DNA Isn't All There Is To Reproducing

Twice in one day I've found myself considering the social impact of DNA on our ideas of fatherhood—earlier while reading an old essay by Richard Dawkins where he argues against a DNA database because it would inadvertently reveal how many fathers are mistaken about the genetic link to their child, and then by reading this New York Times Magazine feature on the way that paternity testing is doing just what Dawkins feared, creating social chaos. And causing people to rethink their understanding of what makes a father. Is it DNA or is it your presence in a child's life?

I'd argue that the escalating ability to process and read DNA is creating a fatal flaw in the public psyche, one where people are too quick to reduce human beings and relationships to what is programmed in your DNA. This has many ramifications beyond questions of paternity. Prioritizing DNA until you ignore the importance of environment has ramifications for health care, and can cause us to start ignoring the way that we can change outcomes for people through environment, without ever referencing their DNA. (For instance, a lot of the public falsely believes that IQ is inherent and probably genetic, but in fact it's highly malleable depending on nutrition and education.) But in terms of paternity, what's really interesting to me is not the way that DNA undermines our concepts of what makes a "father," but the subtle way it reinforces one of the greatest, longest-held social lies humanity has told itself, which is that men "create" children.

It shouldn't have been this way. The discovery of genetics put to rest one of the greatest self-flattering lies that men have told themselves for eons, which is that men are the seed and women are the soil, that men make the babies and women just nourish them. The conjoining of the sex cells subtly remade most of the public's understanding of sex and conception, except for a few Bible-thumping anti-choicers who will never be completely convinced. But for social reasons, most of us are unwilling to take the next step in believing the biological evidence in front of our eyes. We still round up and say that a child is "half" the father, reducing that child to its genetic code.

But the truth is that a baby is made up almost completely of her mother when she is born. The only thing the father contributes is half the code. The rest—the protein, the nutrients, the very fabric of the baby's body, and all the mitochondria—comes from the mother. (This is why biologists trace human lineage through the mothers, because you can trace it through mitochondria.) Of course, after birth, you generate your own tissues through your own eating, and so you get even further away from being made from your parents. We are a lot more than our DNA, and not just in the abstract, but in the brute physical reality of it. Add to that the fact that our DNA gets so thoroughly mixed up in a few generations that you can't rightly call it "yours" in any way, and the knee-jerk belief that a male obsession with paternity goes back to biology seems weak indeed.

No, the traditional male obsession with paternity has its roots in patriarchy and controlling women's bodies. Fundamentally, it's a justification for an unfair system. And now, in our more feminist era, we've re-utilized this obsession for the purpose of determining male responsibility to children and, to a lesser degree, to women. But is it really such a great idea to do that? On one hand, this way of thinking does mean that children receive more financial support and care than they might from men under another family system. But as this article shows, defining family lines according to DNA patterns instead of through relationships and love causes a whole mess of problems, and the actors involved in these confusing situations often feel unmoored. The fathers in this story, for instance, genuinely seem rattled because they love children they don't share DNA with. And they use terms like "biologically intact family," which has the uncomfortable implication that a man who impregnates a woman lays some sort of claim to her very biology.

Of course, the current system will continue because we don't have many other competing systems. But a girl can dream, can't she? A society that loosened its obsession with "biologically intact" families might end up being one where a child benefits from more, not fewer, adults in her life to look over her.

Tags: DNA, fatherhood

VIEW THIS CONVERSATION

Amanda Marcotte Amanda recently moved from her home state of Texas to Brooklyn, NY. She blogs at pandagon.net and rhrealitycheck.org.

Comments

...what about mom?

By: carrot | Sat, 11/28/2009 - 19:50

Seriously, where is the mother in all this? Why isn't it a crime to dupe a man so? The NYT article didn't fill me with rage against the patriarchy so much as it filled me with rage against the women who put these men--and their children--in such a situation. Mike, who must continue paying child support even though his ex-wife is now married to the child's biological father, has a right to be angry. He was betrayed and lied to, repeatedly, for years, and now the ex-wife is using him as a cash cow even though she is married to the biological father, who loves the child and does fatherly things with her (and presumably also has a job, since he was described as her coworker). If the ex-wife were kind, or even fair, she would allow him visitation with the daughter he was conned into loving, since the whole mess is her fault, WITHOUT having to contribute to her financial upkeep since she is in a stable two-parent home that presumably is not in dire financial straits. Instead, she is selfishly depriving Mike and his new wife of resources they may need to raise children of their own. Thanks, Mike's ex-wife, for being the kind of woman misogynists love to hate.

