A growing number of companies now offer DNA tests that promise to pinpoint a customer’s heritage and, with permission, to identify genetic relatives. The firms include generalists like 23andMe and Ancestry.com and specialty companies like African Ancestry.
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The customers are eager to know where they came from, to find a familial context that may be lacking. The answers hidden in DNA can be revelatory, shedding light on hidden events occurring decades earlier and forever changing the family narrative.
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Mark, a banker in Delaware, got his test results back from Ancestry.com along with a list of relatives in its database. Oddly, there was no one on the list from his father’s side of the family.
There was one name he recognized, though: his father’s best friend. Who, it turned out, actually was his biological father.
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Mark, 43, whose last name was withheld to protect his family’s privacy, is estranged from his mother, and the man he knew as his father died more than a decade ago. So he reached out to his father’s best friend, who confirmed an affair with his mother decades ago.
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The secret that the older man thought he would take to his grave is well out of the bag.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: With a Simple DNA Test, Family Histories Are Rewritten
