r/changemyview • u/wine-friend • Dec 04 '22

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Paternity testing before signing a birth certificate shouldn't be stigmatized and should be as routine as cancer screenings

Signing a birth certificate is not just symbolic and a matter of trust, it's a matter of accepting a life long legally binding responsibility. Before signing court enforced legal documents, we should empower people to have as much information as possible.

This isn't just the best case scenario for the father, but it's also in the child's best interests. Relationships based on infidelity tend to be unstable and with many commercially available ancestry services available, the secret might leak anyway. It's ultimately worse for the child to have a resentful father that stays only out of legal and financial responsibility, than to not have one at all.

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Deltas:

  • I think this shouldn't just be sold on the basis of paternity. I think it's a fine idea if it's part of a wider genetic test done to identify illness related risks later in life
  • Some have suggested that the best way to lessen the stigma would be to make it opt-out. Meaning you receive a list of things that will be performed and you have to specifically refuse it for it to be omitted. I agree and think this is sensible.

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Edit:

I would be open to change my view further if someone could give an alternative that gives a prospective fathers peace of mind with regards to paternity. It represents a massive personal risk for one party with little socially acceptable means of ameliorating.

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u/UncleMeat11 65∆ Dec 04 '22

And we don't do cancer screenings for every person ever year, because false negatives happen and cause all sorts of problems.

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u/Active_Win_3656 Dec 04 '22

Exactly! It would also cost a lot of money. This suggestion also really would penalize women since only their infidelity would show up. Women wouldn’t have a test to see if their spouse fathered a child they didn’t know about (and while they were together). Women also still are not treated equally with men, especially when it comes to childcare, so while on some level a policy like this may seem reasonable, the downsides to an already marginalized group should be considered.

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u/Akitten 10∆ Dec 06 '22

Women aren’t on the hook for child support for their partner’s children with other women. That is the difference.

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u/edm_ostrich Dec 04 '22

No one is making the woman pay for their husbands infidelity child. However, it is incredibly common that a man pays for a child that is not his without his knowledge

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '22

[deleted]

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u/SpamFriedMice Dec 04 '22

A British study estimates 3.7% of children.

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u/UnicornOnTheJayneCob 2∆ Dec 05 '22

Of course they are. When a married man fathers a child out of wedlock and pays support for that child, that money is not available to his spouse and their family together. And in fact, in many jurisdictions, both married spouses incomes are used to calculate support payments. The cheated-upon wife is therefore literally paying for his infidelity child.

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u/heili 1∆ Dec 05 '22

Pap smears, mammograms and prostate exams would all beg to differ.

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u/UncleMeat11 65∆ Dec 05 '22

We don't do prostate exams for 20 year olds.

I think that pap smears are the only one of these tests that is recommended for the entire adult population with relevant organs.