) and protection from discrimination. Japan has also introduced provisions for public workers.</p>
<p>Other recent UK developments include workplace <a href="https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/guides/fertility-challenges/">guides</a> from professional body The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and <a href="https://healthcareandprotection.com/sixteen-organisations-share-1-97m-fund-for-womens-reproductive-health-at-work/">government funding</a> for charities to develop resources aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). These are welcome. </p>
<p>But until the government can step up to provide universal cover, organisations should not think of fertility benefits strictly in terms of a cost-benefit calculation. Employers must take a compassionate and fully inclusive approach to supporting their employees’ fertility journeys.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Krystal was PI on an empirical research project connected to this article, which was funded by The Leverhulme Trust (Research Project Grant)
Krystal is a member of advisory boards for the charities Working Families and Tommy's. She has also contributed to resources (book chapters, surveys and guides) for the CIPD and is a CIPD member
</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clare Mumford and Michael Carroll do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The landscape has been shifting when it comes to employer interest in employee fertility journeys.Krystal Wilkinson, Reader (Associate Professor) in Human Resource Management, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityClare Mumford, Research Associate, University of Central LancashireMichael Carroll, Reader / Associate Professor in Reproductive Science, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1631842021-06-27T08:43:44Z2021-06-27T08:43:44ZSex, lies and DNA: why many ‘Bothas’ in South Africa have the wrong surname<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/407857/original/file-20210623-27-uljai7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DNA can solve all sorts of mysteries, including the sometimes thorny question of paternity.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ktsdesign/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Headlines about molecular genetics being used to shed new light on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/australia/who-was-somerton-man.html">old mysteries</a> or even <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/the-meteoric-rise-of-family-tree-forensics-to-fight-crimes/">put criminals behind bars</a> have become increasingly more common. </p>
<p>In South Africa DNA is being used to answer important questions about everything from a <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-genetic-analysis-reveals-about-the-ancestry-of-south-africas-afrikaners-133242">group of people’s origins</a> to the biological paternity of a child.</p>
<p>But paternity tests aren’t just applicable to modern cases. Fellow researcher Christoff Erasmus and I <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/32007/Greeff_Appel%282013%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">considered</a> DNA evidence to understand a divorce case dating back 321 years. The events before and after the divorce case of Maria Kickers had long-term consequences for a family with a surname that, for decades, appeared often among the country’s white leaders. That name is Botha. </p>
<p>The first prime minister of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/union-south-africa-1910">Union of South Africa</a>, established in 1910, was <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/louis-botha">Louis Botha</a>. There was also <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha">PW Botha</a>, the last prime minister to hold that title, and the first to become executive state president of the Republic of South Africa. </p>
<p>Our research shows that Kickers lied in her 1700 divorce case at the Cape of Good Hope. Her lie – about the paternity of her children – led to a chain of events that affected the Botha lineage, resulting in 38 000 people carrying that name when in fact they were descendants of Ferdinandus Appel.</p>
<p>The genetic evidence, which we gathered using a DNA-based paternity test kit, in combination with the documented testimonies, suggests that Ferdinandus Appel was likely the father of Kickers’ first son and Frederik Botha the father of the other boys. When we genotyped a random sample of Botha males. We found that almost half of them have the Appel rather than the Botha Y chromosome.</p>
<p>The false paternity claim means that tens of thousands of Bothas – more than 76 000 South Africans had this surname in 2013 – should in fact be called Appel, a very uncommon name in the country.</p>
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<img alt="A statue of a man astride a horse, both atop a tan-bricked plinth." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/408121/original/file-20210624-23-xz6ue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A statue of Louis Botha, whose surname, DNA suggests, should have been Appel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Felix Lipov/Shutterstock/For editorial use only</span></span>
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<p>If the Kickers divorce case was heard today, DNA evidence would have refuted the lie about paternity outright and the Botha family may well have shattered. Our findings provide another reminder that DNA evidence can clarify events that happened centuries ago, <a href="https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2020.00106">deepening and improving</a> our understanding of history. </p>
<h2>The divorce case</h2>
<p>One of our sources was a set of <a href="http://www.ballfamilyrecords.co.uk/">records</a> presented by Richard Ball, who is linked to the families at the heart of the divorce case. We also drew information from published genealogical records.</p>
<p>From these we <a href="https://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/32007/Greeff_Appel%282013%29.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y">pieced together</a> the following events.</p>
<p>Kickers married Jan Cornelitz in 1683 at the Cape. They had seven children – four boys and three girls. Christening records for six of these children have been located; all named Cornelitz as the father. In 1700 Jan filed for divorce, claiming that Maria cheated on him with Ferdinandus Appel as well as a tenant who farmed alongside him, Frederik Botha. </p>
<p>Maria denied any involvement with Ferdinandus Appel, but confessed that Frederik Botha was the biological father of all her children. </p>
<p>In her own defence, she claimed that Jan, her husband, encouraged her relationship with Frederik Botha because Jan was “onbequaamd” – a Dutch word meaning “incompetent”.</p>
<p>Frederik Botha confirmed before the court Maria’s claim that all her children were his. While the court did not find Maria to be licentious, they did not give her permission to remarry. As a result, Maria and Frederik Botha had to wait until Jan died, 14 years later, before they could marry. The children then took on the name Botha.</p>
<h2>The genetic evidence</h2>
<p><a href="https://isogg.org/wiki/Y_chromosome_DNA_tests#:%7E:text=A%20Y%20chromosome%20DNA%20test,unchanged%20from%20father%20to%20son.&text=Y%2DDNA%20tests%20are%20typically,in%20a%20surname%20DNA%20project">Y chromosomes</a> are inherited like surnames. So, any of Maria’s sons’ descendants along an unbroken line of males should carry identical Y chromosomes, bar a few mutations. </p>
<p>With the help of a genealogist we managed to contact and obtain DNA samples from all four of Maria’s sons along unbroken male lines. In three cases, more than one descendent was found. We genotyped these Bothas’ Y chromosomes with a kit that is used for paternity tests. The Y chromosomes clearly separated into two groups distinguished by too many mutations to have stemmed from the same Botha ancestor. Within each group, there were a few mutations between individuals, as one would expect for two Y chromosomes with 11 to 19 ancestors between them. </p>
<p>Interestingly, the one group linked to Maria’s first-born son, whereas the other sons’ descendants all shared virtually identical genetic profiles. This pattern piqued our curiosity as it suggested that the first son’s profile may have stemmed from Ferdinandus Appel.</p>
<p>To test this idea, we genotyped two Appel men: one was a clear match to the first sons’ descendants. It is 130 times more likely that Maria’s first son was fathered by Ferdinandus Appel than by a random male that just happened to have the same Y chromosome profile</p>
<p>When we genotyped a random sample of Bothas we found that almost half of them have the Appel rather than the Botha profile. To understand why the first son seems to account for more than a quarter of modern Bothas, we looked at the male descendants as listed in the genealogical records published by the now-closed Genealogical Institute of South Africa. </p>
