Supposititious children are fraudulent offspring. These arose when an
heir was required and so a suitable baby might be procured and passed off as genuine. This practice seemed to be a common occurrence in
Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
, being used to claim birthright status to a Roman father's wealth and prestige, and rules were instituted to ensure that the children claimed by the wife were the legitimate children of the husband, or ex-husband, in some cases.
This was a common concern in the
classical period as there were dealers in supposititious children who would provide them for a fee. Laws were passed to counter this and those found to be illegitimate might be sold into
slavery
Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
.
Roman inheritance laws
While Roman wives could own property of their own via the
dowry
A dowry is a payment, such as property or money, paid by the bride's family to the groom or his family at the time of marriage. Dowry contrasts with the related concepts of bride price and dower. While bride price or bride service is a payment ...
system or inheritance, women had no legal standing to participate in public or political life. The upper class of Roman citizen was the
patrician
Patrician may refer to:
* Patrician (ancient Rome), the original aristocratic families of ancient Rome, and a synonym for "aristocratic" in modern English usage
* Patrician (post-Roman Europe), the governing elites of cities in parts of medieval ...
, and the right to participate in the Roman republic at the highest level was passed down from father to son, making paternity in the upper classes a state matter. Because of this, wealthy Roman families often employed a number of
midwives
A midwife is a health professional who cares for mothers and newborns around childbirth, a specialization known as midwifery.
The education and training for a midwife concentrates extensively on the care of women throughout their lifespan; co ...
to ensure that no sleight-of-hand occurred during the birthing period, and for a set period of time immediately after the woman gave birth. Because a Roman woman could file for a divorce after the edict of
Julian and a man could do so much earlier, a divorced woman or a widow had to announce her pregnancy and allow observers if she was to claim the child as an heir of her previous husband.
In western society
Supposititious children were a concern in
Western society
Leonardo da Vinci's ''Vitruvian Man''. Based on the correlations of ideal Body proportions">human proportions with geometry described by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius in Book III of his treatise ''De architectura''.
image:Plato Pio-Cle ...
for thousands of years and were different from
illegitimate children
Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as ''b ...
, who were designated by their paternity. Supposititious children were not the offspring of the father.
Most societies were
patrilineal
Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...
, and the blood link to the father had to be established for the child to lay claim to the inheritance or, at the very least, the paternity could not be in doubt. That fear is associated with the term
cuckold, borrowing the name of a bird notorious for tricking other birds into raising its chicks as their own.
In folklore
Supposititious children appear in myths and legends across many Western countries. In some medieval European countries, fairies were believed to sometimes swap out human children with fairy children so that the human parents unsuspectingly raise the
fairy child as their own. In these legends, there must be a legitimate child present for the fairies to work their tricks on the human parents. These legends played upon the fear medieval men had concerning raising offspring that may not be their own. This was particularly a problem among the upper classes, as older men would marry younger women more frequently in the upper classes.
In popular culture
The fear of supposititious children also appears in media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. With the introduction of DNA tests, men can request a medical procedure to gain incontrovertible truth about a child’s paternity. Due to court-ordered child support payments being levied on biological fathers in the event of separation, the fear of supposititious children has been extended from merely raising the child into the fear of having to financially support a child that does not share a biological link. Some entertainers have capitalized on this phenomenon by televising the results of disputed paternity suits.
Maury Povich
Maurice Richard Povich (born January 17, 1939) is an American retired television personality, best known for hosting the tabloid talk show '' Maury'' which aired from 1991 to 2022. Povich began his career as a radio reporter, initially at WWD ...
made the phrase “You are not the father!” famous on the show which shares his name.
References
{{reflist
External links
Fairies and Folk TalesThe Maury Povich ShowMidwives
Family law in ancient Rome
Legitimacy law
Childhood in ancient Rome