IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER...

“It is much easier to become a father than to be one.” - Kent Nerburn

I watched a current affairs program on the Greek cable channel today, which featured an interview with a medical geneticist. The message was simple but poignant. More and more people are presently requesting DNA paternity testing. In a testing centre in Athens, a couple of years ago, the paternity test requests were one or two a month, nowadays the statistics are an alarming one or two a day…

The doctor was appalled by this increase in such testing and in many cases he was reporting, the children (many as old as 6-7 years old) seemed to be aware of what exactly was being done and why they were in the testing centre. He was not making a judgment on modern mores, nor commenting on today’s “open” relationships, he had no criticism of the parents of such children. All he was drawing attention to was the irreparable damage being done to these children, who seemed to be innocent pawns on a chessboard where strange games of power and money were being played.

Underlying many of these disputed paternity cases was a maintenance payment or a child support payment. In others, a claim on a part of a family fortune was claimed, or a demand for a share of some property. In other cases, children were caught in protracted legal battles, custody cases and government welfare agencies or social department disputes.

We are living in an increasingly liberated society, one becoming more tolerant of a broader definition of “family” and “relationship”. That can be a good thing, but also it may be something that is not so good. How many children nowadays come from a family where there are complex relationships because of siblings and half-siblings from previous relationships of their parents?

We are living in a society where the rights and liberties of the individual are upheld as a first priority, where selfishness often is a predominating force. Where the good of the family, of the community or of society, is often dismissed as an unimportant consideration. How many children are there who live in single parent households (mostly with their mothers) and how many of these children do not have a father figure to provide support and nurture and a role model? How many children are there who have no father because they are the product of an in-vitro fertilisation, or of an “affair” or of a short-term relationship?

How many “week-end” fathers are there, taking the children to the park or a football game or a restaurant, but playing no role in the day to day bringing up of their child (sometimes, through no fault of their own?)? How many stepfathers are there who abuse the children of their partner emotionally, mentally, physically, sexually? How many fathers are there who abandon their children once they find out through a paternity test that they are not the biological father of the children they thought were their own?

“Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon;
Rest, rest, on mother's breast,
Father will come to thee soon;
Father will come to his babe in the best,
Silver sails all out of the west,
Under the silver moon:
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep…”

Alfred Lord Tennyson

What do you think? Are fathers a threatened species?