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Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father
“In this rigorous and beautifully researched volume, Milanich considers the tension between social and biological definitions of fatherhood, and shows how much we still have to learn about what constitutes a father.”
―Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
For most of human history, the notion that paternity was uncertain appeared to be an immutable law of nature. The unknown father provided entertaining plotlines from Shakespeare to the Victorian novelists and lay at the heart of inheritance and child support disputes. But in the 1920s new scientific advances promised to solve the mystery of paternity once and for all. The stakes were fatherhood has always been a public relationship as well as a private one. It confers not only patrimony and legitimacy but also a name, nationality, and identity.
The new science of paternity, with methods such as blood typing, fingerprinting, and facial analysis, would bring clarity to the conundrum of fatherhood―or so it appeared. Suddenly, it would be possible to establish family relationships, expose adulterous affairs, locate errant fathers, unravel baby mix-ups, and discover one’s true race and ethnicity. Tracing the scientific quest for the father up to the present, with the advent of seemingly foolproof DNA analysis, Nara Milanich shows that the effort to establish biological truth has not ended the quest for the father. Rather, scientific certainty has revealed the fundamentally social, cultural, and political nature of paternity. As Paternity shows, in the age of modern genetics the answer to the question “Who’s your father?” remains as complicated as ever.
―Andrew Solomon, author of Far from the Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity
For most of human history, the notion that paternity was uncertain appeared to be an immutable law of nature. The unknown father provided entertaining plotlines from Shakespeare to the Victorian novelists and lay at the heart of inheritance and child support disputes. But in the 1920s new scientific advances promised to solve the mystery of paternity once and for all. The stakes were fatherhood has always been a public relationship as well as a private one. It confers not only patrimony and legitimacy but also a name, nationality, and identity.
The new science of paternity, with methods such as blood typing, fingerprinting, and facial analysis, would bring clarity to the conundrum of fatherhood―or so it appeared. Suddenly, it would be possible to establish family relationships, expose adulterous affairs, locate errant fathers, unravel baby mix-ups, and discover one’s true race and ethnicity. Tracing the scientific quest for the father up to the present, with the advent of seemingly foolproof DNA analysis, Nara Milanich shows that the effort to establish biological truth has not ended the quest for the father. Rather, scientific certainty has revealed the fundamentally social, cultural, and political nature of paternity. As Paternity shows, in the age of modern genetics the answer to the question “Who’s your father?” remains as complicated as ever.
360 pages, Hardcover
Published June 10, 2019
About the author
Nara B. Milanich
3 books2 followersNara B. Milanich is Professor of History at Barnard College, Columbia University, specializing in Latin America; and the comparative histories of family, childhood, gender, reproduction, and social inequality.
Her most recent book is Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father (2019), published by Harvard University Press. She was interviewed about the book for Science Friday by Ira Flatow.
~~~
Milanich is the daughter of archeologist Jerald T. Milanich and anthropologist Maxine Margolis.
Her most recent book is Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father (2019), published by Harvard University Press. She was interviewed about the book for Science Friday by Ira Flatow.
~~~
Milanich is the daughter of archeologist Jerald T. Milanich and anthropologist Maxine Margolis.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 30, 2019
This book was grippingly written, with every chapter beginning with engaging anecdotes that highlighted the high stakes of the paternity question. I'd never thought before about the history of "paternity" or the choice to conceptualize it as a biological or a social fact; Milanich provides analysis of the impacts of each, writing in the epilogue,
"distinct ways of defining paternity have no necessary politics. Biological essentialism is not inherently 'conservative.' Genetic kinship can be mobilized as part of a state's murderous racial ideology, in the name of welfare privatization, or for national security. It can be a rallying cry of men's rights groups that wear their misogyny on their sleeve. But it can also be championed by human rights activists like the Abuelas of Argentina and by advocates of adoptee and children's rights. Nor is there anything inherently 'progressive' about a social constructivist vision of kinship. Napoleonic tradition defined paternity in terms of male volition, social performance, and contract [...] to the benefit of patriarchal privilege. [...] Paternity may be inherently political, but it has no preordained politics. Context is everything."
"distinct ways of defining paternity have no necessary politics. Biological essentialism is not inherently 'conservative.' Genetic kinship can be mobilized as part of a state's murderous racial ideology, in the name of welfare privatization, or for national security. It can be a rallying cry of men's rights groups that wear their misogyny on their sleeve. But it can also be championed by human rights activists like the Abuelas of Argentina and by advocates of adoptee and children's rights. Nor is there anything inherently 'progressive' about a social constructivist vision of kinship. Napoleonic tradition defined paternity in terms of male volition, social performance, and contract [...] to the benefit of patriarchal privilege. [...] Paternity may be inherently political, but it has no preordained politics. Context is everything."
February 27, 2020
The topic is quite fascinating, and one of those moments when you wonder how you could have gone so long without really thinking about it. Especially having lived only in a world where paternity was biologically "knowable", some of the questions and situations in the book really challenge the mind which I loved. Some parts of the book however started dragging for me, especially in the middle. I would have liked to shorten a lot of those sections up a little but and expound a bit more on the new and emerging questions of paternity that society needs to grapple with.
October 29, 2024
loveeee the way this book is written, it's a super accessible nonfiction text !! i just think the whole topic is super interesting and it's very well researched. the book is at its best when it's questioning what exactly fatherhood and paternity means, whether that's a legal, biological, or social definition. other than that, we get itttt everything is about race, god humans are so predictableeee
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews