Who’s your daddy? It’s a fair question. A meta-study published in 2006 by a University of Oklahoma anthropology professor estimated that 30 percent of men who have low paternity confidence about a child were justified in their suspicions. Even among men with high paternity confidence (that is, they’re married to the mother), about 2 percent were cuckolds. During the eons before reliable paternity tests became available in the 1960s, there was no way to verify these “non-paternal events”; even the mother could only guess. Today anyone can submit a few hundred dollars and a scraping of their cheek cells and, if the older guy who claims to be the father does the same, within weeks confirm or deny that claim. Predictably, that 2 percent margin of error has led to some uncomfortable situations.
