Keep the policy jacketed, Heroy
BOLD AND starting out like a ‘hero’, he makes us ask Orville Taylor ‘Y’ at the end. Member of Parliament for St James Central Heroy Clarke stunned the country with a knee-jerk delivery, influenced by the research of my brother and colleague, anthropologist Dr Herbert Gayle. Decked immaculately in a wellfitting three-piece jacket suit, with a red poppy showing on his lapel, Clarke declared that given that the research indicates that one of the sources of domestic violence is paternal issues, then the solution to this mosquito walking on the glass window is to hit it with a length of wood. For him, compulsory DNA testing must be done to the self-designated father of the child at birth. In his view, this “will stem majority of the domestic violence in our society”.
Gayle and I are ‘bench and bench’. However, if that is one of his recommendations, then we have to disagree like puss and dog. Nonetheless, Heroy and Herbert are two different names, and I would bet that Gayle never said that we should force a man to undergo the litmus test before he can father.
Of course, reading a medical report does not make one a doctor, neither does reading a legal case make one a lawyer. Therefore, one must not take chunks out of the research of behavioural scientists and run with it.
But let us follow the premise advanced. If the argument is that discovery that a raised child is not one’s own is a source of domestic violence, what is the likely consequence if a man who lives with a woman realises that he is not the biological father while she is in the maternity ward and waiting to come home? If the male spouse has a proclivity to violent behaviour, what do you think he will do after having waited the full term and supported her while telling his friends and relatives?
WHO IS IT DESIGNED TO PROTECT
As a legislator, the question must be asked as to who is the suggested legislation designed to protect and importantly, is it in the national interest?
First of all, to detect paternity nine months after conception is not early. Census level data from the JA Kids study, spearheaded by Prof Maureen Samms Vaughn, show that Jamaican fathers do want to father, and given the opportunity, will typically put their names on the birth certificates early because more than 90 per cent of them are present at or around the birth of the child. By childbirth, he would have invested large amounts of emotion and expectations. Believe it or not, after bonding with the child, the hurt the non-violent-inclined father feels will be mitigated. Even the good medical doctor recognised she needed a triad of behavioural scientists to help her do this amazing research.
Inasmuch as the incidence of ‘paternity fraud’ is relatively high in Jamaica, most of the men would want to and do continue the relationship with the child, for life. The minority cases are where there is violent reprisal and abandonment. Follow me here. How many women leave men who father outside children after discovering that they even have simultaneous pregnancies? Sauce for the gander.
Never mind other nations’ immigration requirement for declared children to be DNA-matched to the filing father. It is cruel and certainly not in the interest of the child, especially a minor, where all things are in place for the 17 years of life, and suddenly, the sociological father is ripped from her after he prepares all for her to go to college. As long as the school and other records confirm history of parenting, and all reasonable proof exists that a foreign-based father is the one who the child knows, the DNA test is nothing but a source of discrimination or harm.
READ THE RESEARCH
Clarke needs to read the rest of Gayle’s research, which matches seamlessly with those of other members of our Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work (DSPSW), including my own, regarding working conditions and labour laws surrounding women. During the pre-natal and post birth periods, the critical support women receive from men, whether the father, ‘Joe Grine’ or just another male who loves her, is perhaps the single most important variable in determining what type of mother she becomes.
Moreover, a larger source of societal violence and, in particular, multiple homicidal behaviour, is abuse and torture from mothers. And guess what! Most mothers who torture and ‘murderation’ their male children are those who were ill-treated by their men or those who had little support during the tender years of the children.
Thus, since his senior colleague Justice Minister and attorney Delroy Chuck rubbished the arguments from social scientists and labour specialists from the DSPSW, that paternity leave must not require co-residence of the male, Clarke must ask him, “So what happens when the spouse gets paternity leave before the date of birth and then finds out that he was given a ‘jacket’?”
If those who support Clarke really believe this stance is logical, then let them ask their own fathers or surviving paternal relatives to do it for them and their wives/baby mothers to submit themselves post facto.
Me? I am gonna skulk the test.