Sometimes, it’s best to hold your peace forever
DNA testing: not always a great idea
One day I might understand why some women just can’t keep their mouths shut.
God alone knows how many people have lived and died over the millennia thinking that a man was their father who had no biological connection to them at all.
Some men have even been known to do the decent thing: raise children they knew or suspected were not their own, having drawn a firm line under that knowledge or suspicion and telling themselves that the children were theirs.
It wasn’t always hypocrisy. Some of them would have reached the proper moral conclusion that no child is to blame for its mother’s deceit, and that if the child is to be happy, then the mother is to be truly forgiven, the matter forgotten, and the child must never have reason to suspect the truth. The alternative is a train-wreck that ruins lives needlessly.
Men raising children who were not their own while believing that they were has always been not just a possibility but a common reality. That’s precisely why the wives of kings, princes and aristocrats, who had titles, lineage and inheritance to safeguard, were closely watched.
It wasn’t to protect their virtue and honour for its own sake.
It wasn’t because of sexual jealousy; these were most often dynastic marriages in which sexual interest, still less love, rarely featured.
It was to ensure that they did not get pregnant by a man other than their husband, with the result that a child would be raised as a prince or a duke who wasn’t descended from that line at all.
The other way round, it didn’t matter much. It was quite all right for men of princely or aristocratic lineage to keep mistresses or have adulterous flings.
The outcome wasn’t important. Bastards had no right to inherit their father’s titles and estates, so those were safe. If kings and aristocrats cared for their mistresses enough to acknowledge their bastard children, they might make provision for them – just as they made provision for their mothers.
Charles II, king of England, Scotland and Ireland, had no children by his wife, Catherine of Braganza, but acknowledged 12 children he had by a variety of mistresses. Because kings are able to create titles and append large estates to them, he did so for some of his sons.
The further down the social scale one went, the less important a woman’s sexual fidelity was. Where there was nothing to inherit – no land or titles or goods and chattels – lineage was unimportant.
Peasants and the urban poor regarded their children as a useful source of labour and put them to work, or they abandoned them in droves, in the streets, while the luckier ones – who were not lucky at all, really – ended up in vast and overcrowded orphanages.
The idea of childhood as a blessed time and of children being raised for the sheer pleasure of it was an alien one; children were either useful or they were a burden to be offloaded as soon as possible if their birth could not be avoided in the first place.
And so it didn’t really matter either way whether a woman of low birth had her husband’s babies or those of somebody else.
Strangely enough, we have come back to that in a way, after a brief detour through a recent chapter in history when husbands of all sorts, with or without titles and money, believed it immensely important to ensure that their wives bore only their biological children, for the simple reason that children had come to be valued as genetic extensions of the self.
But now things have changed again, as people marry later in life, struggle to conceive, and then resort in their many thousands to donor sperm, which means that husbands are, with their full knowledge and support, raising children which are biologically only the wife’s.
I thought about this when I read a law report yesterday about how the court had ordered a child’s birth certificate to be changed when it was proved through DNA testing that her mother’s husband was not her biological father.
As the bickering became protracted, her sibling was tested as well, and it turned out that he, too, was fathered by somebody other than his mother’s husband. And that’s what made me wonder why some women just can’t keep quiet.
If this woman didn’t spitefully blurt out the truth to her husband during a row or when their marriage was in trouble, then she must have done or said something else to make him suspicious, which would in turn have prompted him to seek DNA testing. Let’s put it this way: men don’t routinely have their children DNA-tested just in case, on the grounds that you never know so majtezwel.
Most of us reach middle adulthood having learned that honesty is not always the best policy, not when it means ruining people’s lives or undoing their sense of self.
There are some situations in which honesty is the worst policy of all – particularly when it has been preceded by the sort of dishonesty which led to the conception of two children in adultery. When that happens, it is best to remember the exhortation in the Christian marriage rite, which implicitly acknowledges that some things are best left unsaid if saying them will cause untold damage to lives: speak now…or forever hold your peace.
That woman should certainly have held hers. And perhaps, so should her husband.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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I wonder. In earlier times, women had almost absolute power of knowing who the father was and God knows how many went laughing to their graves at having deceived their husbands for decades. Now that that absolute prerogative no longer exists perhaps there has been a subtle shift in mentality. Before, paternity could be denied. Now it can be established and so the general feminine mindset has turned from the deep satisfaction of keeping such a secret to simply hurting another party.