Please read a molecular biology text book, Amanda.

By: rudiger | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 19:11

Having re-read Amanda's post, I've come to the conclusion that she simply doesn't understand molecular biology (no great shame in that, but it can lead to some very silly ideas). DNA isn't just some little insignificant thing that parents give to their children, like a lego set. It encodes all of the information about how the macro-molecules (RNA, proteins, etc.) will be synthesized: it oultlines the entire functioning of the organism.

Saying "but what about nutrients, fabric of the baby's body, whatever" is just laughable -- there is no comparison between nutrients and DNA. (And no, proteins, except what is required to create the egg and such, do not come from the mother; they are synthesized in the child, from genes, contained in, yes you guessed correctly, the DNA, which comes from both parents.

Of course the mother has a greater connection with the child. We get it -- fathers are in second place. But Amanda condescendingly denies any biological contribution from the fathers. "Silly dears," she might as well say, "you actually think you have something to do with making babies." Well we do, and I don't think it surprising that the overwhelming majority of men care about whether they are the real fathers of the offspring purported to be theirs.

Sadly Wrong

By: rudiger | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 18:46

Saying that "The only thing the father contributes is half the code." is a bizarre statement, given that our genome (the vast majority of our hereditary genetic code) is the blueprint which gives rise to all of the other structure and function in our body. And saying that biologists trace heredity only through the mother is flat out wrong -- biologists recognize that (very nearly) half of our genome comes from each parent. Where paternal lineage is of interest, biologists use y-chromosome data, since this comes only from the father.

I have no idea why Amanda seems bent on denying any sort of male biological connection at all with children. She usually comes across as a thoughtful and incisive commentator. The fact is that male biological paternity is real, and should determine who is responsible for helping to support a child to adulthood. Condemning a cuckold to the double insult of being forced to support children which aren't his is simply unjust, and 'the best interests of the child,' the cliche that is always trotted out in these discussions, doesn't make it any more fair.

Rather than make a duped cuckold pay for children that aren't his, it would be fairer to simply pick a random man off of the street, and make him pay. He is equally related to the children, and hasn't already been victimized by infidelity, so at least the misfortune could be spread around. Or we could demand that the person who actually made the child with the mother pay -- that is to say, the real biological father.

Regarding adoption: the case of adoptive parents is in no way relevant to the discussion of duped cuckolds. Adoption is not predicated on deception. If a couple wishes to give the gift of parenthood then yes, they should be lauded and have full parental standing. But falling prey to deception should not be considered equivalent to this.

Haha, another "classic" article.

By: Mark | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 16:55

I am struck by how quickly you castigate others for lacking knowledge, but then proceed to rattle off a variety of strange "facts" that are entirely baseless.

If you're discounting the influences of genetic hereditability in such a sweeping manner, I have trouble taking you seriously as an individual. You've allowed your political/social ideology to dictate your understanding of science; ideological paradigms limit the understanding of natural world just as religion does. You can't even accept the usage of descriptive term "biologically intact" projecting your own loaded implications of "ownership" onto it.

Let's Play a Drinking Game!

By: Human Jai Alaig... | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 14:33

Get a crowd together, and then every time Amanda Marcotte writes an article that ISN'T dripping with anti-male invective (sorry, "anti-patriarchy invective"), do a shot. By the end of the night, wow, you'll have...the most sober group of people you'll ever find outside a Quaker meeting house.

So far, the evil male patriarchy systematically "devalues daughters" AND makes women hack away at their own vaginas to make them more aesthetically pleasing to us male overlords, the Catholic Church is waging a war on women in Mexico (it's not a war on women, it's a war on compassion with some female casualties, for the record), and the tech industry hates women and wants to turn any and all female management candidates into strippers, but thank God that women are in the world because not only are they better legislators than the man-trolls they serve with, they ALSO ride into battle on the trusty steed of feminism and prevent false rape claims! Sounds like once women like Amanda Marcotte get asexual reproduction figured out and eliminate men entirely, planet Earth will be one big happy gyno-topia!

