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Severance Magazine
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    ArticlesDonor ConceptionNPEs/MPEs

    Q&A with Daniel Groll

    by bkjax April 11, 2022

    Conceiving People: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of Sperm and Egg Donation, by Daniel Groll, is a fascinating exploration of attitudes about whether donor offspring are entitled to knowledge of their donors, but the issues and questions it raises are pertinent to adoptees and NPEs/MPEs as well. Comprehensive and academic in approach, it may be challenging to readers not well-versed in philosophical discourse, but it’s key reading for anyone with a stake in the debate over access to genetic knowledge. And although Groll ultimately stands against anonymity in donor conception, some NPEs and MPEs may take exception to some of the arguments that led him there. Therefore, we asked him to address some of those arguments, and he readily agreed.

    Severance was the target of a critical article last year in a publication called Real Life that accused it of numerous transgressions, including promoting bionormativity. It insisted that the magazine’s content poses genetic family as measured by DNA as “the norm against which all forms of family should be judged.” It further states that if we view the genetic family as something from which one can be severed, non-genetic family “will inevitably be understood as secondary, extraneous, and even pathological.” Additionally, it charges that those of us looking for genetic information are indicating that “biogenetic kinship is the most true, essential, and valid form of family” and that such a belief places queer families in “legally precarious positions but undermines the larger value of ‘love makes a family’ for all families.” The argument rejects the idea that there can be a desire to know one’s genetic history that is apolitical. Clearly, I don’t believe Severance makes any such assertions, and based on having heard hundreds of stories and experiences, it’s obvious that most of us grew up with non-genetic families. I, for example, was raised by a man who was not my father. He was my family. I didn’t wish to have another father, but I did wish to know who my biological father was. I didn’t imagine my biological family would be a better family, or a more real family. I simply wished, as I believe most people who lack this information do, to know from whom I got my genes. My question is, how does simply wanting that information valorize traditional families or diminish nontraditional families?

    Before I answer this, I just want to explain my connection to the issue of donor conception since people inevitably wonder about it. I am a known donor to close friends who have two children. The children know both who and what I am in relation to them. Our families are in regular contact. From the get-go, everyone agreed there would be no secrets and that we all need to be open to how their children understand their experience and let that guide us. Maybe the fact that I’m a donor will cause some of your readers to stop reading, but I hope not.

    On to your question! One thing I want to make clear is that I think people who create children with donated gametes should not use an anonymous donor. So I am totally with you: I don’t think that wanting genetic knowledge—as I call it—necessarily or always or even usually valorizes traditional families or diminishes nontraditional families. One thing I try to do in my book is to make exactly this case. There are really good reasons for taking people’s desire for genetic knowledge seriously without committing ourselves to the view (which I don’t subscribe to) that biological parents are normally the best parents or that the traditional family form—of a man and woman and children that are genetically related to both parents—is somehow the best kind of family.

    Having said that, I think it’s worth taking seriously the idea that an interest in genetic knowledge is not apolitical, if that means that it floats free from, or exists independently of, the contingent cultural norms, practices. and institutions that shape our desires. I want to be really clear: this isn’t a point about the desire for genetic knowledge in particular. Rather, I don’t think we should see any desire as obviously apolitical. Even what we might think of as our most basic desires—for sustenance or for social connection—take the particular forms they do as a result of the culture they are embedded in. We might put it this way: all of our desires are filtered through, or suffused with, the culture (the norms, the values, the practices) they are located in.

    As a result, I think it is always worthwhile to ask two questions about our wants, desires. and interests: 1. “In what ways have they been shaped by our cultural milieu?” and 2. “Is that shaping a good or a bad thing?” In the book, I talk about certain gendered desires – like, for example, a boy’s desire to not cry in front of his friends—as examples of desires that are a) clearly shaped by our cultural milieu and b) a bad thing.

    Now, I don’t think the desire for genetic knowledge is like that. I’ve already said that I think we should take people’s desire for genetic knowledge seriously and that doing so leads to the conclusion that people shouldn’t use anonymous donors. But I think it’s undeniable that we live in a culture that highly valorizes genetic connectedness and often tells simplistic, reductive stories about family resemblance, genetic ties, the significance of “blood” etc. I think it’s worthwhile for everyone—not just donor conceived people or others who lack genetic knowledge—to interrogate their commitments about the significance of genetic ties in light of the culture we’re in. We should all ask, “Why do I, or do people in general, care about this so much?” and “Is it a good thing or a bad thing?” I try to give an account in the book about why many people care about genetic knowledge in a way that shows how it can be a source of meaning. But I also try to show that, oftentimes, people’s reasons for being attached to genetic knowledge are shaped by forces that do unjustifiably valorize the biogenetic conception of the family.

    Why can’t I uphold the rights of people who wish to create nontraditional families and still want my genetic information? Why is it an either/or? Why is it not acceptable to honor and uphold nontraditional families and at the same time say that genetic knowledge also matters?

    I think it is acceptable! Indeed, that’s the position I try to carve out in the book: we shouldn’t see the interest in genetic knowledge as ineluctably bound up with biogenetic normativity. One can do exactly what you say: honor and uphold nontraditional families and at the same time say that genetic knowledge matters.