[Daphne – Come on, Tim, honestly. No woman in that situation ever goes ‘laughing to the grave’. It’s nothing to laugh about. The only way that women in that situation are probably able to cope is by pretending it never happened, and – quite contrary to what you are saying – persuading even themselves that the child is the husband’s until, in their minds, the child actually is the husband’s. I don’t think you are able to read it from the woman’s perspective: for most women, once their child is born, that child comes first and its interests come before those of the husband (hence the saying that the children of lovers are orphans, which is perfectly true). With the exception of the stupid and the spiteful, women in that situation would do anything to protect the child’s interests, so they would hold their secret not to deceive the husband and laugh about it, but to protect the child from the inevitable harm of deprivation of a safe home environment and a father.]
Daphne, interesting article. A question, who do you think fathered Prince Harry? Nice guy, but not of the House of Windsor. Spitting image of a certain British army major. I don’t think he will deprived of a ‘safe home environment’, however, even his hair cuts are scooped up–no DNA possibility.
[Daphne – Case in point. His father clearly adores him.]
Which father, Daphne? I relate to the guy. Never had a prince named after me!
[Daphne – His proper father: the legal one who brought him up and loved him. He is not the eldest son, so it doesn’t matter.]
You would, of course, believe such a rumour, Purdie. No tin-foil required for gossip. But where’s the evidence?
Here’s another rumour, Purdie. Chew on this: http://www.infowars.com/obama-can-shut-down-internet-for-4-months-under-new-emergency-powers/
Reminds me of that song by Cher ‘He’ll never know; Anybody out there remembers it?
Reminds me of the song ‘All I wanna do is make love to you’.
So what you’re saying here is .. if a man’s wife is unfaithful and also ends up pregnant, the husband should never know. Furthermore, even if he does get to know, he should shut the hell up, raise the child and stay with that woman anyway.
Like hell I would. Raising a family is already a serious and important challenge in its own right. Facing that challenge with the knowledge that my wife was unfaithful to the very point that she irresponsibly got pregnant is not something I would stand for.
[Daphne – I gather your problem is the thought of your wife having sex with another man, and not the child as such. You’re not alone: that’s why so many women whose husbands have a low sperm count or are infertile are made to go through the extreme physical trials of IVF with donor sperm, when commonsense dictates that if the child is not going to be biologically the husband’s anyway, then the woman might as well pick her day carefully and have sex with somebody else. But here’s the thing: men can overcome the mental obstacle of a wife having a child by donor sperm, but if she said ‘Look, to hell with this – why don’t we do it the natural way?’ they would go berserk. Incidentally, just as many men have done the decent thing and raised children who are not theirs, so many men have forgiven their wife’s sexual transgressions and vice versa, many women have forgiven their husband’s. Who is most contemptuous of the value of marriage – the spouse who has an escapade, or the spouse who walks out and ends the marriage because s/he finds out about it?]
If any parent really has a child’s best interests in mind then the least they could do is to conceive that very child in the right circumstances.
[Daphne – Conceptions in adultery are rarely deliberate, Kurt. In fact, relatively few conceptions are deliberate, even in marriage. You have been derailed by these endless stories of people trying to have children in their 30s and failing. The reality is somewhat different. If it were not, there wouldn’t be so many abortions in the developed world – and I’m speaking in general, not necessarily about Malta.]
I agree with you, Daph, but I believe most of the marriages that end up in a conflagration usually have a lot of repressed anger and unrealistic expectations transforming into spite and hurt.
Faithfulness would be an irrelevant side story in these tragedies. Sometimes it’s best to stop a moment and count one’s blessings instead of projecting idealised goals often inculcated by society obsessed with success, achievement, money etc…
Monogamous animals seem to enjoy their escapades as well. Sorry but I cannot remember the Attenborough documentary on some bird (finch?). I vaguely remember another piece about female penguins on their little island prostituting themselves. They seem to have gained the ire of the coupled females.
Then there’s the recent story of a gay penguin couple at a zoo who were stealing eggs so they can raise their family. The zoo keepers seem to have given them the eggs of inexperienced mothers resulting in a successful hatch. We’re not that different from other branches of the tree of life, after all.
They say variety is the spice of life. Recently I read a book by Sr. Emma Camilleri -a description of her experiences in Kenya as a missionary.
She tells the story of a married couple who could not have children because the husband was infertile. Yet they found a solution. They agreed with another man who took the role of the husband. The wife had a boy and both of them were really very happy. How about that, eh?
Sounds like a crazy idea to me rife with potential problems.