Congratulations, Amanda...you're the other side of Rush Limbaugh's obnoxiously strident coin!

@megatza

By: rcwilliams83 | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 14:11

How many commenters read the article? I'm wondering whether Amanda read it!

The long and short of it is that if I had a comment on the Times article, I would have posted it on the Times website. Frankly, I think the Times article hit the right notes (as does KJ Dell'Antonia's DoubleX response, btw): treating the issues that are raised by non-biological paternity as being complicated and insoluble by quick-fixes, and treating the people whose lives have been affected thereby as people, and not as fodder for another tired assault on the patriarchy.

Amanda Marcotte, not the New York Times, is the one whose scientific naivete is on display over this issue, and who's trying to pass it off as political engagement and biological orthodoxy. The NYT largely eschews a discussion of males' evolutionary incentives because (like I keep saying) the gene-centric point of view is utterly irrelevant to the moral issue of what's best for the children. It's Marcotte who hitched her wagon to the star of biological reasoning, and to the extent that the science doesn't bear her out (or that she overstates findings that are still in dispute), this is the appropriate forum for exposing those errors.

Ok, but at any rate, we're

By: you know it is | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 12:57

Ok, but at any rate, we're all in agreement then that since biological fatherhood doesn't mean anything, and the father contributes nothing except some DNA which doesn't matter, then a man who fathers a child but has no interest in acting a father in an emotional sense should also bear no financial obligation?

Right?

How many commentors read the NYT article?

By: megatza | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 12:43

Reading through many of the comments left me wondering if anyone read the entirety (or any) of the NYT article to which Amanda is referring. I just finished reading it, and subsequently have progressed to the Double X posts about it. The original article has more to do with the psychological family ties that a nonbiological father has with his daughter. As a woman, I thank Amanda for pointing out that the gestation of a child is entirely our burden physically. But beyond DNA, there are emotional ramifications in the case of pregnancy to consider. Having the ex-wife marry the biological father in my mind would make me think that dual child support is required from both (if the nonbiological father still has contact), but that if the biological father has taken on the role of a father within the family, he should be required to support the child he helped produce financially.
As a third wave feminist, i firmly believe that while women can raise a child on their own (or a man can, too), a child will receive less stress if there are two parents, hetero or same-sex, to nurture the child emotionally but also financially.

While pondering these parenting thing, I wonder if....

By: janeslogins | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 12:43

While pondering these parenting thing, I wonder if, in the back of our minds, we should not keep an awareness that most animals use the male as a source of sperm and than kick them out. A few birds seem to be the conspicuous exception. Do humans really need to be an exception? I don't know. Just musing over the whole matter.

Nurtured.

By: 00Pisces | Tue, 11/24/2009 - 11:59

I really liked this article. It made me think about a person's physical identity and origin in a way I never had before. This line struck me as very interesting:The rest—the protein, the nutrients, the very fabric of the baby's body, and all the mitochondria—comes from the mother. While you went on to talk a bit more about mitochondria, it reminded me that it's important to consider the sheer physicality of pregnancy and reproduction, and how that burden is solely a woman's; whether a man is there to bring her food or not, she still must find a way to survive.

My step-father was a saving grace in my life, and I have a loving and attentive father. I'm really happy to see more discussions in the media about stability and the family unit, where the conclusion isn't always based on biology. The family issues that caused my own problems weren't about bloodlines, my parents' identities, or where I was spending the night. The erratic, unstable thread in my life was my mother's volatile personality. I personally believe that her wedding vows did provide me with a safe haven; she just had to give them to the right guy. I love my dad and wouldn't trade him for anything in the world, but it took three people to get me to adolescence and four to get me out of it. That's not counting the grandparents, aunts, uncles and "aunts" and "uncles" who babysat, took me camping, lent me books, and otherwise made sure that they had their say in making a person.