Carolyn Hax: Husband Demands Paternity Test Because It's Only Fair

[cereta]

Dear Carolyn: My husband and I are trying for a baby. We've had many talks about parenthood and are mostly on the same page.

One part leaves me cold: He says he needs paternity tests for all our kids. Every aspect of our relationship is solid and wonderful except for this. We've never cheated on each other, but when he tells me he wants the test I feel like he doesn't trust me. He says that's not the case.

He says it's not "fair" that a mother always knows the baby is hers while the father can never be 100 percent sure.

I'm completely in love with my husband and want to have a child with him, but this is ruining the entire experience for us. I'm pregnant and I haven't even told him yet. I know he would be ecstatic and would love to know, but I feel none of this really matters until the paternity test — and then he can finally love our child, with proof it's his.

Am I overreacting? Should I just let him have the paternity test?

— Pregnant

Pregnant: OMG.

No.

This is hideous on so many levels that I fear for you and the coming child.

“We’ve never cheated” is just a flat-out nonstarter. You can love and trust each other and feel sure, but you can’t KNOW what the other has (not) done. Not firsthand. Not provably. You just can’t.

I’m starting here because in making this unmakeable declaration, you’re carrying his water for him. Someone as dead certain as he is that the whole world is out to cheat him — do you know what that often means? That he himself is cheating. That’s his certainty. It’s called projection.

I obviously can’t say he is for sure but, wow, the pieces are in place. He’s got you declaring his innocence for him. Perfect cover for bad acts.

That’s before we get to the slack-jawed horror show of his treating you like a cheater from within a “solid” marriage, like cheating’s a given, no matter what you’ve actually done. This is call-an-attorney behavior. I am so sorry you’ll be doing this now while pregnant instead of before.

I don’t know, by the way, how you can be “completely” in love with someone who is “ruining the entire experience for us” — not accidentally, but by dark emotional design. That alone is call-a-therapist cognitive dissonance, but the whole package belongs in a therapist’s office, SOLO, not with him and his monstrous paranoia and control. ASAP.

And finally, though extraneously, after all the “Get out!” advice prior:

Do you think the world is fair? Do you believe you are owed fairness by higher powers, biology or humankind?

Someone who has such an emotional need to get what he thinks he should get, who is ticked off at nature for not guaranteeing him fairness, is not well. Seriously not well.

Yes, we all want fairness and go to some lengths to ask it of employers, friends, government, institutions. But this guy has a beef with nature. And he thinks he’s entitled to defame you just to get the upper hand on biology. It’s appalling, and I’m worried about you. Therapist, domestic abuse hotline (1-800-799-SAFE), online threat assessment (mosaicmethod.com). No way his control efforts stop here.

The column, originally published in 2021, was republished for the 25th anniversary of Carolyn Hax’s column. You can read the original comments here.

Comments

[lavendertook]

Carolyn Hax is just consistently the best.

[ashbet]

She really is!

Rarely, I’ll have a quibble with some aspect of a response, but Carolyn and Captain Awkward (and the much-missed Danny Lavery’s stint as Dear Prudence) are the best advice-givers out there.

[cereta]

Back in ye olde booju days on LJ, I used to find myself commenting on how many pixels were spent trying to make the fact that women did 95% of the work in creating a baby more fair to men, and I wish I could say this was the first time I'd seen something like an auto paternity test done at birth proposed. But those were hypotheticals being proposed for all births. This is a real pregnancy with a real woman and oh my GOD.

Carolyn does not bring up the rather large question of whether the LW should continue the pregnancy. I'm of mixed feelings of whether she should have or not. On the one hand, I get why she wouldn't: the complicated mix of personal and political might lead to everything else she said getting dismissed. But I do wish that we lived in a society where a woman asking herself if she wants to be tied to this man for at least 18 years was an askable question.

As in ye olde booju days, my answer would have been simple: you can have that paternity test as part of the divorce process.

[thornsilver]

My first thought was "He is totally cheating"...

[movingfinger]

I think he's cheating and he already has a kid somewhere!

[thornsilver]

👏

[p_cocincinus]

Either that or he has a history of cheating and someone who tried to convince him that he was the father of her baby. Or possibly both! It could always be both!

[haggis]

My daughter was born through donor egg IVF. She has none of my genes and no genetic connection to my extended family but she grew inside me and I am utterly, completely in love with her. My parents dote on her.

I cannot imagine any of us loving her less because of something so trivial as a difference in genes.

I get that IVF is a different situation and that being cheated on is horrible but I can't imagine punishing a baby for that, let alone refusing to show any interest until I could be sure the baby was genetically related.

What a f*cking awful man.

[haggis]

I can't find it but I am sure that I read a letter somewhere from a woman with a newborn whose husband demanded a paternity test and the first one gave a false negative. She described him screaming at her while she was in tears with her newborn in her arms. Later tests proved that the baby was his and he was shocked that she left him anyway.

[p_cocincinus]

My daughter was born through donor sperm IUI, and my husband and his extended family all adore her and have never expressed the slightest suggestion that she's not part of the family. (Very much the opposite - every time my MIL shares pictures of her on FB, there are people in her comments who say how much she looks like her grandmother or her cousin, with whom she shares exactly zero genes. My husband is trans and we find this screamingly hilarious.)

[ambyr]

the whole package belongs in a therapist’s office, SOLO, not with him and his monstrous paranoia and control

Say it louder for all the other advice columnists in the back!

[green_grrl]

I love that Carolyn went straight to projection, and from there to “protect yourself!”

She might have also asked what husband’s browsing habits are, because it sounds like he may have fallen down the manosphere sinkhole. But in the end, no real difference — he is not the man LW thought she married.

[castiron]

Dude, either you trust your wife or you don't. If you don't trust her, sure, get the paternity test, but then why are you trying to have a baby with her? If you do trust her, then why are you assuming the baby might not be yours?

[zana16]

Do not put this man’s name on the birth certificate. Make sure you do not have to give him any say in your child’s life without him having to fight for the privilege he was so cavalier about denigrating.

(I am a therapist and there have been so many clients that would have done much better not to put the biofather’s name on the certificate…)

[cereta]

I wonder if they're in one of the states in which if a man signs a birth certificate, he's on the hook for support regardless of biology.

[feast_of_regrets]

"I want a baby but only if it's my heir" sure is a vibe in some parts. This guy should get together with the wants one more chance for a son guy. Maybe at a men's rights convention or wherever it is that these types congregate.