Just consider, is there any guarantee that the biological father will not want any involvement in the boy’s life at any point in the future?
[Daphne – Nothing in life comes with a guarantee. And here’s a bit of surprising biological information: men don’t find out they’ve made a woman pregnant unless she tells them. If she doesn’t tell them, they don’t know. This is not a novel concept: look at the latest statistics for births to single women in their late 30s in Britain. Single women, not women living in a relationship. They go out, deliberately get pregnant, and have a last-chance child. Also, please get real: men do not chase women to acknowledge their children after a brief fling or a one-night stand. They run in the opposite direction and if approached by the woman, the response is one of two: 1. are you sure it was me? and 2. I’ll pay for an abortion.]
Will the husband ever really accept the child as his own?
[Daphne – You tell me. I’ve always wondered how that thing works with donor sperm. How do the men get their heads around it? What happens when there’s a dispute over discipline and the elephant sits in the room: HE’S NOT YOUR CHILD; HE’S MINE. I think even using donor sperm is a recipe for disaster in a relationship.]
Will not jealousy and spite ever rear their ugly heads during the inevitable marital arguments with potentially terrible consequences? How will the son react when he is old enough to understand how he came to be created? These are just a few that come to mind immediately and I have not even touched on legal issues.
[Daphne – Do you for a moment imagine that children in this situation are told of their origins? Of course not. They don’t have to be. The birth certificate lists the mother’s husband, because even the public registry doesn’t have to be told. Sometimes, not even immediately relatives are told. Do you honestly think all these legions of people having IVF are doing so using the husband’s sperm? Some of them are. Others are not.]
Incidentlally, how does Sr. Camilleri reconcile this behaviour with Catholic teaching that preaches a docile acceptance of one’s fate in such circumstances, with the only option of becoming a parent being adoption? Wasn’t this a clear case of adultery (albeit with the sole purpose of procreation)?
Was it justifiable morally because that area in Kenya is probably so poor that no IVF or anonymous sperm-donor options exist? If so, would not the church’s stand on IVF and sperm-donation also preclude such behavior in any case?
I am mystified how this case is quoted as a good example of a solution.
If I had to be helplessly infertile but still wished to have children I would prefer to take the adoption route rather than go through IVF or let my wife have sex with some other guy. Adopting a child is less stressful than IVF and it’s a win-win situation for both the parents and the adopted child. As a bonus, it also gives the parents a certain degree of choice.
[Daphne – Here we go again: the Maltese male-centric point of view, taking a decision from the husband’s standpoint while never for a moment considering the wife’s. You would be asking your wife to give up the chance of having her own child simply because it is you who are infertile, and assuming that it is less stressful for her to adopt than to go through IVF with donor sperm merely because it is less stressful for YOU. You may be surprised to find out that women who can have children prefer to have them, rather than adopting. And in all cases, they do like to have their point of view considered. I’m sorry to lay into you like this, but honestly, I can’t stand to hear another Maltese man going on about I, I, I, I, I, as though he is single and his other half is something he happened to pick up along the way, like a dog or a cat. I do agree with you about the lack of wisdom in using donor sperm in marriage, but not for your reasons. It’s a recipe for disaster. It creates unequal status between the parents, both of whom will always be aware that it is her child and not his. ]
Regarding the issue of accepting my wife having sex with another man, since it would mostly benefit her, in that the child would be biologically hers, I think I would probably accept on the condition that I also get the opportunity to have sex with another woman; just to be fair and square.
[Daphne – Honestly, how childish. No wonder marriages go down like skittles in Malta.]
Yes, and while you’re at it check the hours you both work, measure the water you both use to get washed, weigh the food you eat and count the hours you watch TV to make sure they are both equal … you know, just to be fair and square.
I rather think MS was replying tongue in cheek there Daphne. But perhaps not…
Very good point, Daphne.
I remember a furore in Italy some years back (the news had made it to the local newspapers) about one such case, where a husband agreed to his wife having IVF by donor. Once the baby was born and the husband was faced with another man’s child, he was unable to accept it and left his wife literally holding the baby.
So, the Court’s ruling established a change in the children’s birth certificate. What happens if the biological father does not want to ‘acknowledge’ his children? Will the children now have registered an ‘unknown’ as their father? It seems to me that such rulings are not always in the children’s best interest – a basic principle in family law.
This route of having sex with another person and then raising it up as your own is extremely risky. Doesn’t the “single” person (be it a man or a surrogate mother) have any rights and responsibilities over the child?
