Freedom from false fatherhood

An article in the New York Times Magazine (“Who Knew I Was Not the Father”) describes the torturous dilemmas faced by thousands of men who have discovered, with the help of increasingly affordable (and carefully marketed) DNA tests, that they are not the biological fathers of their alleged children. One of them failed in his legal battle to renounce his fatherhood even after his ex-wife married the biological father of his ersatz daughter, and he has to continue mailing out his child-support checks. It turns out if a man wants to have a chance to be relieved from such an obligation, his only chance is to immediately cut off all contact with the child he previously considered his. A surgeon in Pennsylvania did just that and was allowed to walk out of the courtroom a free man, on the ground that he had been the victim of fraud perpetrated by his former wife. When the doctor now goes to pick up the daughter who is biologically his, the “son” he once co-raised turns his back on him (because his mother told him the man formerly known as his dad no longer wanted him). That’s off-putting a bit, but, hey, nothing beats the $1,400 the surgeon now saves each month by not writing a check to support the boy he renounced. I guess that desensitizing boot camp in medical school, when they had to handle body parts, cut up cadavers, and joke about the accompanying stench of formaldehid, really paid off. Well, let me guess – the callous win again. This is no longer news – after all those biblical vices have received recognition as virtues fueling our much needed economic growth, who can doubt any longer that the thick-skinned will inherit the Earth?