It’s no secret that few things send me on a “don’t get me started” rant faster than a useless scientific study.
Watching tax dollars being frittered away to study the impact of fish genitalia size on the lifespan of a guppy (I’m serious), makes no sense to me, especially when more serious and life affecting scientific research, like Morgan Spurloch’s Supersize Me, receives no grant money at all.
But every now and then, a study comes along that actually piques my interest and makes me reconsider my disdain for all doctorate bearing labrats. For when I read about this one, my disapproval quickly transferred from the scientists to the subjects of the study.
As reported by Reuters today, a study undertaken by the Centre for Public Health at the Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom, has shown that nearly 1 in every 25 men have been duped into thinking they have fathered the offspring they are raising or supporting.
Yes, that’s right, after dissecting and wading through data dating back FIFTY FOUR years, they have come to a very startling conclusion.
British men get screwed around on alot.
Now while their research is meant to draw attention to the potential serious complications of this “paternal discrepancy syndrome” - and it does have far reaching social and medical consequences - I think people should be taking a closer look at what it says about sex, commitment and betrayal.
Not to mention the groundbreaking revelation that alot of British men are getting laid.
Seriously, the statistic skeeved me out because of the obvious level of bed hopping going on in the global society - face it, this cannot just be a British phenomenon, we sex obsessed Americans can screw circles around every country in the world.
Personally, I cannot even fathom the level of hurt, hate and heartache my husband would experience were he to discover one of our children was not his. (Let me pause here to stress: THEY ALL ARE). None of those emotions would be directed at the child, mind you, as he could never stop loving or caring for any of them. Rather, it would forever damage, rape, pillage, destroy and incinerate what he and I have built together over the past 16 years: TRUST.
How any woman can cat around, get knocked up and then knowingly allow another man to think he had fathered their child, is beyond me. Not just because it is a financial betrayal with lifelong implications, but because we are talking about human beings here.
I realize I am the first to make fun of men as not being the most enlightened folk in the world and that they all run around with skidmarks in their underwear, but that does not mean they deserve to be lied to. In fact, in light of this 1 in 25 statistic, I would say women have just received a gigantic scarlet skidmark of shame to wear on their outer garments.
I would encourage any woman, who has swapped spit and other bodily secretions with more than one man, and then turns the stick blue, to come clean immediately about questionable paternity. Yes, I realize that telling the truth sets you up to get your ass kicked to the curb, but it also sets your ass up to be a decent human being.
I mean there are lies, and then there are LIES, and this one is an unforgivable doozy. Not only do you risk the medical implications of lying about half of a child’s genetic heredity, but you also deny the child of its true familial heritage.
I have a better idea. Shit or get off the pot in your relationships. If you are so dissatisfied or simply so horny that you feel compelled to drop trou for a cadre of men, cut the main man in your life loose first.
And look into some serious birth control, will ya?
Because no man deserves the heartache and betrayal of paternal discrepancy and no child ever deserves to have people question, “Who’s Yer Daddy?”
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