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How often are children genetically unrelated to their presumed fathers?
- ggm 2y agoNurture not nature!
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoUnless it culture wide problematic nurture! Then silence and passing the ball back to nature! Oh, and unrealistic, idealising nurture due to unwillingness to look at nature. That nurtures problems, we do not deal with rational, instead we accumulate problems and shift the blame, until the buildup throws society on the side. Oh, and if invisible nature, we pretend to nurture, then blame the failings on the individual. Yes, im fun at parties.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoAlso, we cant have the meta, as in we cant have a discussion on our inabilities, retardations and the handicaps they inflict and how that influences the options and realistic futures humanity can have. No, its startrek or bust- a gentle approach, with self-control enhanced by gadgetry and low risk be damned.
- alchemist1e9 2y agoI don’t read anything in the article related to nurture vs nature. Can you explain why you mention it?
- ggm 2y agodon't you think the rate of non-family births plays to the balance between acquired and inherited aspects of existence?
- alchemist1e9 2y agobut the article has nothing to do with traits and never discussed anything related to acquired or inherited. the comment just seems unconnected to me. Also the conclusion is that the rate of unrelated children is remarkably low not high.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoIf it's not the father's choice, it's like stating raped women should always raise the kid.
- leugim 2y agoSummary (in Europe): 1%
- harperlee 2y agoIn the last 500 years.
- tetris11 2y agoBack when I used to do pedigree analysis, the general rule of thumb was 1/10 chance that the father wasn't what was stated in the pedigree. You would run the analysis and get absolute nonsense results, and then you'd swap a father for an uncle, or a mother for her daughter, and the alleles would all just suddenly line up. We would never tell the families, and since the pedigrees were anonymized before being published there was no need to. Some secrets are just best kept buried.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoSame with blood types. Clearly lots of people never listen in biology class.
- pandemic_region 2y agoAs one of the referred 'lots', care to explain a bit more?
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoSome combinations are impossible. E.G: both biological parents cannot be A and the kids be AB
- jorvi 2y agoWhat is nuts is that in some countries, its illegal for the father to unilaterally have a paternity test done. I know for France that if you have it done unilaterally and thus illegally you are still on the hook for child support until a legal test is done, which either the mother needs to agree to or needs to be agreed on by the court. IMO a paternity test should just be mandated to be done immediately at birth (or earlier even?). It avoids the tinge of distrust of "oh wow, how could you even think that of me?!" from the mother, whilst giving certainty to the man.
- gmane 2y agoI disagree here. Blood tests done at birth are done specifically for the benefit of the child (and with minimal risk to the child). A paternity test has no benefit for the child (it doesn't tell you who the father is, simply who the father isn't) and a ~1% risk of harm to the child. The period immediately after birth is one of the most dangerous times for children, and we (should) specifically take action to protect them in a moment where they are at risk and have no agency. A paternity test would increase the risk of harm to the child (either through violence, deprivation, or neglect). We didn't even get to the subject of possible violence against the mother either, which is likely.
- mg794613 2y agoThe language usage is a bit weird. It seems that caring at all if your child is yours is "obsession" and "fixation". Quite judgemental word choice for something rather normal.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago[flagged]
- cess11 2y agoWhat's "normal" for you isn't for others. Compared to these others those labels are quite appropriate.
- BiteCode_dev 2y agoThe selfish gene states quite well why this happens and is normal in the statistical sense. I don't think a lot of people today would challenge dawkins on that.
- cess11 2y agoAre you kidding? It's a political pamphlet, many scientists have aimed criticism at it.
