One. Anyone who uses your DNA for test/research makes tons of money. You don’t.
Two. You may not be who you think you are. It’ll shock you.
My twin brother did those DNA ancestry test. What affects my brother affects me alike. We found out that our dad is not our biological father. What made it rough is that two of my older sisters had dad as a biological father.
We all have the same mom but who’s our father ?? How did we come into this family?
I took the test hoping I would find out I wasn’t who I think I am. I never felt welcomed by my parents. I wanted to discover that I was in the wrong family, with the wrong parents and that my real family was out there someplace. As a kid (only child) I used to wish it would turn out I was adopted. Unfortunately, the results were as expected and pretty boring. I found one first cousin, but I already knew him. Tons of “third - sixth cousins.” It was interesting, not sorry I spent the $100, but anticlimactic.
So sorry your experience was traumatic. That will be hard to digest. Hope you can get some answers eventually.
So? This is true of anyone providing a service that you pay for. I don’t give a hoot in hell what someone chooses to do with my DNA, I have never bought into the general paranoia about this topic. OK, they have my DNA. What the hell are they going to do with it now? Tests, research…what do I care? If it’s some nefarious dystopian cyberpunk shit, that people often imply, well…if we get to that point, we’re all fucked anyway, what’s the difference?
I think I have it figured it out and my brother and sister agreed. It’s funny how when faced with this revelation you remembered some things in your childhood. I remembered Sue and Lyle, my parents’ best friends who’s always there for us. They were childless and my mom, being graceful, bore us for them.
That begs a question, why didn’t we live with them as a family?
Cops are using genealogy DNA databases to solve cold cases. They can pinpoint distant relatives as suspects.
That’s a bit unsettling. Especially if most of the public doesn’t know this happens with their test results.
But, many of these cold cases were horrific and the victim’s families need closure. Seeing someone charged decades later must be comforting to the family.
This is the least likely explanation you could have come up with. Most likely, your mom had an affair. Were your parents separated for any period of time when she might have had a boyfriend?
B/c your mom didn’t bear you for them and you were not their family.
Our parents have feet of clay, and so do we, and so do our kids. You and your brother are still the people you grew up to be and nothing can change that.
They never separated and no affairs. My brother have the Xmas video we had put on VCR tape from the reels. It was in the 50s and showed us as kids. Sue and Lyle was there and my niece remarked that I look like Lyle.
My brother is going to bring the player and the tape for us to view.
Well, my long-lost half sister and I did it partially to prove we here half-siblings.
I think it would have been kind of a bummer if that wasn’t the case (we had gotten pretty close), but the confirmation was a good thing, even though we had a strong reason to believe there would be a match.
Plus, the breakdown was kind of cool. Not groundbreaking or lifechanging, but kind of cool.
My wife, who was adopted, has identified her biological father, who is still living, and a number of bio cousins and aunts. (Whether or not she cares to ever try to make contact is up to her, though.)
We’ve pretty much identified who her maternal great-grandparents are, and two families that might be her grandparents. She has made contact with one of those cousins, who has helped a lot in narrowing down which families likely have her birth mother.
Mainly, though, she was curious about what her ethnicity might have been. With her olive skin, we had always assumed, oh, Greek, American Indian, Italian, Jewish, Middle Eastern.
Never saw it coming that her most recent immigrant ancestor was. . . Swedish!
I can’t see any point in doing it. I’m me, and I’ve spent my whole life working out who that is. Where my genes have come from, and what my predecessors did with them, is completely immaterial to me and what I am. I don’t know when my most recent contributor arrived in N. America, but it’s been a couple centuries at least–so I’m not English-, Irish-, German-, or any other fair skinned Euro type-American. I’m just an American, and in no need of a sub genre to divide me from my countrymen. Looking for genetic risk factors in potential diseases? OK, if that’s your thing then do it. But if you wonder who you are, a genetic test isn’t going to tell you anything you need to know.
You know that … how? Even wild animals that mate for life have been seen to like a little strange now and then. They were friends and sometimes that leads to a short hop off the reservation.
I have general, philosophical concerns about my DNA going into a database that can – will – be shared with law enforcement without my knowledge or consent. I also find it unlikely (though not outside the realm of possibility) that I may have a half-sibling or two from the days when my dad screwed around with any woman with a pulse (he swears up and down that there are none, but still). And as for my ancestry proper, I can guarantee you that it’s going to be entirely mundane; likely some percentage British Isles, some percentage Broadly Northern European, some percentage Broadly Western European, maybe a hair of Native American or something in there. Likely nothing unexpected.
Still, I have this overwhelming desire to pull the trigger on it, just to confirm my suspicions.
I am curious about the paternity results. Is this a normal part of the 21andMe package? How does the DNA test tell you who your father isn’t? You would have to send in the dad’s DNA as well, right? Did he agree to this?
