You are not the father!  You are not the father! I lost count of the number of times that I heard this statement while watching daytime TV today.  I know that it was more times than I heard You are the father.  I know I should have been spending my time more productively, but I just didn’t feel like it.  Do you ever have those days that you just want to do nothing?  I’ve been having quite a few lately.  


I digressed back to the show.  One lady had been on the show 14 times for a DNA test, 14 times.  Now I’m not going to sit here and pretend to be all innocent.  I’m not, and I have problems with people who can’t be real and be truthful about who they.  I’ve had a good time throughout the years, but I do wonder how a woman would not know who her baby’s daddy is.    

I watched these young ladies state they are 150% sure they know who the father is, but the DNA test proved otherwise.  Not only were they told the young man who stood accused was not the father, they endured being called out of their name by the young men.  There were young ladies who slept with brothers, fathers and sons, and some who didn’t know who they slept with because they were in a drunken stupor.  Now the party is over, and reality is hitting them hard.  Rather this show is real or not, incidents like this occur everyday.  


I decided to switch channels and found myself in a court room watching a judge determine if the men standing before them were the fathers of children being displayed on a screen.  There were more DNA tests, but there were slight differences from the other show.  Some of the people in the court room were married couples and the wife strayed.  There were men and women some who had hooked up years ago, but never married and the child was now seeking the truth about paternity.  

Between the two shows, I started thinking about all that these young ladies would have to endure as a single mother and all that they would endure through their parenting journey.  I started thinking about the young people who had gone through a part of their life not knowing the truth about who their father really was because of their mother’s poor judgement.  I also started thinking about how important DNA tests had become in today’s society to determine paternity. Have we made a wrong turn in society to the point that we need a test to determine who our children’s fathers are? 

Are we not teaching our children about birth control or waiting until they are married?  I understand women have found a new awakening, and they don’t have a problem getting their freak on. This includes young ladies who aren’t really responsible enough to take on such a huge responsibility.  I can relate to being a single parent and all the struggles as a young mother.  For this reason, I stressed the importance of protecting herself and not becoming a single parent to my daughter.  As mothers, we want support emotionally, financially, and physically, but if a man is not your husband they can’t be depended on to help provide those things for us.   


One thing that I noticed was although the young ladies had sex with these young men, nobody was calling the young men out of their names.  Some things never change, it’s the women who are looked down on.  I also understand why young men want DNA tests, it seems that young ladies give themselves so freely and they do so without thinking of the repercussions.  There’s enough blame to go around.  As a parent, I didn’t preach absenteeism to my daughter.  The chances of your child remaining a virgin until marriage are slim to none.  If you’re successful in achieving that goal, my hat is off to you.  I did preach about the struggle of being a single parent and the importance of protecting herself from disease and an unplanned pregnancy.  I stressed the importance of educating herself, traveling and achieving her goals before she took on the responsibility of parenting.  Having these conversations with you child is so important.  You can’t just have them in passing, it must be a constant so it can take hold in your child’s mind.  


Are you discussing sex with your child?  How are you approaching it or how do you plan to approach it?    


Note:  Photo courtesy of stockvault.net.