Misattributed Paternity or Cuckoldry rates

[Angela]

See:
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/24/the-cuckoldry-rate-in-complex-agricultural-societies-is-probably-1/

I'm a bit ambivalent about his conclusions.

This is the Dutch paper being discussed.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.23046/abstract

Do I believe that it was one or a couple of percent per generation in western Europe traditionally? Yes, I do. The penalties were just too severe for women for it to be otherwise, and they didn't have the economic independence for it to be feasible.

However, I can't square this with recent adultery rates for women in industrialized countries, unless it has to do with birth control availability. Women may be using birth control for all occasions when they're not actively trying to get pregnant, presumably with their husbands.

 

[I1a3_Young]

See:
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/24/the-cuckoldry-rate-in-complex-agricultural-societies-is-probably-1/

I'm a bit ambivalent about his conclusions.

This is the Dutch paper being discussed.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.23046/abstract

Do I believe that it was one or a couple of percent per generation in western Europe traditionally? Yes, I do. The penalties were just too severe for women for it to be otherwise, and they didn't have the economic independence for it to be feasible.

However, I can't square this with recent adultery rates for women in industrialized countries, unless it has to do with birth control availability. Women may be using birth control for all occasions when they're not actively trying to get pregnant, presumably with their husbands.

Can the recent adultery rate be explained by an inverse of strong religious feelings? In the old times it seems like the fear of God who was always watching was a good motivator.

However, my readings on old log cabin culture in America tell of rampant out of wedlock pregnancies and shotgun weddings. A traveling pastor whose name escapes me bemoaned the fact that the backwoods Americans were almost always pregnant at age 15-16 and thus rushed into marriage. If that's true then the fear of God might not have been so prevalent.

Daniel Boone's wife had a child with his brother after he was gone for two years. His reply upon seeing the baby and asking about the father: "All in the name is one and the same."

 

[Angela]

Can the recent adultery rate be explained by an inverse of strong religious feelings? In the old times it seems like the fear of God who was always watching was a good motivator.

However, my readings on old log cabin culture in America tell of rampant out of wedlock pregnancies and shotgun weddings. A traveling pastor whose name escapes me bemoaned the fact that the backwoods Americans were almost always pregnant at age 15-16 and thus rushed into marriage. If that's true then the fear of God might not have been so prevalent.

Daniel Boone's wife had a child with his brother after he was gone for two years. His reply upon seeing the baby and asking about the father: "All in the name is one and the same."

I think religion is part of it, but familial teaching even more so. I was a lot more afraid of my father than of God in terms of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Still, easily available birth control methods are probably the biggest factor, imo, in the changing sexual behavior of women, that and economic emancipation.

On the other hand, I have a very extensive family tree, and it looks to me like there were definitely some seven month first babies.

That shouldn't be confused with promiscuity, however. I think the sexual dynamic, at least in Italy, was that if you were courting publicly, and the boy came to the home, you were as good as married anyway, and got more leeway. The boy really had no choice but to marry the girl if she got pregnant. Where was he going to go in most cases? His life would have been in the community and life would have been unbearable for him and his family if he didn't, that is if the girl's father and brothers left him alive. In some places in Italy the situation didn't arise, because the girls literally couldn't be alone with a boy at all.

Once you were married, different factors would come into play, including extremely jealous and territorial husbands. Italy and other southern European countries like France and Spain until quite recently had laws about "crimes of passion", for example, where if you came upon your spouse and someone else "in the act", it was a defense to whatever mayhem you committed. That applied to women as well, I think.

This is all about European culture, however. It doesn't apply in some parts of the world.

 

[Jovialis]

I think religion is part of it, but familial teaching even more so. I was a lot more afraid of my father than of God in terms of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Still, easily available birth control methods are probably the biggest factor, imo, in the changing sexual behavior of women, that and economic emancipation.

On the other hand, I have a very extensive family tree, and it looks to me like there were definitely some seven month first babies.

That shouldn't be confused with promiscuity, however. I think the sexual dynamic, at least in Italy, was that if you were courting publicly, and the boy came to the home, you were as good as married anyway, and got more leeway. The boy really had no choice but to marry the girl if she got pregnant. Where was he going to go in most cases? His life would have been in the community and life would have been unbearable for him and his family if he didn't, that is if the girl's father and brothers left him alive. In some places in Italy the situation didn't arise, because the girls literally couldn't be alone with a boy at all.

Once you were married, different factors would come into play, including extremely jealous and territorial husbands. Italy and other southern European countries like France and Spain until quite recently had laws about "crimes of passion", for example, where if you came upon your spouse and someone else "in the act", it was a defense to whatever mayhem you committed. That applied to women as well, I think.

This is all about European culture, however. It doesn't apply in some parts of the world.

Here's an interesting study on Italian fertility rates, and contraception practices. Despite the reluctance of embracing modern contraceptive, and favoring coitus interruptus; the influence of religion, culture, and social norms have kept out-of-wedlock pregnancies very low compared to other European countries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4100579/

The title of this contribution recalls an expression by Shorter (1975) who envisioned that a “perfect contraceptive society” would be accomplished through means of a “second sexual revolution” and the diffusion of effective contraceptive methods. Italy, however, represents an unexpected and in some ways paradoxical outcome in terms of fertility control. The drop to one of the lowest fertility rates in the world was accomplished despite the persistent use of “non-technological”1 methods. Although the use of technological methods has recently started to rise among younger cohorts (especially single women), among Italian women in couples there remains a clear delay with respect to northern Europe and a reluctance to abandon non-technological methods such as coitus interruptus and natural methods2. In addition, births out-of-wedlock are uncommon in Italy (in 2006 only 15% of births) compared to many other European countries (e.g. 47% in Denmark, 44% in Britain). We investigate this puzzle through an anthropological demographic lens, using data derived from a large ethnographic research project conducted in Bologna, Cagliari, Padua, and Naples.

In a country where out-of-wedlock births are not common and a significant proportion of women in couples use non-technological methods, what factors drive women’s fertility intentions and the planning of births? In the Italian context, the latter seems to take on particular meanings associated not only with the importance of responsible choice and procrastination, but also with the morality of contraceptive behavior that leaves open the possibility of conception. Of no less importance to contraceptive choices is a way of thinking linked to social class, and to notions that women must protect and preserve their bodies and fertility from a multitude of risks. The use of “natural” contraceptive methods is one way to do this. Surprisingly, such methods are not defined as “traditional” by those who use them, but are instead perceived as markers of a “modern” and informed middle class.

We build on a growing literature that challenges a direct relationship between a decline in birth rates and a change in family values towards more “modern” and secular forms, problematizing a linear and consistent path from “traditional” to “modern” and “western” values. Ethnographic investigations of reproduction in the Western world have shown how notions such as “modernity” take on specific meanings in different contexts, and are often of an ambivalent and complex nature (Strathern 1992, 2005; Edwards et al., 1993; Bledsoe 1996; Gribaldo 2005; Di Silvio 2008). Santow and Bracher (1999), for example, point to the diminution in family-size among southern Europeans living in Australia during the 1970s and 1980s which occurred despite the persistence of “traditional” family values. “The demographer’s flow chart, with an arrow leading from a box called ‘values’ to a box called ‘fertility,’ is a gross over-simplification if not, in some cases, simply wrong” write Santow and Bracher (1999: 70). An anthropological approach allows for a recomposition of the conceptual divide often created between purely “cultural” elements on the one hand, and actual reproductive behavior on the other.

The main theoretical argument advanced in this article is that in the Italian case, the use of non-technological methods among women in couples is shaped by a variety of cultural forces such as individuals’ beliefs about health and sex, social models behind choices to have children, notions of “planning” and “decision-making,” Catholic culture, and links binding reproduction to conceptions of belonging to the “modern” middle class. If the informants interviewed refuse notions of planning and choice, preferring instead those of desire (if ambiguous) and destiny (if procrastinated), then it is not surprising that non-technological methods make sense in a decisional space open to “modernity”. More broadly, the decisional space relative to fertility cannot be separated from larger socio-economic questions, gender inequality, and political policies which today characterize Italy and the Italian family (Barbagli and Saraceno 1997; Bernardi 1999; Saraceno 1994). Following the lead of Greenhalgh (1995:13) this analysis is therefore set within [Italian] “culture and the political economy of reproduction”. This approach allows us to reframe the problem of contraceptive choices in a way that does not define them as “irrational”. It also embraces an examination of contraceptive choices that is embedded in the interaction of political, economic, and cultural processes. The goal is to resist “the tendency of economic accounts to abstract decisions concerning fertility from issues of health, the body, concepts of personhood,” and the “continuously changing process of culture” (Carter 1998:262; Kertzer 1997:152).

 

[Angela]

Here's an interesting study on Italian fertility rates, and contraception practices. Despite the reluctance of embracing modern contraceptive, and favoring coitus interruptus; the influence of religion, culture, and social norms have kept out-of-wedlock pregnancies very low compared to other European countries.

Going by my own family and the towns with which I'm familiar, among us most or perhaps none of it has anything whatsoever to do with religious teachings about birth control. People are remarkably comfortable ignoring the Vatican's prescriptions about sexual behavior and seem to have been even before the last sixty or so years, in times when "modern" birth control, pills and devices both, were actually not available. Italy, or at least my parts of Italy, were nothing like Ireland in that regard. My mother went to Mass a couple of times a week and was very devout. However, when the Pope doubled down on "artificial" birth control, her opinion was that if the Church wanted people to have these big families they should pay to support them.

So, family size even pre-war was going down rapidly. My maternal grandparents only had three children. Two was actually already the norm. By the early post war years, one was the norm. A lot of it had to do with the fact that as economic advancement became more possible, couples didn't want to jeopardize their own prosperity and the future of the children they did have by having a dozen of them. Italians on the whole, in my experience, contrary to stereotype, are not very impulsive when it comes to family matters, and they're great savers. They're practical. They also exhibit, imo, a lot of concern for the conditions in which their children would live, and wanted to provide them with the maximum possible in terms of training or education. Indeed, I think Italian children are quite spoiled in that way, including my own.

Every culture is different. Ireland is a perfect example, where until very recently big families were still the norm. A different attitude toward religion is probably a part of it, but, on the other hand, the "natural" methods permitted by the church were apparently used and are used in Italy to some extent even today, so I don't quite understand the dynamic. Something else must have been at play.

 

[Jovialis]

Going by my own family and the towns with which I'm familiar, among us most or perhaps none of it has anything whatsoever to do with religious teachings about birth control. People are remarkably comfortable ignoring the Vatican's prescriptions about sexual behavior and seem to have been even before the last sixty or so years, in times when "modern" birth control, pills and devices both, were actually not available. Italy, or at least my parts of Italy, were nothing like Ireland in that regard. My mother went to Mass a couple of times a week and was very devout. However, when the Pope doubled down on "artificial" birth control, her opinion was that if the Church wanted people to have these big families they should pay to support them.

So, family size even pre-war was going down rapidly. My maternal grandparents only had three children. Two was actually already the norm. By the early post war years, one was the norm. A lot of it had to do with the fact that as economic advancement became more possible, couples didn't want to jeopardize their own prosperity and the future of the children they did have by having a dozen of them. Italians on the whole, in my experience, contrary to stereotype, are not very impulsive when it comes to family matters, and they're great savers. They're practical. They also exhibit, imo, a lot of concern for the conditions in which their children would live, and wanted to provide them with the maximum possible in terms of training or education. Indeed, I think Italian children are quite spoiled in that way, including my own.

Every culture is different. Ireland is a perfect example, where until very recently big families were still the norm. A different attitude toward religion is probably a part of it, but, on the other hand, the "natural" methods permitted by the church were apparently used and are used in Italy to some extent even today, so I don't quite understand the dynamic. Something else must have been at play.

