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Her Child, but Not His: Difference between revisions
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No, this article is not about [[I Thought It Meant|chocolate candies shaped like human babies]].
Two parents, who are the same race or species, are having a child. Except when the child is born, it visibly does not resemble either of the parents.
Usually implies adultery on the woman's part. Even before [[Daddy DNA Test|DNA testing]], this can resolve the question of [[Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe]]. If she's the main character, expect her to either have been raped, or not know why she had a child that doesn't look like its father. In very old stories, the theory of "[[wikipedia:Maternal impression|maternal impression]]" may be used to explained it -- either seriously, or as a way of bamboozling the putative father.
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== Fan Fiction ==
* [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5436315/1/Running_With_The_Wind_Book_One_A_Living_Lie This] [[Warrior Cats]] fanfiction. In it, Squirrelflight has been cheating on her mate Brambleclaw with his blue-eyed half-brother, Hawkfrost. When she has kittens, one of them has blue eyes. However, this indicates some [[Artistic License: Biology|artistic license]] as ALL kittens have blue eyes at birth, and it takes them at least six months for them to turn a different color. Even then, just blue eyes shouldn't be a clear indicator, nor can fur color. A litter of three kittens can have three different-colored pairs of eyes and three different pelts. Cats are also superfecund: any given litter can have more than one father.
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* In ''[[Me Myself and Irene]]'', Jim Carrey's character Charlie Bailygates goes into denial when his wife gives birth to black triplets. Only gets more funny as the boys grow up and becoming stereotypical (albeit genius) big, black men. And he's just a scrawny white dude. Nonetheless he and his "sons" love each other dearly.
* Done in ''The Brothers Solomon'' where we are led to believe that one of the brother's sperm was used to impregnate the surrogate mother but as it turns out the baby was actually her black boyfriend's, but they were so clueless they didn't care.
* In ''Angelitos Negros'', an old Mexican movie, a white couple has a little girl... and she looks black. I don't remember the details very well, but the wife accuses the husband of being of black ancestry and is going to leave but... cue revelation. The black woman whom she thought to be here nanny was in fact her mother. After lots of melodrama the woman realizes what a dick she has been the whole film to her family and they all have a happy ending.
* ''[[The Naked Gun]] 33 1/3'' had this at the very end of the movie, where Frank's wife gives birth to a black baby...or so it appears. As Frank is chasing his black partner Nordburg through the hospital, it turns out they were in the wrong delivery room, and the chief comes out of a separate room with Frank's actual wife and child (But judging from Nordburg's reaction, it seems they had an affair anyway. [[Where Da White Women At?|Cue OJ Simpson joke]])
* In the 1994 Drew Barrymore film ''Boys on the Side'', Drew's character finds out she's pregnant while on the run for killing her abusive boyfriend. Her new [[Cop Boyfriend]] has fallen in love with her and is there when the baby is born...a black baby, from her cheating on her then-boyfriend.
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* In ''[[Stilyagi]]'', the father of Polly's son John is not Mel, but a nameless visiting black man from America.
* In ''[[Superman Returns]]'' Superman is upset to learn that Lois Lane has had a son with her fiance. Then the kid starts tossing furniture around.
* A rare fatherless version, in Secrets and Lies the mother finally meets the daughter she gave up for adoption when she was 15, she is very surprised to see that she is black. At first she is sure it is a mistake as she would have remembered sleeping with a black man, then she DOES figure it out {{spoiler|evidently she was raped by an unseen assailant}}, she had assumed her white boyfriend was the father.
* The movie ''Life'' takes place in an all-Black prison camp in Mississippi from the 1930s to 1997. In the 40's, an attractive young man joins the camp and exchanges some significant looks with the (white) Superintendent's daughter. Nine months later, she has a [[Chocolate Baby]] and the superintendent makes all the inmates line up so he can compare features and find out who "violated" his daughter. Before he gets to the culprit, the other men all claim to have fathered the baby to protect the real father.