<p>Just counting the 62 males that were 30 years old or younger in 1780, 45% descended from the first brother while the other three Botha brothers accounted for the remaining 55%. The high number of the first brother’s descendants in 1780 could thus explain why so many of our random sample grouped with the Appel profile.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163184/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jaco Greeff receives funding from the NRF. Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are his and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto. </span></em></p>A lie about children’s paternity back in 1700 means tens of thousands of South Africans today are using the wrong surname.Jaco Greeff, Professor in Genetics, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1326602020-03-11T00:41:36Z2020-03-11T00:41:36ZThe deep evolutionary links between monogamy and fatherhood are more complicated than we thought<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320034/original/file-20200312-14981-1svthv8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5635%2C3683&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men's level of involvement in parenting is often tied to social norms about monogamy.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Compared with our closest relatives, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-humans-evolve-big-penises-but-small-testicles-71652">common chimpanzee and the bonobo</a>, humans are pretty good at focusing exclusively on one mate at a time. </p>
<p>Just how exclusively, however, is the subject of endless tabloid gossip, culture-war sabre-rattling, and scientific debate. The answer seemed to be that most people are exclusive most of the time, but new evidence has thrown the question wide open again. </p>
<p><a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/8/eaay6195">Recent research</a> has revealed that among the Himba of northern Namibia, nearly half of all children were fathered by someone other than their mother’s husband. This is by far the highest rate of “extra-pair paternity” ever documented by reliable research, but for the Himba it is an accepted part of life. </p>
<p>What’s more, the phenomenon <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2890">doesn’t seem to cause serious problems</a> for the Himba, thanks to their particular social norms. For men, these include a scrupulous sense that biological and non-biological children deserve equal treatment.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-chances-that-your-dad-isnt-your-father-24802">What are the chances that your dad isn't your father?</a>
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<h2>How common is extra-pair paternity?</h2>
<p>Some years ago, I <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-are-the-chances-that-your-dad-isnt-your-father-24802">looked at</a> the oft-quoted estimates that between 9% and <a href="http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blphil_ethbio_patfraud.htm">30%</a> of children are sired by somebody other than the guy who thinks he is the father. </p>
<p>At that time, the best-designed genetic studies showed we could put the sensationalist estimates of 10-30% aside; the best studies suggested extra-pair paternity rates between 1% and 3%. That number gels with <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534716000707">evidence</a> gathered in the intervening years from studies of historic rates of extra-pair paternity in <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2013.2400">Belgium</a> and <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513811001115">South Africa</a>, and contemporary estimates from the traditional Dogon society in <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/109/25/9781.short">Mali</a>.</p>
<p>So you can imagine the surprise in the scientific community when a paper in <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/8/eaay6195">Science Advances</a> published, using a very thorough protocol, an estimate of 48% extra-pair paternity among the Himba. More than that, 70% of married couples with children had at least one child sired by a man other than the mother’s husband. </p>
<h2>Welcome to Namibia</h2>
<p>The Himba are pastoralists who live in the arid plains of northwestern Namibia. UCLA anthropologist <a href="https://anthro.ucla.edu/faculty/brooke-scelza">Brooke Scelza</a>, who led this new research, has travelled regularly to Namibia for more than a decade and learned much about Himba culture, marriage and parenting. </p>
<p>Himba parents arrange marriages for their children, and the groom’s family pays a bride price of a small number of livestock. But many, perhaps most, married adults have extramarital relationships. </p>
<p>These are not furtive affairs, infused with stigma and the threat of destructive jealousy. Himba call children conceived in these relationships “omoka”, but their mother’s husband is still considered their father in all important social ways. </p>
<p>The relatively relaxed sexuality of the Himba is related to how they make their living. A husband often spends long periods away from home, seeking out grazing and water for his cattle, sheep, and goats. During these periods of separation in particular, both wives and husbands consort with other lovers.</p>
<p>Mothers and fathers are both very good at discerning which children are omoka, getting it right for <a href="https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/8/eaay6195">73%</a> of children. Their errors in attribution were much more likely to be false positives, that is to say mistakenly believing that an omoka child is a genetic descendent. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1230488768739565570"}"></div></p>
<h2>Hey jealousy</h2>
<p>Where our promiscuous ancestors – the ones we shares with chimps and bonobos – weren’t much chop as fathers, humans have evolved both the tools to focus on a limited number of mates and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/have-you-got-the-balls-to-be-a-good-dad-17998">capacity to be excellent dads</a>.</p>
<p>In societies like the ones most readers of The Conversation inhabit, where rates of fidelity are high and extra-pair paternity is low, the idea of spousal exclusivity can bring up all sorts of insecurities. In these societies, a child who does not bear their father’s DNA may be seen as the product of “cheating” or “cuckoldry”. Such children experience dramatically <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Truth-about-Cinderella-Darwinian-Darwinism/dp/0300080298">higher risks</a> of neglect and violence. </p>
<p>Individual men invest more in their wives and children when they are confident they are the children’s genetic father. The more women depend on men’s investments, the more they lose if the relationship breaks down. As a result, in couples where the man’s economic contribution is large, both parties are likely to hold strong <a href="https://theconversation.com/economic-dependence-promotes-prudishness-28785">anti-promiscuity views</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/economic-dependence-promotes-prudishness-28785">Economic dependence promotes prudishness</a>
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</p>
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<p>A separate <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0654-y.pdf">study of 11 societies</a> led by Scelza found societies where men spend a lot of time and effort caring for children also tend to be places where women and men react with strong jealousy to scenarios depicting emotional and sexual infidelity. </p>
<p>Despite their relatively low levels of jealousy, Himba dads fall in the middle of those 11 societies on the paternal care scale. They don’t hold, groom, or play with their small children very much. But they do provide indirect care, ensuring the children have food, helping them receive an education, giving them livestock, and paying “bride price” for their sons. </p>
<p>When a Himba man dies, he passes most of his wealth, in the form of cattle, not to his own or his wife’s sons, but to those of his sister. This is not an unusual custom among pastoralist societies. It makes solid Darwinian sense for Himba fathers, given the likelihood of extra-pair paternity.</p>
<h2>Himba dads</h2>
<p>In a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.2890">paper published today</a>, University of Missouri anthropologist <a href="https://anthropology.missouri.edu/people/prall">Sean P. Prall</a>, together with Scelza, shows that Himba fathers hold strong norms against favouring genetic children over their non-genetic (omoka) children. </p>
<p>Himba parenting seems to work, despite the high rates of extra-pair paternity, because of these norms. There is a strong sense that the social father of a child plays an important role irrespective of the child’s genetic paternity. </p>
<p>Children, regardless of their paternity, are useful and important members of a household. Himba children perform useful work around the home, and older boys help care for livestock. Beyond that, being a generous father who is fair to his omoka and genetic children alike, earns a man prestige. Men are especially likely to treat their children equally in the most visible forms of parental investment, like bride price.</p>
<h2>What of human monogamy?</h2>
<p>The new papers about Himba parenting challenge the view that humans are, if not monogamous, then mostly “monogamish”. Himba extramarital relationships are too common and too prominent to conform to our idea of furtive, opportunistic transgressions. </p>