I think only my great-grandmother on my mother’s side was particularly a devout catholic. She would go to church every Sunday, and I’d see her praying with her rosary beads from time to time. The rest of my family were pretty much catholic-in-name-only. Rarely did we ever go to church other than for weddings, funerals, first holy communions, confirmations, and baptisms. My grandfather, on my Mom’s side was pretty much an atheist; he saw the church as greedy. I did go to catholic school for some years. I recall the nun asked if we all went to church on Sunday, and I told them my family didn’t. I mentioned this to my family, and they were really furious with me; and told me, “Don’t tell anyone our business, especially them!”

We did have big families though, I’m one of four, myself. We were only supposed to be three, but my mom ended up having twins. Nevertheless, we were always taught to save money, and to be frugal; save to buy property; the value of education.

When it comes to paternal legitimacy, and out-of-wedlock marriages; I think a lot of it has to do with a cultural sense of honor. Not one of my extended family members ever had a child out of wedlock. I think the social stigma and fear of being ostracized from the family is too big of a burden to bear. Not to mention, the fear of how the father would react, like you said. Even fearing how the mother would react too.

 

[Wheal]

My grandmother (in-law) was the most down to earth woman I had ever met. Her comment to a friend who was complaining about an out-of-wedlock grandbaby was "Ach, so you think we didn't raise our skirts back then?)

 

[Sennevini]

There were (and are) two types: (1) an unmarried woman who gets an illegitimate child; this is the most clear one, visible in baptismal records. (2) a married woman who gets a child of another man than her own but who is just recorded as a legitimate child; this last one is frustrating for us researchers. Of course for every woman there is a man adultering.
I know of one story I came upon in the early 1700s in Holland, a sister of an ancestor got an illegitimate child; she was ashamed, because first, she gave up a wrong name of the father. Later, when the church examinated her child, she let it drop on the stone floor. The child did not survive. After admitting she did it on purpose and called the right name of the father, she was convicted and hanged for murder. That's really a tragedy.

 

[LeBrok]

There were (and are) two types: (1) an unmarried woman who gets an illegitimate child; this is the most clear one, visible in baptismal records. (2) a married woman who gets a child of another man than her own but who is just recorded as a legitimate child; this last one is frustrating for us researchers. Of course for every woman there is a man adultering.
I know of one story I came upon in the early 1700s in Holland, a sister of an ancestor got an illegitimate child; she was ashamed, because first, she gave up a wrong name of the father. Later, when the church examinated her child, she let it drop on the stone floor. The child did not survive. After admitting she did it on purpose and called the right name of the father, she was convicted and hanged for murder. That's really a tragedy.

Ah, the good ol' days...

Few days ago I said to my kids, just get pregnant for god sake, and I will raise the kids. Otherwise I will never get grandchildren, lol. Almost like do it yourself technique.

 

[Angela]

Ah, the good ol' days...

Few days ago I said to my kids, just get pregnant for god sake, and I will raise the kids. Otherwise I will never get grandchildren, lol. Almost like do it yourself technique.

Another way in which we're different, my dear LeBrok. I told mine if they ever dare they're on their own!

Well, they wouldn't be, of course, and they knew that, but I really don't want to raise another set of children, just like I would never marry again. God, been there, done that, as they say.

You know, it just occurred to me. Let's say the figure is closer to the 2 to 3% of prior papers. So, perhaps 2 out of 100 families in the school my kids attended has a cuckoo in the nest. There were 250 in the graduating class. Not many, but still...

I don't understand how women can live with this every single day, deceiving their husbands like this, but that's another story.

In genealogical terms, that's 1-3% every generation, so when you're looking at trees as long as mine, back to the 1400-1500s, what does that do to any presumptions about things like tracing the y?

 

[Megalophias]

At 1% chance of false paternity you would have a 50-50 chance of having at least one false paternity in your line after 69 generations, about 2000 years. At 3% it would be 23 generations or about 700 years to reach that point.

Or after 500 years, an 84% chance of still having same line with 1% rate, 60% chance with 3% rate.

 

[Tomenable]

See:
https://gnxp.nofe.me/2017/09/24/the-cuckoldry-rate-in-complex-agricultural-societies-is-probably-1/

I'm a bit ambivalent about his conclusions.