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== Literature ==
* Arthurian legends, collected and written into a novel by [[Chrétien de Troyes|Chretien De Troyes]], explain that Sir Yvain has a half-brother from a previous marriage when his own father took a dark-skinned Moor as a wife in Spain. Demonstrating just how [[You Fail Biology Forever|shockingly little provincial Europeans knew about genetics]] when interacting with people from other races... Yvain's brother has checkerboard-colored skin, with alternating light and dark patches. (Ironically, such things ''have'' been known to happen in real life, with mosaicism and genes that are only partially expressed, but they are extremely rare, and in any case it is clear that these northern Europeans who had rarely seen a Moor except on the battlefield ''honestly believed'' that this would be the result of a mixed coupling).
* In Shakespeare's ''[[Titus Andronicus (theatre)|Titus Andronicus]]'', Aaron the Moor has been having an affair with Empress Tamara, and her child is black. Tamara's adult sons attempt to kill the child, but Aaron stops them, shocked that they would kill their own (half) brother. Of course, Aaron then casually kills the midwife to make sure no one knows what happens, and plans to just tell the emperor that it wa stillborn. This enters into a curious moment of humanizing the villain, because while Tamara and her sons, and Aaron in particular, are thoroughly evil and manipulative people, Aaron then gives a long speech about how he will care for and raise his firstborn son. In contrast, Titus killed one of his own sons simply for speaking out against the emperor. Who was the real villain? Establishes that this trope is [[Older Than Television]].
* Used in one of the ''[[Outlander (novel)|Outlander]]'' books in which Claire saves a white (also possibly married) woman's abandoned child. As a doctor, she's able to identify (despite the child being recently born) that the father was black, and strongly suspects it might have been why the child was abandoned, the setting of the novel being the mid-18th century.
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* In ''The Sacrifice of Tamar,'' Tamar's grandchild is born with dark skin. Her Orthodox Jewish son is filled with righteous wrath, believing his wife cheated on him; the daughter-in-law can only cry and deny it. Then Tamar confesses to her son that he was conceived when she was raped by a black man. She never told anyone, because she had made love to her husband that same night and always hoped the baby was his.
* [[Warrior Cats]]: Even before it was revealed that Jayfeather, Hollyleaf, and Lionblaze are {{spoiler|the kittens of Leafpool and Crowfeather}}, basically everyone already knew it. None of them look anything like [[Fiery Redhead|Squirrelflight]] and Brambleclaw, except for the eye color of both Squirrelflight and Hollyleaf. Squirrelflight is a ginger cat with green eyes. Brambleclaw is a brown cat with amber eyes. Jayfeather is a gray cat with blue eyes, Hollyleaf is a black cat with green eyes, and Lionblaze is a golden brown cat with amber eyes. {{spoiler|Crowfeather is a black/gray cat with blue eyes. Leafpool is a brown cat with amber eyes. Three guesses who Jayfeather, Hollyleaf, and Lionblaze's real parents are...}}
** There are also Oakheart and Crookedstar. They're both brown, and {{spoiler|their parents, Shellheart and Rainflower, are gray.}}
* In ''Family Tree'' by Barbara Delinsky, Clair, the wife of a man, Hugh, from a very upper-crust white family gives birth to a <s>son</s> daughter that has caramel skin. The husband's family (except the grandmother) immediately disowns the child and the husband accuses the wife of cheating and leaves her for a short time, even though a DNA test proves that he is the father <s>and a lie detector test proves that the wife never cheated</s>. It turns out that {{spoiler|the husband's family ''supposedly'' has black ancestry due to the rumor that the man's grandmother had an affair with her (half) black groundskeeper(?) and became pregnant. When her son was born, he had white features and she promptly passes him off as her husband's child. The <s>grandmother</s> grandfather reveals the secret of the alleged affair to his son and he reconciles with his wife and daughter.}}
* In explaining the [[Redheaded Stepchild]] idea (literally), the backstory of ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda]]'' also falls into [[Chocolate Baby]]. In the 18th century, The prince of [[Ruritania]] visited England and met the beautiful wife of a certain English nobleman. The two men fought a duel, the prince leaving the country with serious wounds and the Englishman later dying of a chill. Some months later, the wife gave birth to a red-headed child and it wasn't much of a mystery who his real father was. Thus, it's been an embarrassment to their family since then whenever someone is born with red hair.
