Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''Telemachus took a deep breath and said: You want the truth, and I will give it to you. 
My mother says that Odysseus is my father. 
I don't know this myself. No one witnesses his own begetting.''|'''[[Homer]]''', ''[[The Odyssey (Literature)|The Odyssey]]''}}

 

 

 

 

A powerful force behind [[My Girl Is Not a Slut]] and [[Nature Adores a Virgin]] in [[Real Life]], because a man's sexual escapades cannot leave the woman wondering, nine months later, whether she really gave birth to that baby. To what extent there is reason to doubt in real life is not known; numerous urban legends claim a high percentage of babies are attributed to false fathers, but the location of the studies determining this tends to migrate a lot.

 

A trope for historical settings, as [[Daddy DNA Test]] is the [[Trope Breaker]], unless identical twins, or clones, are the purported father, or for some reason, testing is impossible.

 

== Ballads ==

* In the ''Odyssey'', Telemachus wonders about this -- a doubt that no one else expresses -- because he wonders if he is a worthy son of such a father.

* In ''[[Jane Eyre]]'', Mr. Rochester's ward is the daughter of his one-time mistress, who sent him the baby after he had dismissed her when he learned she was unfaithful to him. She said the child was his; he assures Jane he has his doubts.

* In [[Madeleine L Engle]]'s ''The Love Letters'', Charlotte fled to Portugal because when she told her husband she was pregnant, he had asked her who the father was when he was.

* ''[[The Jungle (Literature)|The Jungle]]'' has, as part of Jurgis's [[Trauma Conga Line]], his wife Ona tell him that she was raped by a businessman and she's been going to him for conjugal visits to ensure financial security for the family and also that she is pregnant. From what is narrated of their miserable bedtime experiences, they are most likely not having sex and if they are, then it is not very often. Therefore, there is the chance that Ona got pregnant from her visits with Connor. However, Jurgis never makes any comment on the paternity of the child.

* Jacky invokes this trope in ''[[Bloody Jack|Under The Jolly Roger]]''. She knows she's shortly to be deflowered by Captain Scrogg, so she decides to sleep with Robin. Her reasoning is that if she becomes pregnant, whoever the father is, she'll be able to tell herself it's Robin's baby and be able to love it the way it deserves. {{spoiler|It doesn't work, but neither does Captain Scrogg's [[Attempted Rape]], so it all works out.}}

* From the start there is speculation as to whether the father of Isabelle's children is Charlie or her husband in ''[[The Thirteenth Tale (Literature)|The Thirteenth Tale]]''.

* In [[Gene Stratton Porter]]'s ''The Song of the Cardinal'', with some [[Fridge Logic]]. The father cardinal suspects an egg was laid by an interloper and the mother knows it for her own. Except, of course, her actual egg ''could'' have been tipped out of the nest by a brood parasite -- avian mothers would not have the certainty of a mammalian one.

* This could be said for George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire". {{spoiler|Cersei goes out of her way to not have Robert's children, instead getting pregnant by her brother Jaime and claiming that all three of her children are her husband's.}} This brings about a struggle for succession after Robert's death.

== Theater ==

* [[William Shakespeare]]

** In ''[[The Tempest]]'', Prospero tweaks the edge of this trope, explaining the past to Miranda:

{{quote| '''Propsero''': ''Thy mother was a piece of virtue, and<br />

* Literature/real Life: In Conn Iggulden's epic stories of the Mongol Empire, a recurring plot-theme concerns Genghiz Khan's uncertainty over the paternity of his eldest son Jechi (at the time of conception, his mother Borte was a prisoner of the Tartars and was known to have been raped). Because he half-believes in the "this is a Tartar's bastard" stories, Genghiz repeatedly shuns and blanks his oldest son, or else gives him punitive or seemingly impossible tasks to complete that he would not dream of imposing on the favoured younger sons. This had consequences that stretched down the generations and caused the Mongol empire to collapse prematurely.

* At the Oneida colony, the practice of "complex marriage" caused onlookers to wonder about the children knowing their fathers. The leader retorted that the children knew their fathers the way children outside the colony did: on the word of their mothers.

** The practice in Egypt of the Pharaoh marrying his own sister was taken to be evidence of this, but since the Pharaoh's heir would be his own son even if he was not born to the sister, it appears to be a matter of regarding only his own sister as his social equal and so an appropriate wife.

*** Also a matter of getting the strongest royal blood possible for the offspring--the stronger an heir's claim, the less likely a coup becomes, so getting it from both sides helps.