This is the Dutch paper being discussed.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.23046/abstract

Do I believe that it was one or a couple of percent per generation in western Europe traditionally? Yes, I do. The penalties were just too severe for women for it to be otherwise, and they didn't have the economic independence for it to be feasible.

However, I can't square this with recent adultery rates for women in industrialized countries, unless it has to do with birth control availability. Women may be using birth control for all occasions when they're not actively trying to get pregnant, presumably with their husbands.

So do you agree that DNA paternity testing should be illegal in France?

I would never marry again. God, been there, done that, as they say.

What happened, why did that marriage fail? Was it his fault?

By the way, here is a very interesting You Tube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVRQqUgDRBevsDGOeE1DL3A/videos

 

[Tomenable]

I don't understand how women can live with this every single day, deceiving their husbands like this

Oh you underestimate women:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVRQqUgDRBevsDGOeE1DL3A

 

[Angela]

Tomenable: So do you agree that DNA paternity testing should be illegal in France?

If my memory serves me, paternal testing can be done in France, but only by court order. The goal is to protect the children and help keep families intact for their benefit.They presumably also don't want the state to have to help support these children. I understand the rationale, but on balance, no, I don't think I agree with it. If the husband is that suspicious, he either has good reason, or he's pathologically jealous, and in either case it's probably not a healthy environment for the child anyway.

What happened, why did that marriage fail? Was it his fault?

How incredibly presumptuous you are! I shouldn't answer at all, because you're being so incredibly rude and invading my privacy, but you're also so desperately in need of some life guidance, that I will.

I'll start with raising children, although you didn't mention it. To parent the way that I believe you should and the way I attempted to do requires an incredible amount of self-sacrifice. They have to come first, which affects every single aspect of your own life. It also requires an extreme amount of patience and forbearance, which I find I have less and less of with each passing year. That's not to mention the physical energy which is required. If my children wait until I'm really old and decrepit, I just wouldn't be up to raising them full time, although of course I would help to the limits of my ability if required.

In some ways, marriage is similar. It requires compromise, negotiation, patience, forbearance, forgiveness etc.. Of course, the rewards are tremendous: companionship, partnership, not to mention the obvious sexual satisfaction and fulfillment. When you're deeply in love, you're very willing to do all of this, or you should be. Perhaps it's a failure of imagination on my part, but I can't imagine falling madly in love again. To some degree that's a function of age, but it also would require a constellation of qualities that I doubt would be easy to find again. Nor can I imagine being willing to start the entire process of compromise, negotiation etc. all over again. I sincerely doubt I'd be able to have children again, either, one of the reasons for getting married in the first place. So, he could keep his place, I mine, we could have a very nice, companionable friendship and relationship, with benefits, but then he can go back to his place. I'm too stuck in my ways by now to change them for a new man. No need, either.

By the way, here is a very interesting You Tube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVRQqUgDRBevsDGOeE1DL3A/videos

The video is irrelevant to the topic, which is mis-attributed paternity. The conclusion of the research is that despite some men's paranoid fears, your children are, in almost all cases, your biological children.

Whether that's true in every culture, and whether, in very recent times, that means your wife isn't cheating on you is perhaps a different question.

Oh you underestimate women:

First of all, you really do seem to over-generalize about everything, including women. Not all women are the same, just as all men are not the same. From my experience, however, and from all the studies I've seen, the majority of women are faithful, more faithful than men, anyway. Plus, the reasons women cheat are, on average, different from the reasons for men, although that's another topic. You should be leery about drawing conclusions about male/female relationships, or anything, really, on the youtube videos of some random person.

 

[Sile]

Oh you underestimate women:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVRQqUgDRBevsDGOeE1DL3A

you know the old saying:
All is fair in love and war


There is a trend in Australia now that men who are about to be divorced call for DNA tests to determine if the children are his, ............this system will basically be the standard to determine the split of settlements.
Speaking to my second cousin a Barrister ( female ) , she always heads down this path..................as she says, it is easier to resolve the outcome if they are married than if they where only in a de-facto relationship