Who’s Your Daddy?

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/20/opinion/whos-your-daddy.html

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To the Editor:

“Fathered by Plumber? Probably an Urban Legend” (front page, April 9) reports that mistaken paternity is actually a very rare occurrence, despite what daytime television and high-profile cases (most recently that of the archbishop of Canterbury) would have us believe.

What is news is that this finding continues to make headlines. Multiple studies over the last decade have already shown that the misattribution of paternity is rare.

Histories of science routinely assert that DNA technology has made it possible for people to be certain about biological paternity for the first time in human history. But in fact the opposite seems to be true.

Rather than resolving paternal uncertainty, the multibillion-dollar biotech industry actually profits from doubt. After all, people will buy paternity tests only if they have reason to believe that the tests will reveal something they did not already know.

Popular media promotes paternal uncertainty as entertainment, and men’s rights groups call for expanded genetic testing to solve the “epidemic” of paternal misattribution.

Together, these forces have helped create the myth that many children do not know their fathers and that many fathers do not know their children. The belief persists not because it is biological truth but because it is a powerful, and profitable, social idea.

NARA MILANICH

New York

The writer, an associate professor of history at Barnard College, is writing a global history of paternity testing.