# Finding a biological parent when you don't know who they are. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2017, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076 "2017-03-13T09:51:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/1 "2017-03-13T09:51:38Z")
So, my brother revealed something to me last night. A bit stunning to say the least. His father-in-law emigrated from Poland after World War 2. His mother-in-law has been dead for many years. For about a year his wife had been talking about doing the Ancestry dot com thing to get a perspective on her family and relatives. So he finally bought her a kit for her birthday some months ago. She was thrilled. She did the test. Came back that she had no Polish ancestry. WTF, right? She knows for a fact that her dad was born/raised in Poland. Her DNA says she has English, Irish, and Scandinavian blood. The English and Irish part would have been from her mother for sure. They don’t tell anyone about the test. Instead she talked her dad into taking one. He comes back with an extraordinary amount of Polish ancestry, like 87%, and the rest a mix of German, Russian, and Czech. You can see where this is headed, right? So she lied to her father and told him the test was skewed and he has to do it again. Only this time instead of sending it to Ancestry she sent it (along with her saliva) to a paternity test. Yep. You guessed it. The man she called daddy for almost 50 years is not really her daddy. Sister in-law is devastated. She hasn’t told her father this yet. She is certain he doesn’t know. I don’t know what she’s basing that on. This does answer some questions, though. While she looks a lot like her mother she never looked anything like him, yet her brothers and sisters do. She’s seen many photos of her mother in 1968, and she was quite pregnant. So s.i.l. is certain she’s not adopted. She really want’s to know who her biological father is. Dead or alive she want’s to know who it is. She’s been using the Ancestry subscription service to track down hits of matches to her DNA. She put together a board that resembles the suspect board we use in law enforcement. She also got a hold of 3 of her mothers close friends from years ago. They are all elderly but had plenty of memories to share. While none of them had a clue as to who her real father is, she was shocked to hear them say this this news did not surprise them. Apparently her dad was a real bastard to her mother and it didn’t stun them that she would have found comfort in another mans arms. That made her feel even worse about all this. My brother told all of this to me last night over some beers. He said that his wife is slumping into a depression and he made her an appointment with a counselor this week because he feels she needs to speak with a professional about how all this is affecting her. In the meantime he wanted to know if I knew of any way to track down her father. Other than what she’s doing with the Ancestry thing I haven’t the faintest idea of what to do. We have no idea who this person is. All we have are clues to their heritage. Is it even possible to succeed at what she’s attempting? For all we know it could have just been a one night fling with someone in mid-1967. Anything you can think of will be appreciated. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/2 "2017-03-13T10:38:39Z")
Look up old diaries, personal phonebooks, family albums. Letters. And if she is determined to find out, ask her old man. He might know or at least suspect. [QUOTE=pkbites] She also got a hold of 3 of her mothers close friends from years ago. They are all elderly but had plenty of memories to share. While none of them had a clue as to who her real father is, she was shocked to hear them say this this news did not surprise them. Apparently her dad was a real bastard to her mother and it didn’t stun them that she would have found comfort in another mans arms. That made her feel even worse about all this. [/QUOTE] Yeah, don’t base anything on that. Remember when a man cheats its his fault, when a woman cheats, its still his fault, and you cannot expect Dead!Mom’s friends to be even the slightest objective about this. The fact that her Dad was a bastard to her Mom seems to have been a surprise to her; and if they continued living together as a family after she was born and she never saw any mistreatment; then that seriously does call the mother’s friends opinions into question. ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/3 "2017-03-13T11:20:40Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Look up old diaries, personal phonebooks, family albums. Letters. > > And if she is determined to find out, ask her old man. He might know or at least suspect. > Yeah, don’t base anything on that. Remember when a man cheats its his fault, when a woman cheats, its still his fault, and you cannot expect Dead!Mom’s friends to be even the slightest objective about this. The fact that her Dad was a bastard to her Mom seems to have been a surprise to her; and if they continued living together as a family after she was born and she never saw any mistreatment; then that seriously does call the mother’s friends opinions into question. I guess she did go through her mothers stuff and found nothing. I agree with you about the friends. Paul said he felt the one woman was definitely hiding something. Instead of saying “I don’t know” I guess she kept saying 'I can’t help you with this". Other than that I only know what he told me. I don’t think he told her he was going to say anything to me. ---
**Author:** ![MissTake](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misstake/32/3189_2.png) [@MissTake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissTake)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/4 "2017-03-13T11:29:04Z")
When you take the [Ancestry.com](http://Ancestry.com) DNA testing, it gives you familial matches. They may be like 8th cousins, but that is a starting point. Has she tried looking through that panel and weeding out those who are related to her mother? ---