<p>Omoka are not the issue of cuckoldry, but rather a different kind of socially acceptable mating arrangement. More than that, Himba fathers don’t drop their bundle at the first hint that a child doesn’t have “their eyes”. They stick around, and mostly treat those kids the same as everybody else.</p>
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<p><em>The image accompanying this article was replaced at 12.36pm AEDT on March 12, 2020.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Brooks receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>DNA evidence from the Himba society in Namibia overturns ideas about genetic paternity, and about what it means to be a father.Rob Brooks, Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Academic Lead of UNSW's Grand Challenges Program, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1185662019-06-13T17:15:07Z2019-06-13T17:15:07ZWho’s your daddy? Don’t ask a DNA test<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279196/original/file-20190612-32335-l4jcax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What are the rules that make a man a father?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/eFmLuPyzgxI">Slava Potik/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“<a href="https://nypost.com/2017/07/23/man-ordered-to-pay-65k-in-child-support-for-kid-who-isnt-his/">Man Ordered to Pay $65K</a> in Child Support for Kid Who Isn’t His.” “<a href="https://www.news4jax.com/news/investigations/father-hopes-to-change-state-paternity-law-after-losing-custody-of-daughter">Father Hopes to Change State Paternity Law</a>” after losing custody of his biological daughter to another man. The headlines are lurid and seemingly nonsensical. How can a man bear financial responsibility for a child that is not “his”? How can he be denied legal paternity of a child whom he conceived?</p>
<p>The gist of these stories is that such outcomes are not only ludicrous but unjust. Such tales not only appear in the mainstream media but provide fodder for <a href="https://mensrights.com/texas-child-support-paternity/">men’s rights websites</a> and <a href="https://www.nj.com/news/2012/03/nj_legislator_proposes_measure.html">have even inspired bills to</a> <a href="http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2011/feb/12/bill-kansas-house-would-require-paternity-testing-/">make DNA testing mandatory at birth</a>, though none has actually become law.</p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674980686">history suggests</a> such cases are not so strange. In fact, they follow from a long tradition in which paternity was a social and legal relationship, not a biological one.</p>
<p>After all, it was only in the 1980s that DNA testing emerged, with its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/21/us/the-law-dna-test-dooms-paternity-trials-lawyers-say.html">promise to reveal the identity of the biological father</a>. For most of human history, no such technology existed – nor was it missed. Paternity was based on presumption, deduced from social behaviors and legal conventions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/279198/original/file-20190612-32361-1gtbj17.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Is a baby’s father set by social, legal, biogenetic factors… or a combination of all?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Mx2f4psEnvU">Minnie Zhou/Unsplash</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Father, by tradition</h2>
<p>Historically, the father was defined by marriage. Pater est quem nuptiae, in the Roman formulation: The father is he whom marriage indicates, even in circumstances when, well, he could not be. The tradition carried forward over the centuries. According to 17th-century English common law, for example, if a husband was located anywhere within the “Four Seas” of the King of England at the time of his wife’s conception, he was legally presumed the father of her child.</p>
<p>As for children born out of wedlock, courts, especially those operating in the civil law tradition, <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/children-of-fate">deduced paternity from a man’s actions or public reputation</a>. The father was he who cohabited with the mother or kissed the baby in public, the man whom a neighbor saw paying the wet nurse. Paternity was performative.</p>
<p>Such definitions of fatherhood did not mean it was less certain or less true: It was simply that the truth of paternity was social, not physical.</p>
<p>This situation contrasted with the logic of maternity. Mater certissima est – the mother is always certain, in the Roman formulation. Maternal identity could presumably be known by the physical facts of pregnancy and birth.</p>
<h2>A more muddled modern landscape</h2>
<p>Today, according to some observers, reproductive technologies like <a href="https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/ylr96&div=17&id=&page=">surrogacy and egg donation have disrupted the certainty</a> of the Roman dictum on maternity. After all, maternal identity is not so obvious when the gestational mother who births the child and the genetic one whose egg creates it can be two different people.</p>
<p>By contrast, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1983.03340180090038">DNA was supposed to make biological paternity certain</a>. And yet the older reasoning that long defined paternity as a social relationship endures.</p>
<p>Today, family law in the U.S. and elsewhere continues to <a href="https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cjlpp/vol14/iss1/1/">recognize nonbiological lines of reasoning</a>. A man’s behavior, intent, the nature of his relationship with the mother, stability in a preexisting parent-child relationship – all these criteria, rather than biology, may define the father. If anything, reproductive technologies like sperm donation and new family forms, like those born of the frequency of divorce, have only multiplied the scenarios in which biology may take a backseat to social criteria.</p>
<p>But in some contexts, the biological continues to prevail. This is often the case in immigration and citizenship law. Kin relations play a central role in immigration proceedings in the U.S. and other countries because <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/ylj/vol120/iss4/5">citizens can sponsor close relatives to immigrate</a>, and under certain circumstances refugees have a <a href="https://scholarship.law.umassd.edu/umlr/vol8/iss2/4">right to join family members</a> in their adopted country.</p>
<p>Increasingly, countries that are migration destinations use DNA to verify family relationships. In May 2019, for instance, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/30/politics/homeland-security-dna-testing-immigration/index.html">pilot program to test Central American migrant families</a> at the southern border.</p>
<p>As critics have noted, this practice <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/13/rapid-dna-promises-identify-fake-families-border-it-wont/">imposes a narrow, biological definition of family</a>. Kinship practices like adoption, stepparenthood and relationships based on a social understanding of parentage are considered perfectly legitimate when practiced by natives but are vilified as fraudulent and criminal when practiced by foreigners.</p>
<p>These apparently contradictory definitions of parentage reflect the fact that paternity’s definition varies depending on whose parentage is at stake – and how much power they hold.</p>
<p>Law and custom have always purposefully obfuscated the fatherhood of certain categories of men: the slave owner, the priest, the colonizer, the soldier. <a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/2650">Thomas Jefferson’s paternity</a> of Sally Hemings’ children was publicly obscured for two centuries. In an entirely different historical context, <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8048.html">German women after World War II</a> found it impossible to bring paternity suits against American soldiers who had fathered their children.</p>
<p>The fact that some fathers, like Jefferson and the GIs, have remained strategically uncertain suggests the very notion of paternal uncertainty is not a biological axiom but a political idea.</p>
<h2>Life’s too complicated to rely on DNA</h2>
<p>Over the last century, the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children has <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/838374">lost much of its social and legal significance</a> in the West. The once markedly different criteria for proving maternity versus paternity have largely, though not entirely, disappeared. Under U.S. law, children born abroad to unmarried citizen fathers <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2010/11/sexing_citizenship.html">still do not enjoy the same rights to citizenship</a> as those born to citizen mothers, for example.</p>
<p>At the same time, stratification has been reinforced in other contexts, as in the contrasting definitions of parentage among citizens and foreigners. New dynamics of discrimination have also arisen as assisted reproductive technologies and same-sex couples produce new permutations of family.</p>
<p>Take the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/us/gay-couple-children-citizenship.html">recent conundrum</a> faced by two dads and their young daughter. Both men are U.S. citizens and are legally married; their daughter was born abroad to a surrogate. Drawing on a tortured combination of both biological considerations – the fact that child was not genetically related to both parents – and social ones – nonrecognition of the couple’s marriage – the State Department denied their child U.S. citizenship. What such a case shows is not that old laws have failed to keep pace with new family forms, but how the state can generate new forms of stratification even as older ones fade.</p>
<p>With the dawn of the DNA era, many observers predicted that, by revealing the truth of paternity, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1983.03340180090038">genetic science would one day abolish ambiguity</a> and deliver equality and justice. Today science can indeed find a father, but its impact has been rather more complex than once anticipated. Instead of sweeping away older social and legal definitions with a new biogenetic one, it has actually heightened the tensions between different ways of defining paternity. </p>
<p>Who’s your daddy? Perhaps science isn’t best positioned to answer, because this question arises from society, not nature. It might not be the right question anyway. A better one is, what does society want a father to be?</p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p>
<p><strong>Editors Note: A picture was been removed from this article after a request from the photographer</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nara Milanich has received funding from American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).</span></em></p>Before the advent of genetic testing, definitions of paternity were primarily social and legal. Science has destabilized these older definitions, but it has not replaced them.Nara Milanich, Professor of History, Barnard CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/925042018-04-04T20:03:37Z2018-04-04T20:03:37ZFive things to consider before ordering an online DNA test<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213081/original/file-20180404-189824-p1u05b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DNA testing has its risks, including that you don't know who will own your genetic data.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Skf7HxARcoc">Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You might be intrigued by what your genes could tell you about <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans">your ancestry</a> or the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-approves-23andme-s-home-dna-tests-10-diseases-n743416">health risks</a> hidden in your DNA. If so, you’re not alone. </p>
<p>Fascination with personal genetics is fuelling an explosion of online DNA testing. More than <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610233/2017-was-the-year-consumer-dna-testing-blew-up/">12 million people</a> have been tested – 7 million through ancestry.com alone. Amazon reported the 23andMe online DNA test kit as one of its <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/amazon-top-selling-items-on-black-friday-2017-11?r=US&IR=T">top five best-selling items</a> on Black Friday in 2017. </p>
<p>But while online genetic testing can be interesting and fun, it has risks. Here are five things to keep in mind if you’re considering spitting in a tube.</p>
<h2>1. Understand the limits of what’s possible</h2>
<p>Keep in mind the evidence behind claims a DNA testing company makes. Some companies list the science that backs up their claims, but many don’t. </p>
<p>DNA testing can be used to tell your ancestry and family relatedness quite accurately, but companies claiming to predict <a href="https://vinome.com/">wine preferences</a> or children’s <a href="https://www.soccergenomics.com/">soccer prowess</a> from DNA are in the realm of fantasy. </p>
<p>There is also a <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00024/full">lack of regulation</a> on this issue to protect consumers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213079/original/file-20180404-189795-1kib4em.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Genetic testing products like 23andMe are exploding in popularity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
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<h2>2. Make sure you’re prepared for the information</h2>
<p>Genetics can tell us many things, some of which we may not be prepared for. You may go in looking for information on your ancestry, but could find out about <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14647273.2017.1339127">unexpected paternity</a>. Or you might discover you’re at risk of certain diseases. Some of these have no cure, like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/aug/26/alzheimers-disease-shock-for-genetic-ancestry-hunters">Alzheimer’s disease</a>, which could only leave you distressed. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/genetic-testing-isnt-a-crystal-ball-for-your-health-66906">Genetic testing isn't a crystal ball for your health</a>
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</em>
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<p>Some products can test for genetic changes in the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/07/when-comes-home-cancer-tests-think-before-you-spit/404864002/">BRCA genes</a> that put you at risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Other <a href="https://promethease.com/">online genetic interpretation tools</a> can take raw data from ancestry DNA tests and, for a small payment, provide a wide range of disease risk estimates, many of which have been <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608313/a-dna-app-store-is-here-but-proceed-with-caution/">brought into question by the scientific community</a>. </p>
<p>Think carefully about whether you really want to know all this information, and whether it’s valid, before you proceed. </p>
<h2>3. Consider the medical follow-up you might need</h2>
<p>If something serious is discovered in your genes, you might need the results to be professionally interpreted, or to have genetic counselling to come to terms with what you’ve learnt.</p>
<p>Some genetic information can be <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29134551">complex and difficult to interpret</a>, and have medical implications for you and your family. Relying on the internet for interpretation is not advised.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-little-bit-of-knowledge-the-perils-of-genetic-tests-for-alzheimers-disease-3994">A little bit of knowledge: the perils of genetic tests for Alzheimer's disease</a>
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<p>Does the DNA testing company offer any counselling or medical services? If not, are you hoping your GP or genetics clinic will provide this? You might find GPs are not adequately trained to understand DNA results, and public genetics services have very long waiting lists. This means you might be left on tenterhooks with a potentially distressing result.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/213083/original/file-20180404-189813-5v2c6u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before you spit into a tube, be prepared for what you might discover.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>4. Think how the results may affect your insurance</h2>
<p>In Australia, private health insurance can’t be influenced by genetic test results. But life insurance companies can use genetic test results to <a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-can-be-denied-life-insurance-based-on-genetic-test-results-and-there-is-little-protection-81335">discriminate against applicants</a>, with little consumer protection. All genetic test results known to an applicant at the time of a life insurance application must be disclosed if requested, including internet-based test results. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-can-be-denied-life-insurance-based-on-genetic-test-results-and-there-is-little-protection-81335">Australians can be denied life insurance based on genetic test results, and there is little protection</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Once you have a result that indicates increased risk of disease, the life insurance company may use this against you (by increasing premiums, for instance), even if the scientific evidence isn’t solid. This applies to life, income protection, disability and even travel insurance.</p>
<h2>5. Consider who will have access to your DNA and data</h2>
<p>Some online genetic testing companies <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/gim2016136">don’t comply</a> with international guidelines on privacy, confidentiality and use of genetic data. Many online testing companies retain DNA samples indefinitely. Consumers can request samples be destroyed, but sometimes <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/02/15/the-privacy-delusions-of-genetic-testing/2/#24dcbfe689c8">have difficulties</a> with this. </p>