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* The original ''[[Forrest Gump]]'' novel ended with Jenny giving birth to one of these, lying to Forrest that it's his, and he's stupid enough to believe it. In the film the son is white and obviously Forrest's.
* The [[Sherlock Holmes]] story "The Adventure of the Yellow Face" has a widow who remarries and then keeps sneaking off to a cottage and won't tell her husband why. He naturally suspects her of having an affair, but it turns out that what she never told him was that her first husband was black (American); the resident of the cottage is their daughter, who she'd told him was also dead. Leads to a [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming]] [[Fair for Its Day|by the standards of the times]] when the second husband accepts the child immediately, and a [[Crowning Moment of Funny]] in that Holmes didn't come ''close'' to guessing that one.
* Jewel in ''[[As I Lay Dying]]'' is [[Redheaded Stepchild|red-haired]] and noticeably taller than his father and brothers. It's revealed that he was the lovechild of his mother and the local minister.
* In the book ''[[Waiting For June]]'' the white character is pregnant and everyone assumes her best friend, who is black, is the father, especially when the baby comes out black but it turns out that the father {{spoiler|is Native American and the mother is half black}}.
* In the ancient Greek story ''Aethiopica'', King Hydaspes and Queen Persinna of Ethiopia cast out their infant daughter Chariclea because she is white. After many adventures, it is revealed that she is, in fact, the perfect image of a picture of Andromeda that her mother had been looking at while she conceive, and so Chariclea really is their daughter with "maternal impression" explaining her looks.
* In the book version of [[The Help]] its revealed that {{spoiler|Constantine, an old maid that raised Skeeter, was half-white and half-black. Thus when she gave birth to a white child, she eventually had to abandon her, because people kept assuming she'd either kidnapped her or was just the babysitter.}} Years later, the child returns and completely upsets people when they realise the truth.
== Live-Action TV ==
* [[Inverted Trope|Inverted]] with ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]''. Barney's mother never married, and is implied to have been fairly... ''[[Unusual Euphemism|outgoing]]'' in her fertile years, resulting in Barney being white and his half-brother, James, being black. When Mrs. Stinson gives her two sons a name, "Sam," and an address, the two brothers naturally [[Gene Hunting|go on a quest to meet one of their fathers.]] When they meet Sam, {{spoiler|they discover he's black, meaning he's James's dad, not Barney's. Nevertheless, Barney fails to make the biological connection and assumes Sam is his father, too!}}
* On ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'', Joy's second child, Earl Jr., was black, despite Joy and Earl both being white (Joy's first child, Dodge, was conceived before they met so he was always treated as not being Earl's biological son). Earl was too shocked at first to really get upset and Joy tried to explain that Earl might have had a "repressed Black gene" in his lineage from his great-grandmother. Earl doesn't really believe it, and asks the doctor to confirm his suspicions (which the doctor does, in no uncertain terms.)
** A later episode had Joy explain to her parents that Earl Jr. was 'reverse albinism' "You know how two black people can have an albino child..."
** The trope was then sent up in the cliffhanger of the final episode, when {{spoiler|everyone thinking that Earl Jr. was Darnell's child, a DNA test reveals he's not the father either. And in a twist of fate, it turned out Earl ''was'' the father of Dodge, conceived at a Halloween party (wearing a costume and mask) and Earl was blind drunk.}}
* On ''[[Desperate Housewives]]'', the Hispanic couple Gabby and Carlos had their Asian maid as a surrogate, but the baby turned out to be black. It turned out there had been an embryo mix up and the child wasn't related to them at all.
* Played realistically on an episode of ''[[ER]]'' where Benton delivers a teenage girl's baby. The grandparents suspected that the father might be black and are relieved to see a white baby, but Benton warns the girl that it's not so obvious at first.
** It eventually devolves into a fairly transparent ploy to keep the pure-white baby from his horrible racist grandparents.