**Author:** ![pkbites](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pkbites/32/204_2.png) [@pkbites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pkbites)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/5 "2017-03-13T13:20:43Z")
> [@MissTake](#): > > When you take the [Ancestry.com](http://Ancestry.com) DNA testing, it gives you familial matches. They may be like 8th cousins, but that is a starting point. Has she tried looking through that panel and weeding out those who are related to her mother? I guess that’s what she’s been doing. This has been going on for a while, but I just heard of it this weekend. i guess she’s already down to some 2nd cousin hits that are not from her mothers side. He said she wants to have one of her siblings take the test so she can pick out whats her mothers easier by comparing them. Pauls trying to come up with a pretext to get them to take it. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/6 "2017-03-13T13:26:41Z")
Honesty might be the best policy here. Since for all we know, they could well be not his as well. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/7 "2017-03-13T13:33:58Z")
**pkbites** : You might find [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=18756157) thread interesting. I was in a somewhat similar situation myself, and posted here about it. The responses are, as usual, insightful. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/8 "2017-03-13T13:53:55Z")
Any of the friends’ husbands were Scandinavian? Maybe they know more that one of them does not want to admit for a good reason. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/9 "2017-03-13T13:57:54Z")
This is going nowhere good after 50 years. If she is letting all her mom’s friends know it’s going to get back to her father and then what? An old man now knows his wife cuckolded him and she’s tearing it up trying to find a mystery man 50 years on. Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/10 "2017-03-13T15:22:18Z")
On a tangential note where does the DNA data that this registry is using for matches come from? Other [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) users? Criminal and suspects that have had DNA testing? If I take a [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) test am I agreeing to let [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) give my name and contact info to people combing their DNA histories? ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/11 "2017-03-13T18:00:23Z")
> [@pkbites](#): > > I guess she did go through her mothers stuff and found nothing. I agree with you about the friends. Paul said he felt the one woman was definitely hiding something. Instead of saying “I don’t know” I guess she kept saying 'I can’t help you with this". She’s not looking for “her father is really Mark” in her mother’s stuff; she’s looking for “we vacationed with Steve and Ellen” and “the Olsons played bridge with us.” More than likely, the guy is somebody she knew and felt comfortable with: a friend, the husband of a friend, a friend of her husband, somebody at her church or bridge club, etc. Finding him is going to depend on finding who she was close to in 1967. If the guy was completely random (the guy at the filling station, e.g.), there’s probably no good way to track him down unless one of his relatives shows up in the Ancestry database and your brother’s wife can research the relative’s own relatives to find out who lived in her town or where the family vacationed. ---
**Author:** ![MissTake](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misstake/32/3189_2.png) [@MissTake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MissTake)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/12 "2017-03-13T18:01:06Z")
> [@astro](#): > > On a tangential note where does the DNA data that this registry is using for matches come from? Other [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) users? Criminal and suspects that have had DNA testing? If I take a [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) test am I agreeing to let [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) give my name and contact info to people combing their DNA histories? It matches with other people who have taken the [ancestry.com](http://ancestry.com) DNA test. It will list any familial matches by just their name. In order to contact the other people, you have to be a member of the site. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/13 "2017-03-13T18:03:15Z")
> [@astro](#): > > This is going nowhere good after 50 years. If she is letting all her mom’s friends know it’s going to get back to her father and then what? An old man now knows his wife cuckolded him and she’s tearing it up trying to find a mystery man 50 years on. > > Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk I recall one of these dramas with A and B from our workplace where A was boinking B’s husband. In the lunchroom gossip, someone asked whether we should be telling B about it. One of the older, wiser ladies says “What makes you think she doesn’t know?” In the end, A left, and last I heard, B and husband were still together 20 years later. So what makes you think dad doesn’t already know? ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/14 "2017-03-13T18:26:46Z")
> [@slash2k](#): > > She’s not looking for “her father is really Mark” in her mother’s stuff; she’s looking for “we vacationed with Steve and Ellen” and “the Olsons played bridge with us.” More than likely, the guy is somebody she knew and felt comfortable with: a friend, the husband of a friend, a friend of her husband, somebody at her church or bridge club, etc. Finding him is going to depend on finding who she was close to in 1967. > > If the guy was completely random (the guy at the filling station, e.g.), there’s probably no good way to track him down unless one of his relatives shows up in the Ancestry database and your brother’s wife can research the relative’s own relatives to find out who lived in her town or where the family vacationed. She needs to combine this with asking Mom’s friends again. Even if they don’t know, they might be able to point her where to look. Although this will very likely result in finding herself asking some Octogenarian if he boinked her Mom in the swinging sixties. Dad might also know or suspect. She will have to find out the state of their relationship at the time. If there was a trial separation, them she may have been conceived as a result of some relationship then. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/15 "2017-03-13T19:25:47Z")