<p>Some online testing companies have been accused of selling access to databases of genetic information to third parties, potentially without the knowledge of donors. You might have to plough through the fine print to find out what you have consented to.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/take-an-online-dna-test-and-you-could-be-revealing-far-more-than-you-realise-52734">Take an online DNA test and you could be revealing far more than you realise</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>In many ways, it is wonderful we now have access to our personal DNA code. However, as always, understanding the limitations and risks of fast-moving medical technology is very important.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92504/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Online genetic testing promises many things. Some are the stuff of fantasy, while others, even if scientifically feasible, still carry risks. Consider these five things before ordering a test.Jane Tiller, Ethical, Legal & Social Adviser - Public Health Genomics, Monash UniversityPaul Lacaze, Head, Public Health Genomics Program, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/824572017-08-17T16:30:36Z2017-08-17T16:30:36ZNew research pokes holes in the idea that men don’t look after their kids<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182074/original/file-20170815-16750-dkx6kx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Men who had to take responsibility for younger siblings growing up were not concerned about conforming to dominant ideas about manhood.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africa has one of the highest rates of absent fathers in sub-Saharan Africa. As many as 60% of children in the country under the age of 10 don’t live with their <a href="http://www.hsrc.ac.za/uploads/pageContent/3337/2013febFamily%20Policy.pdf">biological fathers</a>, the second highest rate of absence in <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710932/#S3title">sub-Saharan Africa</a> after Namibia. This compares to one third in the <a href="http://www.fatherhood.org/fatherhood-data-statistics">US</a>.</p>
<p>South Africa’s statistics are influenced by the history of migrant labour. Expropriation of the land of black Africans by colonial authorities, coupled with the levying of taxes, forced men (and later, women) to move to the growing cities to earn an income, while their wives and children stayed in the rural reserves or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710932/#S3title">“homelands”</a>.</p>
<p>But there are other factors at play too. These include gender norms about childcare and the different roles attached to fathers and mothers. These norms also generally lead to men – even if they are physically present – making minimal contributions to unpaid care and household work.</p>
<p>A large volume of research – including the Centre for Social Development in Africa’s <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Absent-fathers-full-report%202013.pdf">“ATM Fathers”</a> – has shown that among both men and women, fathers are widely considered as primarily being responsible for supporting the family financially. These attitudes frequently lead men – or enable them – to sidestep non-financial care responsibilities. </p>
<p>But in a context of <a href="http://www.fin24.com/Economy/jobs-not-grants-only-way-out-of-poverty-says-pali-lehohla-20170807">widespread unemployment</a>, inability to earn an income and fulfil the “provider” role often leads men to <a href="https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/csda/Documents/Absent-fathers-full-report%202013.pdf">abandon their children</a>. This leaves women with the double burden of being the sole breadwinner as well as the person primarily responsible for unpaid care and household work. This, in turn, reinforces gender inequality as women have less time to pursue market work, education, leisure and civic life, and are expected to sacrifice their own interests for those of children.</p>
<p>But there are men who choose to be involved fully in the care of their children despite economic difficulty. We have done research into the reasons for this involvement, and the different forms that it takes. The <a href="https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/338575">initial research</a> has been done by <a href="https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/342417">Masters students</a> Manon van der Meer and Hylke Hoornstra, and forms part of my PhD which is due to be published early next year. We also examined men’s attitudes towards gender, and how they define their masculine and paternal identities in the context of caring for children. </p>
<p>We found that a significant number of men are doing this in progressive ways - ‘doing’ fatherhood and manhood in ways that differ from the patriarchal archetypes that sustain gender inequality. Their examples point to the possibility of creating a more gender equal society.</p>
<h2>The research</h2>
<p>The first group of men we interviewed were fathers working in low income jobs in Johannesburg – mostly security guards and fast food restaurant staff. All were cohabiting with their partners and children. Almost all emphasised that providing for the family financially was central to their definitions of a good father. Given their low-paying jobs, they were constantly worried about their inability to do this which often led to feelings of inadequacy as a father.</p>
<p>But most men saw their father roles as encompassing more than just financial provision. Almost all spoke of a need to be available emotionally for their children, and to spend time with them. Most also had no problem with performing care work (such as changing nappies, bathing children, helping children with schoolwork) or household work (cleaning, cooking, laundry, and ironing). But importantly, most saw the mother as primarily responsible for this work, only stepping in to help when asked or required. This was frequently related to gendered ideas about competence: that women were naturally more suited to these tasks.</p>
<p>The second group of men we interviewed were receiving a <a href="http://www.gov.za/services/child-care-social-benefits/child-support-grant">child support grant</a> on behalf of their children. The grant is a means tested monthly cash transfer provided to low-income caregivers to support childcare, and has a value of R380 (around US$29). This group makes up only a fraction of those who get the grants – 98% are women according to data provided by the South African Social Security Agency. </p>
<p>Most of the men we interviewed in Soweto had applied for the grant because a female partner had passed away, or because their female partner was not a South African citizen.</p>
<p>Almost all the men were unemployed. Most put far less emphasis on providing financial support. They considered “being there” for their children – by providing love, guidance and protection – a key component of their masculine and paternal identities. </p>
<p>They frequently described taking care of their children, and not abandoning them or being otherwise neglectful, as central to what it means to be a man.</p>
<p>As with the first group, many in the second group also subscribed to dominant gender norms about who should do what in the household. Care and household work were viewed primarily as mothers’ or women’s responsibility. Nonetheless, almost all regularly carried out these tasks, even those who were either living with female partners or who could rely on the support of female relatives - thus revealing a discrepancy between their beliefs and how they behaved. </p>
<p>Most men in both groups spoke about the pressure to conform to social expectations and the sanctions imposed on them if they didn’t. Sanctions could take the form of disapproval when they were seen to be doing “women’s work”. Also, some men who received the child grant said they were seen as “undateable” by women they encountered at the local social grant offices. </p>
<p>All men said they experienced some form of pressure. But some seemed less bothered by it than others. This was particularly true of those who held gender-equal ideas about “male” and “female” responsibility. Men who had always done this work – for example those who were brought up by single mothers, or who had to take responsibility for younger siblings growing up – were similarly unconcerned about conforming to dominant ideas of what it means to “be a man”.</p>
<h2>Doing gender differently</h2>
<p>Fathers in South Africa are often denigrated for being un-involved and neglectful. But this research sheds light on fathers who, despite significant economic and social pressure, choose to remain involved in meaningful ways in the lives of their children, and to incorporate traditionally feminine behaviours and roles into their own masculine and paternal identities for the well-being of their children. </p>
<p>We hope that the research findings will inspire other men to “do gender” differently – for the benefit of their children and South African women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82457/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoheb Khan receives funding from the National Research Foundation. </span></em></p>About 60% of children in South Africa under 10 years don’t live with their biological fathers. But research sheds light on those who despite the pressures remain involved in their children’s lives.Zoheb Khan, Researcher, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/750452017-05-11T12:48:11Z2017-05-11T12:48:11ZWhy dads can’t be the dads they want to be<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168771/original/file-20170510-21593-1q1tapm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C320%2C1753%2C1194&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's about more than gender dynamics: Do social institutions get in the way of dads being dads?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/beach-child-family-father-351495/">Reginald Williams / Pexels</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In most families, mothers and fathers both work hard. Pew Research has reported that <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/data-trend/society-and-demographics/parental-time-use/">moms and dads in the U.S. work essentially equal hours</a> when paid work hours are combined with household chores and child care hours.</p>
