Why she made the jacket tailored to fit

IN some cases of paternity fraud, the mothers, for whatever reason, truly do not know who the real fathers are. In other cases, it’s a deliberate deception, a calculated plan, perpetrated by women who choose the partners they believe are best able to father their children.

Last week we asked men what they thought should be the punishment, if any, for women who knowingly give men jackets. This week the women tell why, for some, not even punishment is a deterrent when they are sewing full suits for unwitting men to wear.

Denise, 40:

This is not me, but a cousin of mine, and to this day her ex-husband doesn’t know. When she met him she already had a daughter, and she got pregnant for him quickly. He proposed, and even though no one in the family liked him, she said she would marry him because she didn’t want to have two children out of wedlock. So they had a quick wedding before she started showing, and she cried during the entire thing. Baby born now, much darker than either of them, but she said the baby looked like her paternal grandfather’s family. Anyway, a few years later their second child was born — dead stamp of the father. The three kids look nothing alike. It was years later, while we were all drinking, that she ‘fessed up to us that her second child may belong to the taxi driver who used to be her chauffeur, and she didn’t want the embarrassment, so she convinced her husband that the baby was his. The children are all adults now, and I don’t think the husband even knows that only one is biologically his.

Bobbette, 45:

I have a good friend who married an older guy, who basically took her from the ghetto and changed her life. She tried getting pregnant for years, but couldn’t, and we all suspected that he was the problem even though he outright refused to get tested. Well, she was approaching 30 and desperate for a baby, as he was approaching 50. So a group of us friends put it to her straight — if she really wanted a baby, then she would need to get one with someone else. We chose the guy, who was a friend of all of us, they did the deed a few times, and she ended up pregnant. Now she has her little family, and her husband goes around boasting about his miracle offspring.

Shana-Kay, 30:

In this situation I wouldn’t say it was a deliberate jacket, more like a jacket by omission, as my aunt will take God off the cross that she’s only been with one man all her life. But we think that she’s just saying that because she’s baptised now and acting like she wasn’t bad when she was younger. Anyway, word in the family is that my oldest cousin isn’t my uncle’s child, as he was abroad at the time my aunt got pregnant. But she and my grandmother messed with the dates and he believed her. My mother says the real father came to the house once and my grandmother chased him away like a dog. My uncle is none the wiser, even though it’s been years, and it’s pretty obvious that there’s something amiss when you look at their entire family together. Or he could know, and just wants to keep the peace.

Charmaine, 32:

Sometimes I think men know and just work with it, because they couldn’t be so dense, right? My neighbour’s second child that she gave to her boyfriend actually belongs to my other neighbour, and I had to ask many questions before she confessed to me. She laughs when other people point out the resemblance, but her boyfriend takes care of both children without issue. He must know, right? I mean both kids are like coffee and cream, and both parents are chocolate. She hasn’t told me why she did it, but she says he’s a good father and that’s all that matters.