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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31307 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Pure speculation, but I wonder if the bad seed is the result of paternity fraud. Perhaps there are four kids and three are great and a like and then you have the one “bad boy.” Maybe mom Stepped out with a bad boy one night?

No, those kinds of families are respectable and at their wit's end trying to deal with the kid causing trouble. Where Mommy is likely to be stepping out with bad boys, there is no Daddy and the other three kids all have different bad-boy dads and the environment is different such that it's no surprise at least one kid is known to the law.

Sometimes you roll the genetic dice and the result comes up losing throw.

Do most failsons cause trouble? I'm under the impression that the median failson doesn't really do anything- he mooches, maybe becomes an alcoholic or permastoned or something, and never winds up doing much of anything at all.

Certainly even working class failsons(which I am more familiar with) mostly are not serious criminals, they're charity cases who spend "help" on substances of various kinds while never holding down a job, and may have been in the mental health system at some point but probably aren't anymore because either they don't like it or they're just bad at using the resources available to them to get help. Since crime is pretty correlated with class, I would assume that upper middle class failsons are even more likely to just smoke pot in their parents' basement and fail classes at the local community college.

Although I’m always open to a “these hoes ain’t loyal” hypothesis, Razib has discussed before how the false paternity rate is likely “only” about 2 to 3%. I say “only” because 2-3% is still horrifying; imagine if hospitals switched babies around 2-3% of the time. Women certainly wouldn’t tolerate it.

I would venture that false paternity rates covary with SES, and that the rate is much lower among families successful enough where the concept of a failson is a thing.

If you have a bunch of trees each with a bunch of apples, chances are an apple will eventually fall and roll far from its tree.

That’s probably right.

There's lots of obviously-genetically-related (e.g. by appearance) failsons. Even if we assume everything's genetic, nobody's genes are all aces, and sometime some zygote will roll a bad combination.

Agreed not one for one. But I wouldn’t be shocked if paternity fraud plays a role.

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