Who's the daddy stories

[Cruising Soaps]

Does anyone know what soap had the first Who's the Daddy story and what characters did it surround?

[Paul Raven]

Although later it was done to death on most soaps I think the first time a baby's paternity was in question would have been on Days with the Laura/Bill/Mickey triangle.

Laura married Mickey but was raped by Bill and became pregnant. But mickey was sterile so the baby was Bill's. it took years for the paternity reveal.

Around the same time on Another World Rachel married Russ but had sex with Steven Frame and became pregnant with his child. Everyone believed the child to be  Russ' until the truth came out.

ATWT did the Paul/Dan/Liz  story where Liz got pregnant by Dan who was unhappily married to Susan. But Susan fell pregnant also so Dan stayed with her. His brother Paul married Liz and Dan was unaware Betsy was his daughter, not his niece.

Up until then (late 1960's) that sort of story wouldn't have been permitted to due to censorship of the time.

[te.]

I think another obvious issue is that paternity wasn't that easy to determine - DNA testing didn't really get to that point until some time in the mid-80s. So either paternity would've been obvious from the timelines not matching up or that the blood type made it impossible for someone to be the father; or obviously as in DAYS's case someone being sterile.

[Dion]

I can think of one earlier...Robin's paternity on The Guiding Light during it's first year on TV back in 1952 - 1953.

I'm guessing having Robin's mother Kathy Roberts secretly elope to marry Bob Lang, being widowed when Bob died and then marrying Dick Grant (the late James Lipton, later a writer on a number of soaps and host of Inside the Actors Studio) when Bob was barely even cold was the way they got around censorship issues.

And of course while Kathy was busy trying to pass off her child as Dick's, she also had to face a trial over her suspected involvement in Bob's death and the machinations of Dick's mother who suspected the truth.

Eventually Kathy told Dick the truth about Robin but by then he no longer cared as he was having an affair with nurse Janet Johnson (Ruth Warrick).