The Cuckold

The definition of a cuckold is a "man." It is the husband who is cheated on. This doesn't seem fair to me. What about the wife who is cheated on? Yeah, the internet calls her a "cuckqueen," but history? I'll never forget Shakespeare's Othello and the tension that built up with him stressing over becoming a cuckold. This is a grave insecurity that continues today. Men are emotionally insecure. What about the women whose men cheat on them? Are they somehow more secure? This rhetorical questioning and the observation that society blatantly treats men and women different in heterosexual relationships prevents me from taking paternity relating to cuckold-ry seriously. Unfortunately, I have a sense of objectiveness. Let's take a second to talk about how cuckold-ry affects paternity.

My working title for this section was "THE CUCKOLD: Sorry Daddy and Use it or Lose it…" When I looked up the articles for a quick Google (Yahoo) search engine to give me the citation for the articles herein, all that pulled up was porn. This really proves my point about not wanting to mess with this subject. Have fun, guys. Women, I'm a divorce attorney if you need to get away from your marriage and join me in the light of navigating paternity for non married relationships.

Here are two articles I've read for this research, and I welcome others to read this as well. I will end up trying really hard not to talk about C.C. Art. 198.

Rachel L. Kovach, Sorry Daddy--Your Time is Up: Rebutting the Presumption of Paternity in Louisiana, 56 Loy. L. Rev. 651 (2010)

Matthew P. Clark, Use It or Lose It: Revising Louisiana’s Process to Establish Paternity, 84 La. L. Rev. (2023)

More reasons why I get frustrated with the cuckold narrative:

• I feel that the above two law review articles infantilize the cuckold. They treat a grown man like a child.

  
  

• The husband of the mother has superior paternal rights under current law over the DNA father. At the very least, the husband has rights from the moment the child is born. If a child is born at 8:05 am, the husband is the father starting at 8:05 am. He does not need to wait until enough people can be gathered to sign an affidavit of paternity. He doesn't need to pay and get a DNA test for himself and his child.

  
  

• The husband of the mother, especially of a woman who has slept with someone who is not her husband while she was married, has the right to get a divorce. There is no point when he cannot divorce her. He can get a no-fault divorce if he wants to try to make it work. He can get a 103(2) divorce based on adultery if he doesn't want to try to make it work.

  
  

• The husband of a wife has a gender wage gap in his favor. Oh, wait, I promised I would consider the paternity issues in a vacuum without considering gender wage gap. I guess I bring this up because finances are not a reasonable hinderance for a man to divorce a woman. Finances are not a reasonable hinderance for a man to get a therapist to determine whether he thinks something is wrong in his marriage.

  
  

• Women are frequently tasked with keeping track of their fertility via ovulation trackers and the simple task of keeping tampons/pads stocked. If a man is married to a woman, he knows whether she is likely to conceive based on living with her. If he doesn't want to be aware of these issues affecting her body, why is he married to her? Additionally, a man can track the few days or weeks he is sleeping with his wife after she gets her period to determine whether she has skipped a subsequent period. He can talk with her about why she may have missed a period and determine immediately if there is a pregnancy from outside of the marriage. Which will lead him to a 103(2) divorce, if he doesn't want to make it work. For a husband to be oblivious to his wife's period is concerning on an ethical and moral level.

  
  

• Another maker of a cuckold is the "I don't want a divorce yet, but let's see other people" marriage. Sure, they have been living in separate households for five years when the wife gets pregnant. Obviously it's not the husband's baby, it's the new boyfriend's baby. My opinion about this is there are legal repercussions that come with this life choice. The parties need to accept the repercussions and not fuss about them. This is an easy fix, but it does require good timing and court.

  
  

• This "let's see other people" marriage is wonderful for my hypothesis that paternity should be severed from marriage. If these people who want to move apart but not get divorced don't want husband to be dad, I'm on board! That's one more agreement for severing paternity from marriage.

  
  

• These are entire articles that whine and moan about men who are married who have children who are not biologically theirs.  This is such an entitled niche issue.  I don’t understand why they got published in the first place- there is so much more depth and long term repercussions to larger swaths of people than these cuckold dads.  And to be a married dad at all is a luxury.  This is truly disturbing.

  
  

• This is an example of men are idiots and the ones who are especially awful damage outcomes for the rest of us.  Even the laws the men make for themselves don’t protect them from this dumb behavior.  I’ve got no problem shaming the alleged cuckold.  Because you know what? It’s just a defensive mechanism to claim your woman was “cheating” on you.  Also, what about the woman who gets cheated on? When can we talk about her?  Until we can talk about the woman who gets cheated on in the same essay we talk about the man who gets cheated on, I’m going to write it off as unequal and therefore refuse to discuss it.