Paternity
The Elusive Quest for the Father
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4156206 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Allison L Hepler (University of Maine at Farmington, corresponding author), Allison Hepler (University of Maine at Farmington, Farmington, Maine) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 107 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 514-515 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaaa291 |
| OpenAlex | W3088373770 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
This book's most compelling story—it has many—describes how war, race, and nation building inscribed paternity onto the bodies of an Italian woman who gave birth to a child after World War II, her legal husband, and the child who was clearly the product of a relationship with an African American soldier. In this scenario, as in the other cases that the author describes, paternal identity was not only biologically derived but was also based on various legal and social norms. Paternity traces the twentieth-century history of the definition of fatherhood and examines how science has played a large role in its determination, from a blood test machine called an oscillophone that used vibration to determine race and ethnicity to today's consumer-friendly Dna (deoxyribonucleic acid) tests. As with other uses of science in this period, biochemical evidence was often weighted equally with social or legal determinants of paternity. Why was paternity important to identify? Through a variety of legal cases across the United States, South America, and Europe, Nara B. Milanich illustrates how a determination of paternity was used to reify social norms for female moral behavior and to compel financial support from men. The Nazi regime also employed paternal identity to terrifying ends to define citizens based on heredity in establishing who was and was not Aryan. In other words, writes Milanich, paternal identity became an “instrument of racial governance” (p. 151
Art · Aryan race · Biology · Criminology · Ethnic group · Genealogy · Heredity · Identity (music · Political science · Race (biology · Sociology · Variety (cybernetics · Gender Studies · Genetics · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Medical History and Research
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2024 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |