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The French government claims that fatherhood is determined by society, and not biology. That is a very unscientific law.
by rjdagost 8y ago
The French government claims that fatherhood is determined by society, and not biology. That is a very unscientific law.
- jacobush 8y agoHow is it unscientific?
- oh_sigh 8y agoMaybe anti-scientific would be a better term. The law explicitly prevents people from finding out information about themselves that is encoded into every cell of their being.
- 1996 8y agoSuch laws just can't be made to work. Laws can't fight reality.
- darawk 8y agoThat's pretty clearly false. See: China, North Korea.
- 1996 8y agoAny artifical norm can try to fight reality for some time, but reality eventually ends up winning. You can't make something work by going against reality. You can pretend it will work by itself - for a while. This is usually called "delusion" and it takes a lot of resources to maintain it.
- speedplane 8y agoMany artificial norms have stuck around for millennia in the face of reality. Many don't want to wait around that long.
- mirimir 8y agoSure, but France is very close to other countries where DNA testing is legal. No?
- darawk 8y agoMy point is that the idea that you can't deny reality is false. Governments do it all the time, very successfully, for long periods of time. If the argument is "Western, liberal democracies cannot deny reality for an extended period of time", you're probably closer to making a correct statement, but still false. See: Gulf of Tonkin, Lusitania. You might say "But we know the truth of those incidents!", but of course, I can only cite examples for which we now know the truth. The ones for which we do not are, by definition, uncitable.
- mirimir 8y agoOK, sure. But France can't prevent DNA testing. And I wonder, what is it such an issue in France? I wonder if rates of misattributed paternity are higher there.
- darawk 8y agoI'm not sure. Seems like a cultural quirk. The French are somewhat infamously adulterous. So much so that Francois Hollande had a mistress that was super well known and didn't negatively impact him at all. So ya, maybe misattributed paternity is pretty common there.
- syshum 8y agoHow is it not?
- Randin 8y agoIt doesn't have to be scientific.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bayesian_horse 8y agoIt's not unscientific to define fatherhood in a way that doesn't involve genetic or copulative parentage.
- crumbshot 8y ago> The French government claims that fatherhood is determined by society It is. A child does not need to be genetically related to their parents. Adoption is a common practice.
- st26 8y agoAlthough with genetic diseases and child support, genealogy/paternity still matters.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gdfasfklshg 8y agoAdoption is one thing. Paternity fraud is another. Many men do not want to raise children that are not biologically theirs. The current system in France (and in many US states) forces men to raise or pay child support for children that are not biologically theirs. In some cases this even prevents men from being able to have or raise properly children of their own.
- paidleaf 8y agoLegal fatherhood is determined by law. Biological fatherhood is determined by science/genetics. Also, adoption isn't a common practice. Adoptions happen, but they are rare. Ideally, legal and biological fatherhood should be one and the same. That way you can find your genetic history for medical purposes and legal family tree for historical purposes. But tragically, in a few cases, legal and biological fathers are not the same.
- crumbshot 8y ago> Ideally [...] But tragically, This is of course a value judgement. I'm sure many adoptees would disagree with your assessment that their situation is tragic.
- paidleaf 8y ago> This is of course a value judgement. It's a biological and common sense judgment. > I'm sure many adoptees would disagree with your assessment that their situation is tragic. Ideally ( all things being equal ), adoptees would want to be with their "ideal" biological parents. Of course if the biological parents are dead, abusive or too poor to provide for them ( tragic ), then adoption is better than nothing. But I can't think of any child who wouldn't want to be with their biological parents all things being equal.
- vkou 8y agoWhat makes it unscientific? Because it makes it difficult to access information? There's a lot of information access to which is, by law, forbidden, or restricted.
- s_kilk 8y ago> That is a very unscientific law. And yours is an extraordinarily myopic view. It should be obvious that fatherhood is more about kinship bond, duty, and obligation than it is about genetics.
- ddorian43 8y agoHow do you feel paying child support for somebody's else kid ?
- baud147258 8y agoIt's a claim that the legal relationship between father and children will not rely on DNA relationship, but on the father acknowledging the child as his own.