* On ''Sophie'', the titular character is devastated when her boyfriend Rick leaves her for her best friend Melissa, especially since Sophie is pregnant with what they all thought was Rick's baby. It turns out Rick wasn't the only one cheating when Sophie gives birth to a black baby. The father is a black man named Andre whom Sophie had a one night stand with.
* In the Season 8 ''[[Law & Order|Law and Order]]'' episode "Blood", a baby is given up for adoption by her parents because {{spoiler|she's black, really really really dark-skinned, and the parents are evidently white, although it eventually turns out that the father is also black, but so light-skinned that he's been passing for white his entire life, and the man's social-climbing ex-wife killed the second wife, who was trying to reclaim the baby, to keep the secret from getting out so that she wouldn't have to live with the social stigma of having been married to a black man and having borne a son by him, a son who would therefore also be considered black by the one-drop rule and so would presumably have a miserable life from that point onward}}. Whew.
** A bit for [[You Fail Biology Forever]] here -- while two mixed-race parents can definitely have a baby darker than either of them, the new wife here was Swedish.
* Referenced in an ''[[Ashes to Ashes]]'' episode -- a suspect's alibi rests on his having been there when the police came to break up the domestic dispute resulting from one of these.
* Done on ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' where Gul Dukat (modified with future surgery to look, and pretending to be, Bajoran) leads a Pah-Wraith cult, which includes a pregnant woman and her husband. She gives birth to an obviously half-Cardassian baby, and everyone believes Dukat when [[From a Certain Point of View|he says it's a miracle]]...at least, until they find out he doesn't intend to commit suicide with the rest of them.
* The ''[[Cold Case]]'' episode ''Libertyville'' plays with this trope as the victim is a black man passing for white who marries a white woman and has a daughter. However, this is not why he was killed. The daughter has white features. She and her mother meet their black relatives during the [[Medley Exit]].
* Done implicitly due to actor selection in ''[[Power Rangers Mystic Force]]''. Udonna, who looks Irish, has a son with Leanbow, who looks Spanish. The kid, Bowen, looks Arabian, with skin about eight shades darker than either of theirs- a shade fairly close to that of his parents' close friend Daggeron. No comment is made on this matter.
* Waynetta Slob in ''[[Harry Enfield and Chums]]'' feels that she's failing to keep up with the other families in the neighbourhood as she lacks a 'Brown Baby'. So Wayne steals one for her.
** Not exactly. Waynetta takes out a separation. Wayne then gets a black girlfriend (played by Naomi Campbell), who gives birth to a brown baby that the Slobs adopts after getting back together. In short, it's a very rare ''gender reversal'' example of this trope!
* ''Nip/Tuck'': Christian assumes that the baby Gina is carrying is his. Big shock when the baby is born and he is black. Very black.
* Inverted in ''[[Glee]]'' - In the first episode, Caucasian Rachel has two dads, one white, one black. She doesn't know which is her genetic father. Once we actually meet them, though, we find [[Ret Conned|they're both white]].
** Also referenced when seemingly pregnant, white Terri talks to her sister.
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== Radio ==
* ''[[This American Life]]'' did a story about a mixed-race guy who had been born to a white girl who got pregnant in high school; there was a shotgun wedding with her white boyfriend, and she was the only one who knew that there was another boy at school who was a candidate for paternity, and that he was black. The marriage lasted, more kids were born, they grew up, and everything was normal except that for years and years no one acknowledged the increasingly obvious fact that the oldest child was of a different ethnic makeup than everyone else in his family.
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== Webcomics ==
* In one of the ''[[Something Positive]]'' 1930s strips ([http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp1937010.shtml this one], to be exact), where black midwife Hetty is delivering a white girl's illegitimate baby, and the girl's parents freak out when it's a black child, ''blaming her'' for "getting the black all over that baby" when she delivered it. As she replied: "Woman, I pull 'em out. I don't put 'em in."
