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My mother got a call about three years ago from a man who told her he thinks his mother is my mother's sister. Turns out my grandmother had a child at 16 and pu
by OedipusRex 8y ago
My mother got a call about three years ago from a man who told her he thinks his mother is my mother's sister. Turns out my grandmother had a child at 16 and put her up for adoption. Now I have an extra aunt and she's super cool.
- njarboe 8y agoMost of these sort of stories turn out ok. The ones I have yet to hear about is when a person discovers that their father is not their genetic father due to their mother's infidelity. This is likely to be true for millions of people in the US. Or maybe estimates I've seen for this happening are way high? If it is only one in a thousand, then that would mean 300,000 people in the US are in this situation. Most are likely to find out eventually as more and more people get their DNA sequenced.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoWhen people find out that their dad isn't actually they're biological dad they're not going to tell anybody because it is likely to make everyone hate each other (especially if the non-biological dad doesn't know already) and because it reflects poorly on them in some contexts. There's probably a lot of mothers out there who feel really worried when they read news stories like this and there's probably a lot of people who aren't much like their sibling(s) that wonder.
- PHGamer 8y agolol i know someone who found out this via one of those gene services. gained an extra sister from his real father. Its a big issue because its generally viewed a evolutionary acceptable for a father to sire multiple offspring from different women but if a women cheats on man and the only son of that man is not his, its a big ego kill. For that reason the secret was kept till his father died.
- skookumchuck 8y agoIt's more than a big ego kill. In the most extreme example, kingship is hereditary, and people would fight wars over who the legitimate heir was.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoPlus, you're working your ass off to raise someone else's offspring. So it is different. Darwin spinning in his grave: "Nah, we already have a child, let's not have any more."
- LitFan 8y ago> they're not going to tell anybody The angst they save their family still exists - they'll keep it to themselves. Even without sharing, that's bound to have some social implications.
- hellogoodbyeeee 8y agoWhat scares me worse than finding out about a mother's actual infidelity is the test, due to statistical variation, falsely reporting infidelity. Could that happen? Or are the DNA tests correct 100% of the time?
- yorwba 8y agoSince most humans inherit exactly half of their DNA from each parent, it should be pretty obvious when 50% match the mother and the rest doesn't match either parent. So long as enough locations are checked, the probability of getting such a result by chance mutations could be made extremely low.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Since most humans inherit exactly half of their DNA from each parent, it should be pretty obvious when 50% match the mother and the rest doesn't match either parent. Assuming the other parent is human, or even from the same tree of life, that's not going to happen, because the actual parent will share some DNA with the purported parent; you'll never get 50% match the actual mother, 0% match neither the mother nor the putative father.
- yorwba 8y agoAh, right, I was only thinking about locations which are already different between mother and father.
- dv_dt 8y agoThere are odd reported cases of people being chimeras and carrying two different genotypes in their bodies. But again, extremely unlikely - but I suspect we will find out more and more about the exceptions which break the expected rollup of model of locations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_%28genetics%29
- dekhn 8y agoThis is called Npe (not parent expected) and iirc 10% of tests have that result.
- njarboe 8y agoHiding that one or both parents are not the biological parents from the child is one thing. A child finding out about that, while serious, not that devastating and a pretty common event. The father not knowing that the child is not his is a different ball of wax. The mother will always know the child is hers or not (baby switching in hospitals and other rare events excepted). What percentage of children have fathers that are not their biological fathers and the father doen't know it? I have no idea, but this fact being discovered via DNA is going to really hurt a lot of relationships from each discovery.
- lallysingh 8y ago1-2% per generation: https://www.kqed.org/science/11450/new-dna-studies-debunk-misconceptions-about-paternal-relationships https://www.kqed.org/science/11450/new-dna-studies-debunk-mi...