- cess11 2y agoIn my headcanon the downvotes are from dudes that read The Selfish Gene in high school and got some feeling of epiphany, and now did a bit of web searching that angered them. Dawkins is a radical genetic reductionist, this book is his defense of this position. In the face of criticism he has moved on from the conclusions he presents in it towards a focus on phenotype reminiscent of older biological paradigms. One obvious critique is that if he was correct in the book, evolution would have played out much differently and most likely not moved on from single cell organisms. This is why his loyalists over time has moved from studying animals to find something that seems like evidence to preserve the conclusions, to studying bacteria. Another is that the most well known expression of genetic selfishness in humans would be cancer, which is clearly not the dominant mode of cellular reproduction. There are more cleanly scientific objections, famously locusts, i.e. epigenetics. He wrote at a time when the last remnants of aristotelian views of animals withered away, leaving an ideological vacuum. Previously the entire animal was thought to be the evolutionary atom, similar to an aristotelian form, against which Dawkins proposed his radical genetic reductionism. The main reason that the book has been as influential as it has, is that it is aimed at laypeople and cherrypicks and frames things to drive home a political view that is much easier to understand and accept than the mess we're actually in.
- JackMorgan 2y agoQuick numbers: - Belgium and Netherlands: ~1.5% - 19th century European city dwellers: ~6% - Certain tribes in Namibia with cultural multiple partners: ~48% City dwelling was always higher than rural in Western cultures.
- cm2187 2y agoI remember a surgeon who does a lot of transplantation (and where they have to check DNA for compatibility), telling me that it also depends a lot on which child. The first child is almost always from the father. Second child a bit less. Third child is where there is a significant percentage of outside interference. To the point that they discourage same family donors as it creates a lot of drama.
- tycho-newman 2y agoThere's lots of variations across cultures. You could make the (lazy) generalization that men do not want to invest in propagating genes belonging to another man. But then the Himba have a high level of extra-pair paternity (EPP). How does this make sense evolutionarily? Maybe a high level of EPP means that more members of the community share your genes? Which gives you an incentive to care for offspring that are fathered by another man (you and that man may share genes to begin with). Maybe this reduces violence between individuals, which in turn reduces violence more socially? A more peaceful kinship group may have a competitive evolutionary advantage in the long term. Given the levels of gendered and sexual violence I've seen in many societies, I can see several advantages to the Himba way. Of course I'm just speculating.
- cassepipe 2y agoI am.wondering though, would a more kinship based society be less tolerant ofotherness/outgroup ?
- rachofsunshine 2y agoSometimes it helps to just remember that we're talking about people. Like most people, Himba men mostly adopt the norms of their culture, and structure the way they think about the world through that lens. For a Himba man, it is normal to love children that were born via another father. Half of them were raised by fathers who were not their own bio-parents! It doesn't represent a threat to his masculinity, because his own father and every man he knows in his social groups has children this way, too. He never expected otherwise. And it doesn't even reduce his number of offspring, because he's having extra-pair children with other women, too. In the west, on the other hand, the offense in cases of "extra-pair paternity" (to use the article's term) is not usually about genetics. It's a social violation. It offends the husband because his wife has broken an implicit or explicit promise of exclusivity. He can't go have kids himself outside the pair without committing another social violation. It's not normal or accepted in his world, so it makes cultural sense to react negatively to it. You can ask why Western culture and Himba culture differ in how they think about these things, but then you're not really doing raw EvoPsych - you're doing cultural anthropology.
- bitshiftfaced 2y ago> Even in Europe, people regularly make decisions that belie the view that paternity and parenting is primarily a biological investment, including caring for stepchildren, adoption, and fostering. “There’s no genetic kinship there, and people are investing resources in children who are not related to them at all,” Jobling says. “I’m a bit skeptical of applying these sociobiological ideas to human behavior. I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.” Here's a thought: maybe it has to do with consent?
- insane_dreamer 2y agowhy is this flagged?
- rurban 2y agoLarmuseau really has this Gino/Ariely vibe to me. Getting from the 10% estimation to the extremely conservative 1.5% figure and then finding the Namibian 48% counter example. Count me sceptical, sounds too good to be true
- KonradNRiker 2y ago[flagged]