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. If a wife is infertile, can the husband impregnate another woman, and then be on his merry way? This “hostility” to raising another’s child isn’t exclusive to men.
[Daphne – It’s women who have to raise the child, despite ‘equality’.]
Women have to raise the child only if they assume they have to.
We don’t know for sure how the man got to know that his son is not his son. Maybe he just figured it out because he discovered he was infertile. If his wife did tell him, it was a really silly and useless thing to do which will unnecessarily wreck people’s lives.
I agree that fertile people shouldn’t be impeded from having children just because they have an infertile spouse. Maybe the man felt highly aggrieved more because she did it behind his back than the fact that she did it. I still think he should have been more understanding though knowing his condition. Presumably he has loved his children until now so why disown them all of a sudden? It sounds very immature.
I think mature couples can find a solution to such a problem without doing stuff behind each other’s backs. I think IVF, adoption and having sex with a third person are all good ways to tackle the issue if they can reach an agreement on one. I guess the key is making the infertile spouse feel somehow involved so that she or he would feel comfortable raising the child as his/her own. Maybe a threesome, maybe the infertile spouse would want the other to do it while she or he isn’t looking. Maybe together deciding who the surrogate mother or father will be. There are different ways of dealing with this. Obviously they have to have a strong relationship to take this kind of decision and they have to be mature and understanding about it. Failure to reach some kind of an agreement would lead to cases such as this one.
Dear Daphne Caruana Galizia,
I fully understand you have every right to choose what you publish on your website and since I’m sure you have better things to do, I’m sure you don’t generally give explanations as to why a comment isn’t published. That said, I’m wondering whether you can find a minute or two to write to me explaining why my last two comments were not published. This is out of curiosity more than anything else and it can also serve as a guide to any future comments I might decide to write.
May I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your blog. It makes for very interesting reading, creates good debates and you often express what more or less I tend to be thinking myself.
I’m looking forward to your reply. Thanks.
[Daphne – I was out. And when I returned, I wrote tomorrow’s column. Both comments are pending still.]
@Harry Purdie
I would have previously agreed with you but I’ve changed my mind after seeing these pics, seems like he does take after Prince Charles after all, check this out:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1289118/As-Prince-dresses-like-Diana-visit-minefield–Is-Harry-really-Mummys-Boy-just-like-Dad.html
The red hair is a ‘Spencer’ trait, no link with the Major.
Don’t understand your line of thought here, Daphne.
The couple can’t have kids because of the a low sperm count problem and rather than resort to a safe, well planned, professional environment at the doctor’s surgery, you call for women to have get pregnant by having it off with someone else? Call me the typical Maltese male – but I beg to differ.
[Daphne – I’m not calling for anything. I’m just pointing out that the donor sperm system is designed primarily to protect the husband’s ego. It’s certainly not designed to protect the wife. If you think it’s safe, you’re off your rocker. The process literally assaults the woman’s body, which is why there can be no more than two or three attempts. Women left to their own devices would simply find somebody to sleep with. The latest statistics – released a few days ago – show a phenomenal increase in the number of single British women giving birth in their late 30s. Do you think they’ve all found Mr Right at 38, by some amazing coincidence? No. They realsed they were never going to find him, that this is their last chance at getting pregnant, and took a pragmatic decision to conceive.]
The act of making love is wildly different from getting IVF for the simple reason that there is no emotion involved for IVF as there is for the former.
[Daphne – You’re very naive if you think that sex necessarily involves emotion.]
Yes, some may have a consensual emotionless fling for different reasons or sometimes without reason save for the pleasure of it, but this does not mean that all are of the same ilk and that the act in itself does not leave lasting emotions.
If my wife had any problem with her reproductive system, I could never get myself screwing someone else to have a child. If anything I would resort to using my sperm to be used with a surrogate mother. Love making is best savoured by the couple themselves.
[Daphne – That’s completely different. You wouldn’t be the one getting pregnant, giving birth, and being the primary carer. I’m always astonished when men make a direct equation between fatherhood and motherhood. The two are completely and utterly different. If you got somebody pregnant, you would never know unless she told you. You could live and die not knowing you had a child. Women cannot fail to know they have become mothers. The bond between a woman and her child is primeval. Between a father and his child the bond is entirely social. The man goes on trust: his woman presents him with a baby and tells him that it is his. It could just as well be anyone else’s, as we have seen.]
What I can never understand is: life is so easy for women – they just spread ’em (a little judiciously) and the world is theirs, and yet, all they seem to do is gripe about it and claim they’re discriminated against.