DNA tests have made it easier today to find out who a child's biological parents are. But in her book "Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father", Nara B. Milanich argues that the social factors that define what being a father is are still just as important if not more so than the biological aspects.
For millennia, the objective fact of paternity was thought to lie behind an “impenetrable veil.” It was the performance of fatherhood that mattered most: claiming parentage, supporting children day to day, and leaving them an inheritance.
This entrenched social landscape began to shift by the early 1900s, thanks to some experts’ proclamations that lab-tested techniques could settle questions of fatherhood beyond doubt.
However, even though we can now identify a child's biological father with more certainty than before, cultural concepts about what a father is still persists and perhaps, will continue to persist into the future.
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