* In ''[[Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures]]'', Abel is revealed to be an extreme complicated version of this in his side comic. Specifically, Abel is born with wings, something that is not at all unheard of in the setting but is unsual and indicates that his parents couldn't really have had them. Him and his mom recive large amounts of flack over this from just about everyone but the father who steadfastly belives that she was faithful. As part of [[The Reveal]] Abel finds out that {{spoiler|his dad is a shapeshifter who killed his mom's real husband and has been impersonating him since before Abel was born. Abel's wings and other oddities are part of his race's [[Shapeshifter Default Form]]}}
** It's also heavily insinuated that this is the case with Devin, since his father [http://www.missmab.com/Comics/Abel_50.php took one look at him and walked out the door]. This has naturally led to [[Epileptic Trees|rampant speculation]] among fans.
* A sort-of example in ''[[Vinci and Arty]]''; Vinci is a raccoon. His parents are chihuahuas. Arty assumes Vinci must have been adopted, but it turns out both his parents had "recessive raccoon genes" from further back, so Vinci is "a pureblooded raccoon, but I could have registered as a pureblooded chihuahua".
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* Pre-empted in [http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1993#comic this] [[Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal]] strip.
* Guinness from [[Krakow]]
* Very...odd example in Dueling Analogs [http://www.duelinganalogs.com/comic/2010/11/24/other-m-part-iii/ here].
** In this case, it's because Samus is part Metroid. The bigger question is: what is she doing with ''[[Shotacon|Mega Man]]''?
* In [[Pokémon-X]], it's indicated that {{spoiler|Brendan gets his white hair from Mailman Joe.}}
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* Joseph Gribble on ''[[King of the Hill]],'' who has obvious Native American features despite supposedly white parents. His "father" Dale, usually an [[Conspiracy Theorist|overly-suspicious nut]], is completely oblivious to the fact that his wife has been cheating with her "massage therapist" John Redcorn for the majority of their marriage. When Peggy learns of the affair (one of the last people to do so, told by Hank, who'd up to this point assumed she'd been aware all along but, like everyone else, was keeping quiet), she mentions Nancy claiming that Dale's grandmother was Jamaican.
** His conspiracy theorizing eventually kicked in for his son, so now he "knows" that his son is...an ''alien''!!!
** On another occasion, he finally realizes that Joseph looks different, and has a [[Psychic Dreams for Everyone|psychic dream]] where he sees an Indian man having sex with Nancy. His conclusion?
{{quote|"I must be an Indian! That explains why I like tobacco so much! And hate the federal government so much!"}}
* In the Disney cartoon "Ugly Duckling", [[Getting Crap Past the Radar|the duckling's father accuses the mother of cheating]]. After a short fight, they separate.
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* A particularly warped version turns up on ''[[Family Guy]],'' in which Brian is thought to have impregnated Carter Pewterschmidt's prize-winning greyhound -- but when the puppies are born, they all look like ''Ted Turner.'' TBS and [[Adult Swim]] [[Biting the Hand Humor|syndicate Family Guy.]]
** Though, to be fair, when the episode first aired, they were not yet syndicated, and Turner was already in the midst of the arguments that would lead to his 2003 ouster from the network management. So maybe more [[Hilarious in Hindsight]].
* Similarly, an episode of ''[[South Park]]'' has the boys trying to crossbreed Cartman's pig with Kyle's elephant so they'll get pig-sized elephants. When the pig finally gives birth... "Hey. It kinda looks like Mr. Garrison."
* In ''[[Batman Beyond]]'' Mary and Warren McGinnis, both redheads, have two black-haired sons. A popular fan theory is that this is the reason for their divorce. An odd example, because while he ''is'' the father, "[[Fully-Absorbed Finale|Epilogue]]," an episode of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', reveals that {{spoiler|1=Warren McGinnis' reproductive DNA was overwritten with Bruce Wayne's without anybody's knowledge in an attempt to produce another Batman, making Terry and Matt Bruce's ''genetic'' sons despite being conceived by Warren}}.
** It should be noted that this actually wasn't even intended--the creators eventually realized how implausible the family was and performed an [[Author's Saving Throw]].
* Mumble from ''[[Happy Feet]]'' not only was born without the ability to sing like the other penguins (it's the main reason he tap-dances instead), but was also born with [[Blue Eyes]], something real penguins do not have (even his own parents both have [[Brown Eyes]]).
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