Who’s Your Daddy?
Several years ago, I did the whole Ancestry DNA thing. My results were neither surprising nor interesting, but I allowed them to be compared to others to see who I was related to. Most of these results were either already known to me (hi, cousin!) or they were third, fourth, or fifth cousins that I had never met and probably never will. And then there was the day when I received a message from someone I didn’t know, asking me if I am related to a certain Maxwell Carey (not his real name). I responded to the woman, who we’ll call Carol, that in fact, he was the youngest brother of my late grandfather.
“I believe he is my father,” Carol responded.
Carol was probably at least in her 50s, maybe older. I had never heard of her before or of anyone with her last name. Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about a woman who must have gone through most of her life not knowing exactly who her father was and only now finding out. I wasn’t sure how helpful I could be to her, other than to confirm my relation to great Uncle Max. I told my dad about Carol’s message and asked what he thought of it. “Well,” he said, with a resigned sigh, “that sort of thing would be in Max’s wheelhouse.”
Carol was obviously not the first person to experience what is called paternity discrepancy, or having the person identified as one’s father not actually be the biological father. With the advent of home DNA tests, many people have discovered the existence of half-siblings or a surprise father. There are a lot of reasons such things can happen, such as the previously undisclosed use of donor sperm. Back in the day, people certainly didn’t like to talk about that sort of thing or even tell children that they were adopted. While that’s thankfully improved in recent years, it still leaves plenty of adults to uncover the secrets of previous generations. A CNBC article I read stated, not especially helpfully, that paternity discrepancy can exist for “0.8 to 30%” of the population. That could be anything from a “Wow! What a strange occurrence!” to “Oh yeah? Me too!”
What does it mean to be genetically related to someone else, anyway? Obviously I know what the biological definition is, but what is the deeper meaning and importance of being genetically connected to someone and knowing it? Most people care. Most of us want to know where we come from and where we belong, who we belong to. The concept of chosen family is a powerful one, but there is something to be said for at least being knowledgeable about one’s biological and cultural lineage.
In his final years, my dad spent a great deal of time and effort researching our family history and writing a book about the family from the early 1600s to the late 20th century. When he finished writing it, he and my mom went on a “book tour,” which instead of signing it at the local bookstore, in this case meant that they drove around the Northeast handing out books to all the relatives and other interested parties. It was a triumph for my dad, and it was a major source of family history information for the rest of us. One thing that my dad had learned fairly early on in his research was that previous researchers on our family (surprisingly, there were several) had been “pedigree hunters” and had connected our family to English aristocracy. No such luck, as it turns out. My dad was thrilled to describe himself as a Carey family iconoclast.
What does it matter if we’re descended from aristocrats or not? My claim to the family castle would have almost certainly been rejected, even if the relation was real. The aristocracy or commonness of my ancestors has relatively little bearing on my life as a modern American, especially since all those people were generations ago. Still, it was extremely satisfying to find out a more accurate picture of the ancestors (middle of the road merchants, for what it’s worth). It has been important to be able to have a better perspective on where we come from.
It’s definitely fun to be able to identify about 15 or so generations on my dad’s side. On the other hand, my mom’s family history is a lot less clear. After about three generations back, the trail gets lost in a haze of untranslated Eastern European documents or perhaps untranslated Eastern European documents that no longer exist due to war, pogroms, and all other manner of strife that those relatives were trying to get away from in the first place. I feel a bit wistful about it. I’d like to know. Not knowing about my distant maternal relatives is not the same thing as not knowing my father, who I was fortunate to know and love for these many years.
So many of us are looking for our roots. I hope Carol was able to find the answers she was seeking