Discussion

Woman who had sex with identical twins told it is 'not possible' to identify father of baby

gadders: >>A woman who had sex with identical twins separately "within four days of each other"Amazing.

muskstinks: Why?And why do we evaluate this on something like hn?Are you shaming a person for having sex or?

ahhhhnoooo: Right? Good for her/them, assuming everyone was consenting.

snvzz: Considering outcomes of children that grow up in a single parent scenario are well-known to be much better when it is the father rather than the mother, in the interest of the child, I would propose splitting custody between the two fathers, leaving the mother out.

muskstinks: Yeah probably because our patrichary is shit and woman earn a lot less money than man do which makes it easier for the man to pay for baby sitter, nanny, education etc.Perhaps we fixup our society instead of blaming it to a woman?

pseudocoup: From reading it appears all parties are invested in the outcome of children. So this becomes interesting for other reasons.What is the current state of the art in this type of testing? Why is a definitive result too far off but also too expensive?

muskstinks: You need to find a genome change if it exists which requires whole genome sequencing. so its a money question and doesn't guarantee a result

cjs_ac: > Considering outcomes of children that grow up in a single parent scenario are well-known to be much better when it is the father rather than the motherI've never heard this and would be very interested in a source.

ap99: Just google it.Better outcomes all around when the father is the only parent as opposed to when the mother is the only parent.

spzb: The burden of proof falls on the person making the assertion. Why should anyone else have to do the work that he/she/they didn't bother with?

nodesocket: I mean, 4 days and then she hooks up with your twin brother. Yes, I am shaming her.

ahhhhnoooo: Maybe everyone was aware and consenting.

GeekyBear: With identical twins, the genome is identical.I'm not sure how future advancements can overcome that issue.

ahhhhnoooo: No clue why you are getting downvoted. It's well documented that women earn less. It's well documented that children are expensive. It's well documented that social safety nets are inadequate to assist in raising a child.You've literally just stated some objective facts and suggested we fix some of those challenges.

ap99: Money isn't the only factor of why the single fathers produce better outcomes for their children.

ahhhhnoooo: Show your work, provide a source.

ap99: We need to bring shaming back for egregious stuff like this.

mionhe: A person expressing wonder at a surprising situation does not require shaming.And yes, I think when a person finds themselves in a situation like this they should be examining their life choices.I don't know why it's on hn though.

ap99: The sex part is a bit shame worthy I'd say.But the part where this woman cannot identify the father is definitely worth shaming.

ahhhhnoooo: Consenting adults can have sex with each other. There's zero shame in that.And though having these two partners was unwise for this reason, it's not really a matter of shame so much as one where we should just find a practical solution that doesnt mess with the kid.

yummybrainz: April Fool's?

ap99: This is actually well known.

spzb: Interesting bias to blame the woman. How do you know that the second twin wasn't taking advantage of their identical looks to convince the woman it was the same man she had slept with the first time? She may not even have been aware that he had an identical sibling.

hnbad: If I understand correctly, the current outcome is that the twin remains on the birth certificate but his legal rights granted by paternity have been suspended?I understand the reasoning that the inability to prove a positive does not suffice to prove a negative but clearly his presence on the birth certificate is a positive claim that has been ruled invalid - shouldn't it then be removed, at least temporarily?

nyeah: Rage farming with no scientific interest. Sad to see this upvoted to front page.

giantg2: There is an interesting question - how can we prove paternity or other DNA based questions with identical twins (full sequencing looking for mutations?) and if we can't, how do we handle legal responsibilities in this sort of case?There's a lot of good material to discuss here.

giantg2: "Why should anyone else have to do the work that he/she/they didn't bother with?"Because they are curious (consistent with the culture of this site). They would also be more likely to trust their own sources, I assume.

spzb: Trusting sources because they are your "own" is just asking for bias to be ingrained.

giantg2: Yet it's well known that if you want someone to change their mind it's most likely to occur if they think it's their own idea/doing. You're more likely to argue with me than if you just read sources you found and independently came to the conclusion.

giantg2: I assume they are getting down voted because their statement is emotional and seemingly unsupported (seems to ignore child support). After accounting for child support, they should have similar resources. We can further investigate this when comparing to intact families - single parents of either sex have wealth gaps with intact families, yet outcomes in single father families tend to be close to the outcomes of the intact families. We would probably need more research into the topic to find concrete causes, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in that.

muskstinks: I would have a lot more money even with child support just because I earn so much more than my wife.So in avg man earn more and have more carerse because they do not stay at home for the children.Also guess who normally gets custody? Yeah the mother. So having a man getting custidy is not normal at all. This skews the data massivly.So as long as we are not experts here but a group of men earning above avg, we might not stereotype and dismiss genders.

gadders: Oh, I blame everyone who was aware.If one brother was pretending to be the other I blame him more.

giantg2: Not the same person, but here's something. Just to note, the income portion mention might be lacking additional investigation as child support is typically not accounted for in income numbers.https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-single-father-households-...

spzb: The buried lede in that link is that mothers who don't have custody of their children are more likely to remain in close emotional contact with their children than fathers are when in the same position. So children living with dad still benefit from having both parents involved in their upbringing. Which undermines OP's assertion that this child would be better off without their mother around.

giantg2: Yes, involvement from both parents seems to be the major factor regardless of sex. There is likely additional research needed on why fathers disengage more when the mother has primary custody. With a majority of single parent households being headed by mothers, it seems another area ripe for research is how unlikely it is that the majority of fathers are disengaged to create such a large effect on the whole single mother cohort. Likewise, with the way custody tends to be grated in court, you would expect single father households to have a higher percentage of unengaged mothers due if it was determined that the mothers were the lesser choice for child welfare. I would guess looking at outcomes where one parent died would mostly control for that support mechanism.

PaulKeeble: Epigenetic changes might be one possibility, they are sometimes passed down to children and are responses to environmental adjustments. We don't know most of the rules around them however nor what can be passed down and to what extent but potentially in the future we should know more.

giantg2: "I would have a lot more money even with child support just because I earn so much more than my wife."That depends on the state, especially looking at after tax income due to the tax treatment on both sides."So having a man getting custidy is not normal at all. "I agree there could be bias there. I think if we looked at households with deceased parents and then controlled for income, that would present a good elimination of bias.

muskstinks: There should be a cap in all states of child support. And independent of this, the person with a lot more income can do things the other person can't like getting a nani.And lets be honest here: A single father is so rare that this alone raises eyebrows and questions. Ironically more like positive reactions and dismissive ones against the woman.

muskstinks: "they should be examining their life choices." based on your world view though. We became a very boring race only optimizing our lives for work. No alien race would look at us and think we are smart spending so much time doing things which do not add value to our society just because we can't organize ourselves better.Just because we conditioned ourselves like this, doesn't mean its right or wrong.And this article doesn't give us enough insight to even judge.Birth control is not perfect. 99% is very little in comparision to the amount of sex happening in a population of 8 billion people.

rich_sasha: When I first read the headline, I thought it's about a woman who had sex with her own identical twin (and somehow that means their father cannot be identified).So I was almost disappointed when I read it properly.

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