The conversation I have with folks includes a reminder that the end result of their curiosity can and often does directly impact others - known and unknown - in unexpected and even unwelcome ways.
And altho it’s six year old by now, and much has changed, I usually encourage them to read Libby Copeland’s “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are” before they buy a kit.
This is a thoughtful and well organized treatise on the topic of DNA testing, Paul. Yet it is in some ways irrelevant to the need for some of us to know certain things with certainty. Or at least as certain as DNA testing can be. But that's a whole 'nother topic.
Thank you @David Shaw the key bit for me is that people go into this well informed and educated on the subject before they test. So many go in blinkered. But I agree that it’s part of our fabric as researchers to get to the truth. But that can have a cost attached to it.
I first tested in 2014. I now have several friends and relatives who found out one or both parents aren't who they thought they were when their results came in. Some ended well, others did not. It's a tricky thing to navigate.
That’s what makes it feel darker, it wasn’t a hidden truth, it was a seed planted right into an existing wound.
She’d already spent her life feeling like she didn’t belong, and then her mother’s final words reinforced that fear instead of resolving it. So when the DNA test confirmed she was her father’s daughter, it didn’t really heal anything, it just raised a harsher possibility: that she always belonged, and was made to feel otherwise anyway.
That’s the real sting. Not betrayal of lineage, but betrayal of emotional truth.
Because in the end, she doesn’t get clarity or comfort, just the unsettling sense that her lifelong doubt may have been shaped by the person who should have given her certainty.
The conversation I have with folks includes a reminder that the end result of their curiosity can and often does directly impact others - known and unknown - in unexpected and even unwelcome ways.
And altho it’s six year old by now, and much has changed, I usually encourage them to read Libby Copeland’s “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing Is Upending Who We Are” before they buy a kit.
It’s an important lesson for anyone thinking of taking a test
This is a thoughtful and well organized treatise on the topic of DNA testing, Paul. Yet it is in some ways irrelevant to the need for some of us to know certain things with certainty. Or at least as certain as DNA testing can be. But that's a whole 'nother topic.
Thank you @David Shaw the key bit for me is that people go into this well informed and educated on the subject before they test. So many go in blinkered. But I agree that it’s part of our fabric as researchers to get to the truth. But that can have a cost attached to it.
Absolutely spot-on advice. Thank you Paul.
DNA testing has proved (despite Ophra audiences hissing at men) that a lot of woman have fooled around.
Curiosity and the cat, right? Sage advice that we need to be prepared for the unexpected.
It’s all about being prepared for the unexpected
I first tested in 2014. I now have several friends and relatives who found out one or both parents aren't who they thought they were when their results came in. Some ended well, others did not. It's a tricky thing to navigate.
It’s one of those outcomes we always think happens to someone else.
That’s what makes it feel darker, it wasn’t a hidden truth, it was a seed planted right into an existing wound.
She’d already spent her life feeling like she didn’t belong, and then her mother’s final words reinforced that fear instead of resolving it. So when the DNA test confirmed she was her father’s daughter, it didn’t really heal anything, it just raised a harsher possibility: that she always belonged, and was made to feel otherwise anyway.
That’s the real sting. Not betrayal of lineage, but betrayal of emotional truth.
Because in the end, she doesn’t get clarity or comfort, just the unsettling sense that her lifelong doubt may have been shaped by the person who should have given her certainty.
'Mom' didn't take the test. She still may have had an affair and believed someone else to be the father.
Mom could have had an affair leading to an incorrect assumption of paternity.
Not an easy life to live with or an easy lie. I hope they slept well at night!