by
Melinda Pillsbury-Foster
Fatherhood
is not about DNA.
Fatherhood
is about a relationship -- including the wiping of noses, hugs, long
nights of rocking, changing diapers and all forms of support including
financial. It is about being a good example to your child through
the acts that make up your life.
Fatherhood
is a lot like motherhood when practiced well.
Adoptive
parents know they are mothers and fathers without sharing any DNA with their children.
How
did we come to confuse the issues? Blame government indifference to
just outcomes for individuals.
Expect
no more justice on parental issues than you find in the tax code.
To those who wield power, reducing the call upon public money for
the support of single parent children has a higher priority than justice
or truth. Women using welfare services are forced to name the biological
"father". You can hear practically the judge thinking, "Well,
if he isn't the father of this one, he is the father of some other
kid on welfare."
That
is the first problem. The second is much deeper. At the foundation
of the morass is the fact we have mistakenly equated two human relationships
that are substantially different: motherhood and fatherhood.
There
is a saying that goes, "While you know who the mother is, the
father is always in doubt." This is not said to insult women
-- it is a logical extrapolation of the facts of biology.
Women
get pregnant. Their bodies respond to the baby within by making huge
changes. Hormones, impacted by the baby's presence, go into overdrive
-- causing emotional and physical changes in the mother-to-be. Her
breasts ready themselves for lactation as her body prepares for the
stresses of birth. We see pregnancy. In Norse legend, laboring women
were counted as warriors.
Mothering
is also a cultural role, but it has always primarily been a biological
role that is complex and consuming. A new mother may be inept at the
realities of caring for her baby, but nature has prepared her for
that role as well as it can with all of its evolutionary wisdom. On
this primary biological reality is based the survival of our species.
Fatherhood
is cultural, a late adaptation not shared with other primates. Men
do not experience hormonal changes. They do not give birth; they become
fathers by simply being fathers as they see that role practiced around
them, especially through their own life examples. Fatherhood is therefore
practiced differently in various cultures while motherhood is a human
universal. The Madonna and Child speak to all humankind.
Nature
provides no kick-start for the process and exacts no essential physical
or psychological payment from men. Their costs are all cultural. Sperm,
the means of DNA transmission, are source so worthless that men have
to pay to give it away in most cases. Given the number of abortions
today, some might call it toxic waste. Recipients may even expect
it to be delivered with various frills, for instance dinner and a
movie.
Which
is no comfort at all to men paying support for children they have
never seen and with whom they have no biological relationship. They
are not fathers in either sense.
And
if the question of DNA testing were only to relieve them of an unjust
burden justice would be simple.
We
now have access to a technology that has enabled us to document the
genetic aspect of all relationships. But the uses we are making of
that technology tells more about the inconsistencies and injustices
of our past than it does about what we need to do to create a better
future for ourselves and our children.
Some
few women are probably lying. Most women in this situation are just
mistaken. Our best bet may be wrong in any specific case.
But
that is not the issue.
In
some cases men undertake a fatherhood role in the life of a child
assuming they share DNA. In some number of cases they might have assumed
that role anyway. Babies are enchantingly attractive and being a father
is an honored role in our culture. Babies come with mothers who can
also be wives and lovers. For whatever reason, men become fathers.
Fatherhood should be a relationship, freely entered into and responsibly
carried out, as all relationships should be founded on choice and
not coercion, truth and not lies.
But
a history of hugs, wiped tears and years of cherishing cannot be cancelled
by any test. Fatherhood is not made by biology but through love and
human honor.
DNA
testing has made available to us a powerful tool for justice. Men
who have not become fathers should not be forced to support children
with whom they do no share DNA. But fathers, men who have seen their
love reflected in the eyes of a child, do not abandon their child
because that would be an unpardonable breech of trust.
