Maury Povich’s eponymous daytime TV show, “Maury,” ended in 2022 after a 24-season run, but the host isn’t fully retired quite yet. His latest venture? An at-home paternity test. And he’s calling the test The Results Are In.
Anyone who’s watched the show before knows that “Maury” was most well-known for its DNA-testing segments. During these segments, Povich would speak to guests who wanted to prove (or deny) that they were the parent of a child. At some point, Povich would inevitably utter the words “The results are in . . .” followed by “You are the father!” or “You are not the father!”
This trope – among others on Povich’s show – has long been criticized for being exploitative, sensationalistic, and downright harmful. But in his latest venture, Povich is putting a more positive spin on his interest in DNA testing.
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“I’ve been around paternity testing for more than 20 years, so I know exactly what’s going on and how we can help those people who are looking for fathers, fathers who are looking for children, fathers who don’t think they’re the father, fathers who think they’re the father – and we can unite families after a long period of time,” he told TMZ Live.
During the TMZ interview, Povich cited a survey he said was conducted by The New York Times that found that “as many as 10 percent of the children in this country are with the wrong birth father,” he said. (We couldn’t find the survey he mentioned, and in fact, The New York Times has stated that the often-cited 10 percent figure is likely a major overestimation.)
Povich also told TMZ Live, “By the way, a lot of the fathers want to be the father – we have a lot of people on the show over the years where the wife didn’t want this guy as the birth father but he wanted to be the birth father.”
Although he didn’t take this point any further, implicit in the comment is a kind of judgment, the same one that “Maury” often invited viewers to make of the show’s guests: that one person in the situation is a morally upright person who only wants the best for the child, and the other is a deceitful good-for-nothing, a bad parent. Of course, situations of uncertain paternity aren’t always so straight-forward – and are probably best handled off of daytime TV. What’s more, someone might have a very valid reason to hope or insist a former partner isn’t the biological parent of their child – something Povich’s comments ignore.
Later, Povich noted that the test would be helpful in situations where child support was being debated, saying, “Many fathers say, ‘I’m not the father of this child, I’m not going to pay any support.’ So now we have a test that brings the truth home.”
Povich created The Results Are In in partnership with the DNA Diagnostics Center, the same company that conducted all of “Maury”‘s paternity testing during the show’s taping. The kits are currently available at theresultsarein.com for $199.