<p>Pew also reports that fathers are putting more time into their families than ever before. Yet, many social scientists argue that <a href="https://theconversation.com/dads-are-more-involved-in-parenting-yes-but-moms-still-put-in-more-work-72026">subtle forms of parenting inequality endure</a>. Some <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X13001063#b0320">scholars</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-mom-the-designated-worrier.html">commentators</a> argue that this inequality results from a patriarchal gender ideology: a power dynamic that affects how parents socialize their children and what roles men and women take on in families.</p>
<p>As a scholar who focuses on fathering and men’s health, I see <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svw020">my research</a> paint a more complicated picture. While traditional gender attitudes and expectations tell an important part of the story, inequalities between moms and dads are not driven solely by beliefs or interpersonal interactions. </p>
<p>Fathers repeatedly tell researchers <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms-and-dads-converge-as-they-balance-work-and-family/">they want to be more involved parents</a>, yet public policy and social institutions often prevent them from being the dads they want to be – hurting moms, dads and children alike.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168782/original/file-20170510-21588-1l45c9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Moms and children benefit when societal structures allow fathers to be more active parents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-working-mother-her-little-son-244844188?src=St5aoGiL44r9jZC6sfZM6Q-1-28">Ekaterina Pokrovsky / Shutterstock.com</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Wasting the ‘magic moment’</h2>
<p>Engaging dads in prenatal care is a potentially powerful way to help set dads on positive parenting trajectories. I recently participated in a <a href="http://sswr.confex.com/sswr/2017/webprogram/Session8432.html">symposium</a> of social work researchers that highlighted the importance of engaging fathers during this “magic moment” in their lives.</p>
<p>Dads who are actively included in prenatal care <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2008.00551.x">form a stronger “father” identity for themselves</a> and are good parents by virtually any measure. In fact, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12193">impact of the prenatal period</a> is often stronger for dads who are already at risk of having low levels of engagement.</p>
<p>Yet, dads are often <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05628.x">actively excluded from prenatal care</a>. Obstetricians’ offices are rarely designed in ways that help doctors and nurses engage dads with their unborn child. For example, many ultrasound rooms do not include space for fathers to see their child for the first time. In general, obstetricians emphasize mother and child health – to the exclusion of other members of the family system.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1624/105812406X107780">Childbirth courses</a>, similarly, often tell dads they should be supportive, but do little else to address the father’s role.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168777/original/file-20170510-21615-1k9l3le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fathers are often excluded from prenatal experiences, like viewing ultrasounds in real time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/future-father-holds-ultrasound-picture-421456165?src=QEEABgaqibP3iLzTqdQajw-1-1">bearmoney / Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>After the baby is born</h2>
<p>Family health and well-being are important after babies are born, too. <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/04/15/when-men-get-the-baby-blues">Fathers</a>, like mothers, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2010.605">can experience postpartum depression</a> and struggle with the transition to parenthood. Recently, pediatricians have taken a more substantive role in <a href="http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2015/06/01/how-pediatricians-are-helping-moms-with-postpartum-depression">addressing postpartum depression in mothers</a>. Fathers seldom get the same attention. </p>
<p>This lack of support from the medical profession may hurt families in the long run. My research suggests that being a parent has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swu057">similar negative effects on the mental health of mothers and fathers</a>. In fact, in some cases, we found that fathers were more likely to experience depression than mothers.</p>
<p>Failing to acknowledge the mental health of fathers can be problematic. Like depression in mothers, paternal depression has negative effects in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2005-2948">early childhood</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/swr/svx006">beyond</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168774/original/file-20170510-21588-188y6b3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Though it’s given less attention, postpartum depression can be experienced by men as well as women.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/baby-child-cute-dad-daddy-family-22194/">Pixabay</a>, <a class="license" href="http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en">FAL</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why the workplace may matter the most</h2>
<p>Obstacles to more involved fathering extend beyond health care. <a href="http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/03/14/modern-parenthood-roles-of-moms-and-dads-converge-as-they-balance-work-and-family/#balancing-work-and-family">Many mothers and fathers struggle to balance</a> family and careers. Public and private policies often contribute to the difficulty, forcing parents to prioritize one or the other. </p>
<p>The U.S. is the <a href="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/jul/25/kirsten-gillibrand/yes-us-only-industrialized-nation-without-paid-fam/">only industrialized nation in the world</a> that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave. To make matters worse, few families have a choice as to whether the mother or father stays home: <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/16/pf/parental-leave-fathers/">Less than one-fifth</a> of American employers offer paid paternity leave. Meanwhile, several European countries (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/04/maternity-leave-paid-parental-leave-_n_2617284.html">including France and the U.K.</a>) have mandated paternity leave.</p>
<p>Research has shown that generous family leave policies <a href="https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/benefits/Documents/paid-family-leave-1-2011.pdf">positively impact</a> family health, parents’ well-being and gender equity in the workplace.</p>
<p>Yet, these benefits may not be enough. For example, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/josi.12015">many men do not use leave or flextime</a> if they believe it will damage their careers or reputation. My own research – with colleagues from Brigham Young University – focuses on <a href="https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/sites/workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/files/Master%20program%20with%20abstracts%20-%20Thursday_1.pdf">workplace culture and its significance for fathers</a>. Using data collected from fathers of children aged 2 to 17, we found that even reluctant fathers were more nurturing, emotionally engaged and better co-parents if they worked for organizations with cultures and policies that promoted family involvement.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/168781/original/file-20170510-21627-40ev5u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many fathers are not given the opportunity to take paternity leave – or fear that doing so would impact their career.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/three-happy-fathers-on-city-walk-281472332?src=gz7c0FZD07LNO4WB3G3p2A-1-2">Olesia Bilkei / Shutterstock.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Structural barriers hurt all family members</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2007.00572.x">Fathers</a>, like mothers, can help their children grow and learn. It’s clear that children in families with fathers <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2007.00572.x">benefit from having an engaged, warm, nurturing dad</a>. Likewise, moms, both at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X15623586">home</a> and at <a href="http://men-care.org/soaf/download/PRO16001_Americas_Father_web.pdf">work</a>, benefit from dads who share the burden in taking care of children.</p>