Keep in mind that even if you find a way to track down who the likely father is, she’s still not going to know that’s the guy without him either admitting it or submitting to an actual test of some sort (another form of “admitting it” or allowing someone to find out). Since this isn’t an investigation, one would presume the guy is completely free to cooperate or not. And the guy, if he’s even still alive, might simply not want to go along with it for his own reasons. It’s sort of like adopted people later finding out who their biological parents were; sometimes the parent doesn’t want to be found and sometimes for fathers they don’t actually know they fathered a kid. So the desktop portion of figuring this out might end there if the guy is dead, uncooperative, or doesn’t believe the story she might present him with. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/16 "2017-03-13T20:48:32Z")
I’ll throw a few thoughts out here: 1. I’d want a DNA test done through a known lab for both parties before I was convinced. I would agree that what they have now looks like an indication of shenanigans, but we have absolutely no idea of what type of care what taken with any of samples. For comparisons sake, I had my dog’s DNA sent in to get her breed tested. She looked like German Shepherd and Lab or Golden Retriever. She came back English Sheepdog and Basset Hound, which was clearly not the case. 2. The fact that only certain factors came back in the DNA test may or may not be an accurate indicator of a relationship. There’s a reason that DNA tests for paternity look for a certain set of factors. Were those factors looked for here? Again, the better way to be sure is to find a lab that specializes in testing for paternity. DNA is a tricky thing. Sometimes the deck gets shuffled in mysterious ways. 3. It sounds like it’s too late, but have they asked themselves in all seriousness if it really matters? This man raised her. He was her father in every way that matters. What does she gain now by proving that he isn’t, other than hurting him? 4. If your brother and SiL are determined to dig through things and find a man who may or may not exist, they might consider hiring a private investigator who specializes in this. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/17 "2017-03-13T20:53:44Z")
The percentage Scandinavian should be a clue. Either (a) she wound up with someone completely outside her circle of friends and co-workers, or (b) it was someone in the group. (b) is the likely choice. If she was working, my bet is on co-workers; you get more interaction over 8 hours x 5 days than with evening and weekend get-togethers… Then it turns into late night projects, etc… ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/18 "2017-03-13T21:33:33Z")
All I have to suggest is that she look into other service that do DNA relative matching for genealogy. A different pool of users (even with quite a lot of overlap) increases her chance of finding a match. I know that 23andMe does relative matching, but I think both parties have to opt in to the matching service. I don’t have personal knowledge of them but there are other companies that do it as well (e.g., Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage). ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/19 "2017-03-13T21:49:16Z")
I suppose my main issue with her rooting up the ground trying to find this mystery guy is that it’s 50 years ago. Who is going to be served in any positive manner by doing this at this point? There’s no CS at issue. All that will happen is that her father (even if he already knows) will be _publically_ humiliated. Her bio dad if ID’d and alive will have to deal with a super awkward situation on multiple levels and an apparently super needy 50 year old bio daughter determined to make a connection. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2017, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076/20 "2017-03-13T22:57:50Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Her bio dad if ID’d and alive will have to deal with a super awkward situation on multiple levels and an apparently super needy 50 year old bio daughter determined to make a connection. Sometimes people just want to know something about their bio parents. My grandmother was illegitimate, born in 1901 in the Netherlands. A big shame, at the time. She suffered a lot due to that. She always wanted to know about her bio dad, but her mother refused to give her any details at all, for nearly her entire life. Then just before her mom died, she revealed that his name was “Herbert” and that she’d kept a picture of him until just the week before, but burned it because she sensed approaching death. She refused to give any more info, and died not long after. Grandma really, really resented her mom for that. She’d just wanted to know _something_ about her dad, the circumstances, etc. But she was denied that. She didn’t want a connection, she just wanted some info. I did eventually sleuth out who her dad was, with about 95% certainty. Sadly, it was long after Grandma had passed, though. I understand the woman’s desire to get some info. I too worry that it could end up hurting some feelings, but she may find out enough to satisfy her curiosity while preserving everyone’s dignity. I think she’s entitled to make the attempt. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/finding-a-biological-parent-when-you-dont-know-who-they-are/782076.md?page=2)