I was watching Prisoner (Prisoner: Cell Block H in the USA and UK), which is an Australian soap opera and the storyline is Lizzie who is somewhere between 65 and 75 was a criminal and had her kids taken away from her.
So now one of her kids shows up at the prison claiming to be her daughter and she has a Granddaughter. According to the plot the daughter was about ten when she was taken away from Lizzie, so that means it would be well over 50 years (minimum) since she saw her kid.
Of course the women is a phony and Lizzie says “Of course I knew she wasn’t my kid, do you think a mother can’t tell her own daughter.” (Lizzie was just pretending to go along as she wanted a family even if it really wasn’t her real one).
Since I don’t have kids, I will ask this question of parents, but anyone else who wants to chime in please do.
Do you think a parent could tell his kid after such a long seperation?
If you think so, then how old do you think the kid would have to be at the time of seperation that some 25, or 50 years later you could tell the child as an adult.
Like for me I basically look the same since I did when I was 12 years old. I shot up between 12 and 13 to six feet and I still have all my hair (OK it’s a bit gray now) and my face cleared up, but basically if you saw me at 12 you’d have no trouble knowing me know at 45.
I’m not that great with faces, but I’m pretty clued into some of my son and daughter’s more distinctive features because they match mine. It would be pretty hard for an impostor to match eyebrows etc., but after 50 years would I remember those features? I don’t know. Not to be sexist, but I think a woman would have an easier time making those fine distinctions.
I’m lucky if I recognize people I know if I pass them on the street and am not expecting them. It’s highly unlikely I’d recognize my given-up-at-birth child unprompted. It’s at least possible I’d be able to tell whether someone making the claim was telling the truth or not, but absent some objective evidence (e.g., you have blue eyes and little Umb had brown eyes) I probably wouldn’t bet on my accuracy.
Yeah, maybe someone could, but not me. My mother has the amazing ability to stop random people in supermarkets because she remembers them from when they were in pre-school with me. Myself? I probably wouldn’t recognize my mother if I wasn’t expecting her. I’m just no good at faces.
Because my kids take after my side of the family, I would. I’m not very familiar with my husband’s family’s features, so if they looked more like him, I’d have a hard time. As it is, they look just like me, and I look just like my Dad, so if in twenty years I saw my Dad as a young man, I’d know it was my son.
Before ten? Puberty can change a face significantly, especially with men. Stronger chins, heavier jaws, brows… I guess I might be fooled by someone claiming to be my kid in the OP’s scenario, especially if she did her homework as to the facts and details of our old home and relatives.
I guess I would compare my “kids” face to my own face, or my parent’s faces at his or her age. If there is a resemblance, I might be more inclined to believe the story.
In the senerio in the original soap opera, the girl, claiming to be the daughter did know the actual daugther, they were in the same group home together, so she knew enough background to fill somethings in. The actual daughter had died, so that is how this imposter got the idea to “fill in.”
There was this kid in my grade school that moved to a new town a state away in 3rd grade (or so). So the last time I saw him he was 9 or 10. A decade or so later, I went to this small town to see my boyfriend in college, and I saw this kid at Taco Bell who looked really familiar. It took me a while, but bam! Placed him - it was Erik! Very weird. He recognized me too. His father took no time to recognize me.
Sure, it was only 10+ years in my story, but I think an adult might do pretty well recognizing someone they last saw at age 10, even decades later.
Ha ha. I found an old girlfriend on Facebook whose son looked very familiar, if you know what I mean. Turns out he wasn’t mine, but it was an interesting couple of days anyway. Here’s a thread about the subject.
I’m totally confused by your math here. If Lizzie is 65 to 75, then 50 years ago, she was 15 to 25. If her daughter was 10 at that time, then you’re saying Lizzie gave birth to her when she (Lizzie) was between 5 and 15 years old. And you say it would be well *over *50 years, which would make Lizzie even younger - 0 to 10? Maybe you’re thinking of it backwards? It looks like 50 would be a reasonable maximum, rather than a minimum.
Anyway, I think it’s certainly possible she’d recognize her after that much time, but not neccessarily a given. When I went to my 15-year high school reunion, there was one girl I never would have recognized. She’d had a hard 15 years, and it had significantly changed her face. Other people had gone bald, or lost or gained a lot of weight, but they still looked basically the same.
On the other hand, I didn’t know her that well to begin with. If she had been a close friend, it might have been different. I guess to me, it seems unlikely that you’d mistake a stranger for your daughter, but you might mistake your daughter for a stranger.
I think I would. My kids are young now, but they have distinctive features and certain expressions. It might take a minute or 10 if it had been a really long time, or if they gained a lot of weight it would be hard.
Something I have noticed since having kids is I can recognize certain expressions or ways of doing things that are immediately recognizable as mine or my husband’s or some other family members’. I see it in my friends’ kids too, that even as they grow older they have a certain manner of tilting their head, or looking at you sideways or something, that is recognizable. I think a mother would often be able to recognize this.
I am also better at doing those “match the celebrity photos to their baby photos” games that magazines sometimes have since I had kids of my own. I used to think all babies/kids kind of looked the same and especially had a hard time telling babies apart. Now I recognize their distinguishing features much quicker.