<p>The failure to provide explicit, consistent, and strong supports for fathers is a failure to pave the way for a more equitable kind of parenting. My research – and that of many others – shows that if fathers are to take on more caregiving at home, they should be provided with the tools to become more engaged with their families. This would not only distribute parental expectations more evenly, but also eliminate the overly restrictive gender boundaries that <a href="http://sowf.men-care.org/">limit men</a> and <a href="http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/IJSSP-10-2014-0073">marginalize women</a>.</p>
<p>Yes, I applaud changes that have helped fathers be more involved parents than ever before. But it’s not enough. We need cultural and political change that emphasizes the significance of fathers for families and the crucial role women play in the workplace.</p>
<p>[<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em>]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75045/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Shafer has received funding from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services as an evaluator on a Responsible Fatherhood program grant. The views in this article do not necessarily reflect those of funding agencies, Brigham Young University, or its sponsoring church.</span></em></p>Why is it all about mom? Fathers want to be more involved in their children’s lives, but are limited by public policy and social institutions. This is a bad deal for dads, kids and moms alike.Kevin Shafer, Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of Canadian Studies, Brigham Young UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/245242014-04-17T21:52:44Z2014-04-17T21:52:44ZWho’s your Daddy? seeks answers in all the wrong places<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46542/original/gx3qdkq4-1397628178.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paternity doubts are a source of gossip and emotional trauma – with a man, woman and child caught in between.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS (resized)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How often is a person’s biological father someone other than the man they call dad? </p>
<p>Paternity doubts are a source of gossip, on the one hand, and emotional trauma, on the other. But our assumptions about infidelity may be based more on the headlines of salacious magazines than on hard facts. </p>
<p>Who’s your Daddy?, a provocatively titled documentary airing on SBS at 8:30pm Sunday April 20, delves into rates of what is variously know as non-paternity, “misattributed paternity” or “disputed fatherhood”. </p>
<p>Genetic testing for paternity has transformed such disputes from subjectively pitting the credibility of the <a href="http://digitalcommons.law.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2380&context=lawreview">mother and the alleged father</a> against each other, to a more objective process where the natural variation in each person’s DNA is used to determine the likelihood of a genetic relationship.</p>
<p>With such precise science available, you might imagine the rate of misattributed paternity would be quite easily measured, but this is not the case. So the documentary sets out to determine what the actual rate is.</p>
<h2>Dubious details</h2>
<p>The film sets the scene by describing an unpublished study of blood groups of parents and children of between 200 and 300 families in the United Kingdom, done “<a href="http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/analysis_and_opinion/choices_and_behaviours/misattributed_paternity.htm#philipp1973">possibly in the 1950s</a>” in southeast England. </p>
<p>It reportedly showed 30% of children had blood groups different from their putative father, suggesting the men didn’t really father the children. </p>
<p>The study was testing not for paternity but for antibody formation, according to the researcher Dr Elliott Elias Philipp, who quoted the figures at a symposium. And it leaves many unanswered questions about the nature of the population studied and the quality and robustness of the data.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, this 30% figure became frequently quoted as the general rate of non-paternity and is used throughout the documentary as the “shock! horror!” baseline to which comparison are made.</p>
<p>To elucidate the current rate of non-paternity, the documentary presents results from a world-first study of 2,200 Australian and American women, who chose to do an online survey. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46544/original/24f3cz9h-1397628352.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">You might imagine the rate of misattributed paternity is easily measured with DNA testing but this is not the case.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Three questions were posed:</p>
<ul>
<li>have you had consecutive male partners within a month?</li>
<li>have you had any sex outside of a long-term relationship?</li>
<li>have you ever conceived when married from another relationship?</li>
</ul>
<p>The answers generate interesting information about patterns of sexual behaviour among the participants, but the documentary doesn’t tell us some key information: who are the participants in the survey? Are they representative of the general population or mainly very literate, well-educated people with high socioeconomic backgrounds fooling around on the internet?</p>
<p>The documentary makers missed a real opportunity here. Think about it, if you’d been unfaithful around the time of the conception of your child, would you admit it in an online survey? </p>
<p>Without this information, the survey generates curious but uninformative data, and we’re left no wiser about the underlying question of the rate of non-paternity in the general community.</p>
<h2>Mix and match</h2>
<p>The documentary is a curious mix of attempts at genuine measurement of non-paternity and pseudoscience on theories of human behaviour, based on anthropomorphising people comparing their sexual behaviour and monogamy practices with those of swans and fairy wrens. </p>
<p>This is its weakest aspect – where speculative theories are presented as probable fact – and it diminishes what is mostly a genuine effort to understand what the science can and can’t tell us.</p>
<p>DNA fingerprinting carried out for entirely different reasons – testing carried out in the military services, for instance, or for medical or forensic reasons – may actually provide some of the best evidence we have of true non-paternity rates. And these data show vastly lower rates than 30%. </p>
<p>With over 15 years of experience in the clinical genetics setting, we have observed very low rates of accidental discovery of non-paternity: fewer than five cases among the hundreds of families we see clinically. </p>
<p>But of course, we don’t claim our experience is necessarily representative, and families where non-paternity is an issue might avoid genetic testing for that very reason.</p>
<p>Perhaps the single greatest contribution of this documentary is to question the dogma around the 30% non-paternity rate figure. While its attempts to get better answers lack rigour, it starts a conversation we need to have – because at the centre of these sometimes titillating stories is a mother and a child and a father.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How often is a person’s biological father someone other than the man they call dad? Paternity doubts are a source of gossip, on the one hand, and emotional trauma, on the other. But our assumptions about…Jane Halliday, Professor Public Health Genetics, Murdoch Children's Research InstituteSue White, Clinical Geneticist, Victorian Clinical Genetics Service, Murdoch Children's Research InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/248022014-04-15T20:37:06Z2014-04-15T20:37:06ZWhat are the chances that your dad isn’t your father?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46444/original/bvqmnfk3-1397543002.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is that you, dad? SBS documentary questions oft-quoted figures on dads who are not the real father of their children.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How confident are you that the man you call dad is really your biological father? If you believe some of the most commonly-quoted figures, you could be forgiven for not being very confident at all. But how accurate are those figures?</p>
<p>Questions of paternity are built over the deepest well of human insecurity, for children searching to know who they are, for fathers wanting to know whose kids they are raising and for mothers uncertain about the strength of the bonds holding their families together.</p>
<p>I consulted on an episode of SBS’s Tales of the Unexpected documentary series, “<a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/programs/tales-of-the-unexpected/gallery/10-myths-surprises-about-paternity-just-who-your-daddy">Who’s Your Daddy?</a>” (screening this Sunday April 20) which looks at the issue in some detail.</p>
