A recent
article in the Wall Street Journal highlighting advances in DNA analysis triggered
a memory for me of an idea (widely held) I’ve had about using DNA technology to
bring families back together. Somehow, some way, our society needs to bring
motivated men back into contact with children that they’ve voluntarily
abandoned or from which they’ve been involuntarily driven or, as important,
that they didn’t know they’d fathered. The DNA match program I envision would
include men who want to establish their biological relationship with children
they know or suspect they’ve fathered and/or who’d like to find children they
didn’t know they had. That some mothers aren’t sure of or don’t know the
fathers of their children is just a fact of life, and that fact makes a DNA
match program all the more worthwhile.
Everyone who follows the news is aware
of the gun carnage in many inner cities (425 deaths year-to-date in Chicago),
intractable poverty, low rates of employment, low graduation rates, and, in
general, a pall of despair hanging over such communities. It has been argued
that high rates of out-of-wedlock births that create thousands of boys and
girls growing up in fatherless homes plays a huge role in the aforementioned
problems. So, it is reasonable to believe that a program to reunite biological
fathers with their offspring in high crime areas (initially) might have a
positive effect on family behavioral patterns. The “Alpha-male” is a scientific fact.
Recent
statistics show 73% of black kids are born of single mothers. Whites are at
29%, Hispanics at 53% and even Native Americans are at 66%. Not all of these
kids live in dysfunctional households, but crime statistics dictate that many do.
Thus, a young woman struggles to raise her children, often on Public
Assistance, in neighborhoods populated by other women in similar circumstances,
and eventually this matriarchal sub-society becomes the multi-generational ‘normal’.
Men are hanging around to be sure. But the matriarchal sub-society keeps them
marginalized at arm’s length for perverse economic necessity. As those kids
reach adolescence, the mother/grandmother/aunt often loses control of them, and
disaster looms as the kids gravitate to gangs for a sense of belonging,
camaraderie and the gang’s own perverted role as disciplinarian.
Arguments against the choices women
make, e.g. having babies without marriage or, indeed, any substantive
relationship with the father(s), are attacked, if the mother is a minority, as politically
incorrect at best, racism at worst, thus ensuring that the trend continues. So
the cycle of poverty, violence and hopelessness moves along decade after decade
with those Americans caught up in that cycle effectively playing no productive
role in our overall society. Rarely mentioned, again due to political
correctness, is the eroding of our broader culture as the pathological
manifestations emanating from such dysfunction spreads into it.
Would the reintroduction of the biological father to a
child’s life be a net positive, and why would a guy want to suddenly discover
he has one or more children, possibly with one or more women? Because a lot of
the men who have fathered those children feel regret, some don’t have much going
on in their lives, don’t have much to take pride in or be proud of and,
frankly, are getting older and would like to have an opportunity to have a real
‘family’ experience before it’s too late to do so. Sadly, some of the fathers
might be incarcerated. Likewise, a father might find out a son or daughter is incarcerated.
No matter, in my view. The reestablishment of ‘blood’ presents an opportunity
for a brighter or more substantive future. Let the chips fall where they may.
Why would a child of
one of these absent fathers want him back into their life to any degree, large
or small? How about someone to look up to, someone who’s looking out for them,
normal human curiosity, filling a void, wanting a grandfather around for their
own children, wanting to fill that empty seat at the Christmas Dinner table.
The reasons one has to search out a son or daughter or father are highly
subjective. But consider the effort so many adopted children expend to find
birth parents. Who’s to say that such desire wouldn’t exist among other fatherless
children?
Some of the mothers would balk at a
father suddenly appearing for their minor children. Others might leap at a chance to
introduce a father-figure to an unruly son or daughter. However, many potential
reunions would be between adult children and their fathers, outside the control
of a possibly resentful mother. That’s a ‘family’ dynamic that will have to
work itself out as the new relationships evolve.
Skeptics might say that only ne’re-do-well fathers would seek
matches with children in hopes of reaping financial gain from them or their
mothers. Conversely, the kids/mothers might hope to gain financially from their
emergent fathers. Both scenarios could happen, but so what? Maybe some lives
will be enriched literally as well as figuratively. But reality will set in
quickly as it always does, and the substance or lack thereof of the new
relationships will depend on the individuals involved.
How does a DNA match program get going? Advertise the free
service that allows anyone to voluntarily enter a DNA database with the intent
to be cross-matched with unknown/missing family members. Set up pilot programs
in several target cities using ‘faith-based’ organization volunteers (the LDS
Church/Mormons would be my first call). Storefronts with nurses taking cotton
swab samples from the interior cheek surfaces of participants or opening and
labeling mailed-in samples is all we’re talking about. The criminal justice system should
have no reason to impede an inmate’s participation by mail. Lab services will
be donated or discounted. DNA match results would be mailed or emailed simultaneously
to parents and children or their guardians. At that point it’s up to those individuals
to decide what to do next, but they’d be highly encouraged to move forward to a
physical get-together. Such first meetings might be worthy of a reality TV
series. Who knows? Maybe the Discovery Channel would fund the entire program
for the ‘exclusive’ production rights.
The database must be
separate and firewalled from the databases maintained by many state criminal
justice systems for the obvious issue of personal privacy. The Wall Street
Journal article mentioned above was in regards to solving ‘cold’ criminal
cases. The program would collapse if participants even thought that their data
would be shared. Once the intended matches are effected, the data would be
destroyed.
Naïvely but hopefully, I envision, several
years hence, that many urban communities will see plummeting out-of-wedlock
births, kids staying in school to graduate, crime rates falling to historic
lows and dads saying goodbye to wives and kids at the front door as they head
off to work. That will necessitate vast improvement in local job opportunities
and, equally important, a concomitant reconsideration of the myriad social
welfare programs that made dads superfluous to being with. Good luck with that.
Bill
Gritzbaugh
September 3,
2016
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