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Family dynamics are hard enough without major surprises, and since the popularization of commercial DNA tests, the surprises being discovered are life-changing, tumbling out with a never-before-seen ferocity for those who discovered misattributed parentage, also called non-paternal events (NPE). This phenomenon is new only insofar that families are no longer able to hide the secrets, but the affairs, coercion, and manipulation leading to the misattributed parentage have been going on since it became important to trace patrilineal lineage. These secrets are as multi-faceted as a diamond, the damaging effects leave no one connected to the discoverer immune, changing the family dynamics. Here are two important reasons family dynamics change, affecting DNA discoverers and their family members, like a ripple in a pond.
Culture & Social Norm
Defined as the attitudes or patterns of behaviors in a group, culture is essentially the scaffolding organizing behaviors of a large group. Social norms refer to the range of normal behaviors within that culture. It’s important not to lose sight of the historical context for the reason women and families lie: society has had a long tenure of governing what is acceptable, leading to whether or not people are acceptable and women have been unfairly restricted in the definition of what is socially acceptable. It’s a lot harder for a woman to walk away from an affair or assault due to the nature of her biology; eventually, pregnancy is impossible to hide. Typically, manliness is tied to virility or battle hardiness, so the early days of donor conceptions produced inferiority complexes for infertile fathers who acquiesced to the procedure, dousing their shame in an effort to fulfill the social expectation of continuing the family line. Culture said to be a man meant fathering children, protecting and providing for them; not being able to do the first detracted from the accomplishments of the latter two.
Families historically have perceived the reputations of their members as a sort of currency and struggled to deal with unwed mothers because of the social implications of her being unmarriageable after being “ruined”. The girls were sent away to deliver babies they often would be forced to give up for adoption, triggering two souls to forever deal with feelings of abandonment and shame, all in the name of preserving the social currency of the family – modern conformity for the survival of the group. Acceptance from the larger group was achieved at a great cost for these girls.
A common thread for the DNA discovery clients in my practice pertains to relinquishment creating a core issue with trust, and self-worth - as true for the mothers as it is the adult children making these discoveries. The mother’s abandonment first occurs in the familial relinquishment of her if she does not conform, and a second relinquishment occurs for the discoverer when they learn of the falsified paternity. Often the very victim of the first relinquishment perpetuates more herself via threats and manipulation against the child she tried to protect from this, to begin with. An intergenerational pattern is then set to expect abandonment, shame, and distrust.
The groundwork for distrust is laid out like dominos, starting when the mother is forced to lie about sexual behavior that society deemed unacceptable for her gender (situations of sexual assault still include the lie to cover up the shame of the era’s belief the woman asked for it). She is told her indulgence is essentially unsurvivable because no man would want to raise a child that is not his own. As the mother then engages in a story to save herself (and by extension her unborn child) by saving her reputation, she solidifies her security. In the mother’s mind, it is equated to a life or death situation. The final domino falls when her child discovers the truth, feeling betrayed by the one person all of this hinged on originally, her child.
It seems that extended family has a stake in this as well from an anthropological perspective. Perhaps it’s guilt by association, in that the mother’s behavior reflects badly upon the whole family damaging not just her own reputation, but by extension others as well. I have seen many cousins, aunts or uncles and grandparents manipulate an NPE to keep the secret or give up pursuing the truth because of how it will affect the family.
Going back to anthropological thinking, modern families attempt to regain normalcy (homeostasis, in family therapy terms) in the larger group affiliation by constraining the individual, the DNA discoverer. That takes the form of coercion, contempt, pleading, or shunning. Cutting the DNA discoverer out of the family is an option many families choose to remain allegiant to the larger group affiliation of cultural appearances, perpetuating the cycle of abandonment, mistrust, and shame.
Affiliation lays the foundation for identity and comes first with the families we grow up with. It’s the first group we belong to and we are quite literally dependent on them for survival, so we learn early on that allying with the group’s norms, dislikes, goals, behaviors, etc., is necessary for our survival.
Many things comprise identity, starting with family of origin as the first sphere of influence then changing fluidly over the lifespan from nationality, culture/subculture, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion, and environmental influences like neighborhood/region, and even sports teams or universities. Exemplified by the Identity confusion when a DNA discoverer learns they are no longer biologically affiliated with a parent, thrusting them into genealogical bewilderment.
Genealogical bewilderment refers to the problems children face when they have little to no knowledge of their birth parents, and by extension their ancestors. Coined by psychologist H.J. Sants in 1964, it was used primarily in reference to adoptees and foster children and has gained a wider application with the misattributed parentage phenomenon. Sants’ work focused on the increased stress children experienced who didn’t know who they were tied to ancestrally. From an anthropological perspective, a possible anecdotal correlation of not knowing where one comes from could stem from not being affiliated with a group that reflects back to you what your identity is.
I’ve seen two origins of the identity crisis from this discovery. First, somehow, in a felt-sense capacity, the body and subconscious appear to know the individual doesn’t belong biologically, contributing to their feeling they just don’t belong, preventing a cohesive identity from forming from the beginning. Second, even if no intuition is present prior to discovery when the discovery is made the compulsion to learn who the biological relatives are is profound and overwhelming due to how destabilized the identity has become. The process of re-identifying occurs twice in normal development; it first occurs slowly over adolescence, then again later in midlife. Yet, the DNA discovery identity crisis is not developmentally expected, so the process is accelerated and unnatural, creating additional turmoil for the discoverer.
The impact of identity changes reaches the DNA discoverer’s loved ones as well. These discoveries seem to come in pairs, so often there will be more than one NPE in a family. In addition, many DNA results prove different percentages of ethnicity if not different ethnicities altogether, catapulting older generations into identity confusion because the culture they strongly affiliated with is no longer theirs. The behaviors or attitudes they engaged may have no ancestral basis any longer, while also divulging secret affairs, further destabilizing the whole family. The impact of genetic identity on affiliation is an emerging field and explored at length by Libby Copeland.
Unfortunately, many of these changes are permanent as families can’t see their way to new homeostasis, and individual DNA discoverers are often left out of the family, blamed for the unwanted changes to the family status in society. The ideal response from family would be to explore inclusion; of new information about the family and inclusion of its actual members with their personal needs. There can be room for everyone.
