Another Man's Child

Infidelity in marriage has spawned a social problem affecting spouses, parents, and children alike. This is the issue about a man unknowingly raising the child of another. The husband of a woman who bears a child during marriage is presumed to be the father of the same child. But what if the child is the product of the wife's affair with another man? Is it just to let the husband shoulder the heavy responsibility of fatherhood to a child who is not in any way biologically related to him?

Women who produce children out of extramarital affairs unknown to their spouses have the tendency to conceal the truth thinking that it presents the easy way out. Keeping quiet eliminates the need to confess, to engage in bitter confrontation, and to permanently destroy the marriage. Unless there is something that obviously gives rise to suspicions of fatherhood such as the genetic improbability of producing children of a different race, trusting husbands can actually go through life thinking that they are raising their own child when nothing can be farther from the truth.

Come to think of it, only men will typically find themselves in this situation. Women will always know their real children because they bore them unless in extreme circumstances where children have been purposely switched at birth. Even then, women have the advantage of really knowing whether they have conceived a child or not.

Paternity can be determined by laboratory testing but this can only be availed of by people who know that they have yet to be acknowledged as a biological child and therefore would be actively seeking the answer to their questions. There is no shame in raising another man's child especially if it is being done without deceit or manipulation. Forcing it however by telling a lie in denying the occurrence of infidelity is unfair to the person unduly burdened by the responsibility.