This article draws on a study of the use of genetic paternity testing in the Australian context. It uses data from interviews with women in regular or cohabitating relationships whose partners exited the relationship because of a pregnancy and subsequently denied paternity. At a broader level, it explores the fragility of paternity itself in the early 21st century within the context of unprecedented sexual freedoms and transformative changes to family formation and intimate relationships. It also locates cohabitating paternity in a broader discursive context that has seen an unparalleled demonization of mothers as potential perpetrators of ‘paternity fraud’, a neo-legal exposé of infidelity and extortion of child support that commercial DNA paternity testing purports to be able to uncover.
