There is a very interesting article on a British study in today's HealthDay Reporter by Steven Reinberg.  It's entitled "Many Dads Unknowingly Raising Others' Kids."  There's also a Spanish-language article on the same subject from BBC Mundo, entitled "¿Y quién es el padre?"  When I read these articles, they got me thinking about a story my ex-wife once told me about her grandfather who lived next door to her when she was growing up in Junquito in Humacao.  It seems it was a New Year's Eve, now about 30 years ago, when at a large party her grandparents were throwing for family and friends got just a little bit out of hand.  What happened was one of the guests innocently mentioned that her grandfather's son Barney didn't look too much like him.  And because they were all drunk, my ex-wife's grandfather took one of those tools you use to cut sugar cane, walked over to his wife and tried to sever her head.  Happy New Year!
 
Now, I say it was because they were all drunk, and that may very well be true -- but then that wouldn't explain the 100 other times the police were called to that house when no one was drinking any booze.
 
It's just as crazy to try and kill someone cheating on you as it is letting some guy think for even one second that a child is his -- if someone were unsure.
 
Crazy to do to the guy, and HEARTLESS to do to the kid(s).
 
Anyway, I'm thinking to myself this morning as I am reading this study, that it really makes no difference if a child is someone's biological child or a child they believe is theirs.  What matters is that the child be loved and taken care of.
 
I'm sure that the approximately 80,000 single moms in Puerto Rico, for example, and the 200,000 children they are raising without the help of the "men" who supposedly help make them, DO NOT care whether they had a kind, loving, full-time dad in their lives that was their biological father or a father tricked by a woman into believing they were the biological father.
 
I'm also sure that of those 80,000 single moms -- just about all those children are in fact the biological children of those "men."
 
I'm also sure that if men were able to give birth -- there would be probably be many tens of thousands of babies each year, in Puerto Rico alone, who weren't actually the mom's biological children -- if you know what I mean.
 
Women have it a lot easier.  Unless a baby is switched in the hospital -- every woman knows their baby is in fact theirs.
 
That's at least one minor conciliation and one MAJOR responsibility.
 
Just about EVERY kid will eventually learn and/or suspect that their father all these years was actually NOT their biological dad.  The longer it takes for this to be revealed -- the greater and deeper the hurt to the child and the dad and the family members.
 
Don't forget -- the truth can NEVER hurt anyone, unless it's a lie.
 
Here's the article .  .  .
 
«Many Dads Unknowingly Raising Others' Kids: Increase in paternity testing reveals 1 in 25 men raising children not their own, study says
 
Calling it a Pandora's Box with broad health implications, British researchers say genetic testing is informing about 4 percent of fathers that a child they are raising is not their own.
 
The implications are huge, the study authors noted, because such revelations often lead to divorce and increased mental health problems for both the man and woman involved, including the threat of violence by the man.
 
In addition, children whose lives are changed by this genetic information can struggle with low self-esteem, anxiety, and increased antisocial behavior, such as aggression.
 
And the problem will only grow more serious as genetic testing is used for more and more purposes, including screening for organ donations and checking for genetic-based diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis and heart disease, the researchers said. In addition, such testing is becoming more common in police investigations.
 
What's needed, the researchers said, is clearer guidance on when and how to disclose such information. They believe individual and family support services and counseling should become part of paternity-testing procedures.
 
"At the moment, people are often receiving the results of paternity testing through e-mail and post," said lead researcher Mark Bellis, a professor of public health at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.
 
"People are receiving what can be pretty dramatic information without being linked into health or counseling or support services," he added. "In addition, people are coming forward in more and more numbers each year to have paternity testing done."
 
The report appears in the August issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
 
The authors said they based their findings on international published scientific research and conference abstracts released between 1950 and 2004.
 
The study found that rates of "paternal discrepancy" range on average from less than 1 percent to as high as 30 percent, depending on the group of people looked at. For women, those who are younger, poorer or have multiple sex partners are more likely to bear a child who wasn't fathered by a long-time partner, the researchers said.
 
An average paternal discrepancy rate of 4 percent means about one in 25 families could be affected, the researchers said.
 
To determine the extent of the problem, Bellis and his colleagues collected data on increasing rates of paternity testing in North America and Europe. For example, in the United States, rates more than doubled to 310,490 between 1991 and 2001, they noted.
 
In Great Britain, about one-third of pregnancies are unplanned, and about one in five women in long-term relationships has had an extramarital affair, the researchers reported. These are similar to figures in other developed countries, they noted.
 
Yet there is a lack of support services to help people who find out about a parental discrepancy from a paternity test. "Finding out a child does not belong to them [the fathers] can have effects in terms of breakup of families and issues of safety and well-being of the child and women," Bellis said.
 
Bellis believes that giving counseling and support to these families needs to be considered. "We need to think about how that can be delivered," he said.
 
He added, "In genetic testing for health conditions, in police investigations, all these can identify discrepancies in family genetics, but there is no consideration if it is a good thing or a bad thing to let the families know about those [discrepancies]."
 
One expert thinks the study highlights the social downside of emerging technologies.
 
"Not surprisingly, the disclosure of information about unsuspected paternity comes with potentially devastating effects," said Dr. David L. Katz, an associate clinical professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.
 
"But does that mean such information should be concealed when it is a byproduct of testing for other reasons? When should paternity testing be permissible, and at the request of whom?" he added.
 
New knowledge means new power, but not necessarily the power to use it correctly, Katz said.
 
"Bellis and colleagues suggest that genetic testing has provided the power to lift a lid off Pandora's Box," he said. "As they rightly point out, it will take something other than power -- namely wisdom -- to respond productively, fairly and compassionately to all that comes flying out."

Visit the American Pregnancy Association website for answers to any and all of your questions»
 
If every child in Puerto Rico, for example, were tested at birth as to who their actual dad was -- the murder rate would quadruple.  That's not to say that so many women do not know who the actual fathers are -- it's just that it would take at least a year or two to enact such a law -- and a quadrupled murder rate is a sure thing a couple of years from now anyway -- whether a paternity law is enacted or not.  VIOLENT CRIME AND MURDER is NOT getting better -- RATHER WORSE -- and it's NOT going to get better until the ROOT PROBLEM is addressed in a BIG way and in a LOGICAL, SANE, COMMON-SENSE way.
 
These kids born to moms where the "dads" are not in the picture, have this habit of growing up and many times NOT contributing to society -- BUT RATHER RUINING SOCIETY for just about everyone -- INCLUDING THEMSELVES.
 
THAT'S THE ROOT PROBLEM -- that NO ONE wants to address in any BIG way or any way at all.  Happy New Decades To Come!
 
So guys, if when you are with your children in a supermarket or restaurant or anywhere else and people keep coming up to you asking for your advice on adoption or if you are a black or white guy married to an Asian woman and your kids look like a Menudo -- SOMETHING MAY NOT BE KOSHER -- but it's NEVER THE FAULT OF THE CHILD(REN)!

Well, that's all folks! Until next Friday.

Keith


For motivational speeches, conferences, media requests and other things such as eating disorders, you'll have to contact someone else. My only qualifications for writing a weekly column are based solely upon having a lot of free time, unlimited Internet access and very little else.