<p>The program explores the question of paternity certainty, combining three moving tales – each involving a DNA paternity test – with a poll of sexual behaviour in Australia and the US and an exposition of why uncertain paternity presents such a sensitive issue.</p>
<h2>One of the three?</h2>
<p>How many children are the genetic offspring of someone other than the guy who thinks he is the father? </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=780&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46403/original/785h7yt4-1397532665.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who’s Your Daddy?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you have read, heard or watched anything on this question, you will have encountered many estimates, from <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1415296.Human_Sperm_Competition">9%</a> to more than <a href="http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/phil/blphil_ethbio_patfraud.htm">30%</a>. The idea that almost one in three people might be the result of what we biologists rather matter-of-factly call “extra-pair copulations” titillates and horrifies in equal measure. </p>
<p>These estimates surprise most people when they first hear them. So much so that the numbers tend to stick in our minds. But do these numbers bear any truth?</p>
<p>The problem with most data on paternity is the near impossibility of obtaining an unbiased sample. A paternity clinic, for example, is a bad place from which to estimate the rate of misattributed paternity. Many clients are there because at least one party isn’t convinced.</p>
<p>Likewise, any study recruiting families – however randomly – might have more success recruiting mothers who harbour no doubts about their children’s paternity.</p>
<h2>Questionable figures</h2>
<p>Swinburne University sociologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/michael-gilding-12162/profile_bio">Michael Gilding</a>, who also appears in the SBS program, has thoroughly researched the origins of the popular belief that 10% to 30% of paternities are misattributed.</p>
<p>He <a href="http://inside.org.au/the-fatherhood-myth/">traced the source</a> of the high estimate – 30% – to the transcript of a symposium held in 1972 in which British gynaecologist and obstetrician <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/8049068/Elliot-Philipp.html">Dr Elliot Philipp</a> mentioned an estimate from a small sample of parents.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This brief conversation took on a life of its own, despite the fact that Dr Philipp never published the findings of his study. As a result, his precise tests and his population sample were never identified.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of the many studies that have attempted to estimate the rate of misattributed paternity, the higher estimates have tended to grab headlines, whereas more modest estimates sink without trace.</p>
<h2>In whose interest?</h2>
<p>Prof Gilding implicates two groups for inflating the public perception of misattributed paternity rates: evolutionary psychologists and fathers’ rights groups. </p>
<p>Evolutionary psychologists, according to Gilding, are so invested in their ideas about the nuanced mating decisions women make that they overestimate how often women mate outside their long-term relationships. My impression is that this may be an accurate assessment of <a href="https://theconversation.com/cunnilingus-assisted-orgasm-may-not-be-such-a-big-mystery-15832">some headline-grabbing research</a> but not universally true of the field.</p>
<p>Fathers’ rights groups represent men negotiating the heartbreak of family break-up. Some such groups also host strident activists propelled by a conviction that the law and society have been utterly corrupted by <a href="http://human-stupidity.com/stupid-dogma/mens-rights-feminism/men-ruined-destroyed-by-feminist-legal-system-driven-to-self-immolation-murder">feminism</a>, <a href="http://www.avoiceformen.com/gynocentrism/timeline-of-gynocentric-culture/">gynocentrism</a> and <a href="http://exposingfeminism.wordpress.com/what-is-misandry/">misandry</a>.</p>
<p>The blogs and forums of this netherworld amplify any finding, however flimsy, implying that women are rampantly promiscuous or cynical swindlers looking to part men from their hard-earned cash or dupe them into caring for kids that don’t bear their DNA.</p>
<p>They call this “<a href="http://www.mensdefense.org/STM_Book/PaternityFraud.htm">paternity fraud</a>” and some claim it “<a href="http://www.returnofkings.com/18694/paternity-fraud-is-worse-than-rape">worse than rape</a>”.</p>
<p>You won’t find on their websites a critical analysis of the sampling methods or techniques used to estimate paternity misattribution rates, just titanium-reinforced convictions that <a href="http://www.australianmensrights.com/DNA_Paternity_Testing-Australia_NATA_Laboratories/DNA_Paternity_Testing_Laboratory_Companies_Australia.aspx">25%</a> to <a href="http://www.rense.com/general51/chsup.htm">30%</a> of children are being raised or supported by the “wrong” guy.</p>
<h2>Why does it matter?</h2>
<p>In the ever-dynamic game of sexual relations, the one factor that has always weighed decisively in the favour of womankind is the secure knowledge that she is the mother of her children. According to an old aphorism: “Maternity is a matter of fact, whereas paternity is a matter of opinion.” At least it used to be.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/46404/original/g48s93p7-1397532875.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paternity testing now much easier and cheaper.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fast-moving developments in molecular biology make paternity testing faster, cheaper and more accurate than ever before. Analysis of foetal DNA in the mother’s blood enable paternity assignment as early as <a href="http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/science-scope/new-paternity-test-pinpoints-father-8-weeks-into-pregnancy/">eight weeks</a> into a pregnancy.</p>
<p>Interweaving strands of evolutionary research suggests that paternity confidence forms part of the glue bonding men to their children and to the women who bore them. Undermine that confidence and men invest less readily in the subsistence and safety of their families, and become more likely to abscond. </p>
<p>That is not to say that all men are calculating Darwinian cynics. Many men make magnificent fathers to children that do not bear their DNA. But men get immoderately touchy about paternity. Insecurity over paternity has tectonically shaped much that is <a href="https://theconversation.com/shutting-that-whole-thing-down-todd-akin-rape-pregnancy-and-abortion-8989">least admirable</a> about male behaviour and <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-name-of-the-father-the-links-between-religion-and-paternity-7516">twisted societies</a>. </p>
<p>But knowledge about paternity can be empowering. It can reassure an uncertain father. It can vindicate an impugned mother or assist her in a paternity suit. And it can help a child understand who they are and where they come from. </p>
<h2>What’s the answer?</h2>
<p>So how many children are sired by someone other than “Dad”?</p>
<p>Population-wide random-sample DNA testing remains financially and ethically unviable. But to understand some of the behaviours that might lead to paternity misattribution, the SBS documentary producers commissioned Roy Morgan Research to poll samples of Australian and American women.</p>
<p>They asked a number of questions including whether they had conceived a child at a time when they had multiple sexual partners? I was surprised that no more than 2% of women admitted to this.</p>
<p>That suggests a low rate of misattributed paternity; but note the data are presented per woman, not per child. The poll does suggest that mating with multiple men around the time of conception is neither rampant nor pathologically rare.</p>
<p>These results marry comfortably with DNA estimates of misattributed paternity from samples that cross a broad range of societies which suggest the rate is <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/06/the-paternity-myth-the-rarity-of-cuckoldry">between 1% and 3%</a>, and with Prof Gilding’s estimate of <a href="http://inside.org.au/the-fatherhood-myth/">between 0.7% and 2%</a>.</p>
<p>The number of children whose biological father isn’t their social dad is probably far smaller than you’ve been led to believe, although the 30% figure seems to be a zombie-statistic that refuses to die. </p>
<p>But even a 1% rate of misattributed paternity still adds up to millions of individual children, world-wide, each part of an interesting, sometimes tenuous and often heart-breaking story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Brooks receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He consulted, without remuneration, with the production company (Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder) on the design of the paternity poll and the content of the show, and appears in the program mentioned here. </span></em></p>How confident are you that the man you call dad is really your biological father? If you believe some of the most commonly-quoted figures, you could be forgiven for not being very confident at all. But…Rob Brooks, Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Academic Lead of UNSW's Grand Challenges Program, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.