    A problem emerges, however, when people put an emphasis on the significance of genetic knowledge—and genetic ties— that automatically downgrades the status of non-traditional families to “second best.” I’ve seen this attitude on display in a number of contexts. Sometimes the idea is that someone who isn’t raised by their genetic parents is (usually, though not always) worse off for it. Sometimes the idea is that a life without genetic knowledge is necessarily and seriously deficient. Sometimes the idea is that contributing gametes for the purposes of procreation without the intention of raising the resulting child is, by itself, morally unacceptable (equivalent, perhaps, to abandoning one’s child). I take all of those ideas to downgrade—if not outright reject—non-traditional family forms. So to the extent people’s attachment to genetic knowledge goes through those ideas, then I think there is a tension between caring about genetic knowledge and honoring non-traditional family forms. But again, I have no objections whatsoever to your way of thinking about things.

    It seems that the objection to wanting genetic knowledge asserted by some individuals creating nontraditional families has to do with the fear that their children will be somehow less connected or see their parents as somehow less than traditional parents when I believe there’s no research or even anecdotal experience to suggest that is true. Is that right?

    I think you’re right. Certainly, parents who do not want their donor conceived children to know that they are donor conceived sometimes cite as the reason that they’re worried the child will be less connected to their non-genetic parent. One thing seems clear: when people find out later in life they are donor conceived, that very often does cause a rupture. But the issue there seems to be mostly about secrecy and deception, and not about the fact of genetic non-relatedness itself. As far as I know, there is no evidence that people who are donor conceived and have never been led to believe otherwise are generally less connected to their non-genetic parent. Part of the issue here, though, is that we would need a better of understanding of what “less connected” even means. One thing I would definitely want to reject is that “being connected” is a zero-sum game so that if a donor conceived person forms a connection to their donor they are thereby less connected to their social parents.

    It’s important to note here that it’s only some families that can realistically keep their donor conceived child in the dark, namely heteronormative families that can “pass” as “traditional” families (i.e. families where children are genetically related to both parents). I think doing so is, generally speaking, deceptive and wrong. I think oftentimes a parent’s worry that their child will not connect to them in the same way if they (the child) know they are donor conceived reflects the parent’s own preconceptions about the significance of genetic ties as well as, sometimes, shame about not being able to conceive (particularly for men).

    At some point in Conceiving People you say that people can be influenced or educated to believe that genetic history is not as significant as some would have us believe. There seems to be no evidence to assert that genetic information is unimportant. On what basis can that claim be made?

    This is a great question. One thing to say up front: clearly genetic information can be super important for medical reasons. I do not want to deny that! Nor do I want to suggest that we should try to “educate” people to believe otherwise. But the medical reasons for wanting genetic knowledge are not—for many donor conceived people—the whole story: if it were possible to get the relevant medical information without knowing who your genetic parents are, many donor conceived people would still want to know who their genetic parents are. So, when I suggest that maybe we can move people toward caring less about genetic knowledge, I don’t mean that people should care less about the medical reasons for wanting genetic knowledge. I mean, rather, that perhaps people can be moved to care less about genetic knowledge for the reasons that go beyond the medical reasons.

    What do I mean when I say that perhaps people can be “moved” in this way? To answer this question, let me lay out one key idea I argue for: while genetic knowledge can provide a rich source of meaning in answering the question “Who am I?”, I don’t think it is either the only source or a necessary source. I think there are ways of telling a rich and truly complete story about who you are as a person that doesn’t put a lot of emphasis on genetic lineage. Now combine that thought with one I discussed above, namely that we live in a society that puts a lot of emphasis (in my view, undue emphasis) on the significance of genetic ties. These two thoughts together suggest one way that we might move people—everyone!—to care less about genetic knowledge, namely by working to make society less bionormative overall, where that means we try to change our cultural schema so that lacking genetic knowledge isn’t necessarily seen as having this massive void in one’s life. That’s a tall order (as are all calls to effect change at a societal level). I don’t have anything particularly insightful to say about how to go about doing that.

    At the individual level, one thing I say in the book is that people have a choice about how to construct their identities, about what parts of their life to treat as important and which to treat as comparatively unimportant. In retrospect, I would have not put things in terms of “choice” because I don’t think it’s really possible to just make up your mind to either care or not care about something. What I was trying to convey is that I don’t think there is a fact of the matter about who we, as individuals, are. There’s not a single answer to the question “Who am I?” out there, waiting to be discovered. Rather, there are many different rich, full answers to that question and not all of the answers require having genetic knowledge. So, it’s not about “educating” people, but rather creating a culture, a climate, where there is less pressure—from all avenues of life —to pursue what I call the “genetic route” to answering the question, “Who am I?”

    Crucially, I think one of the ironies here is that insisting that genetic knowledge doesn’t matter at all or withholding information from people is not the way to create that climate. Quite the opposite: I think practices of secrecy and anonymity function to heighten the perceived significance of genetic ties. I think honesty and an openness to what the philosopher Alice MacLachlan calls the “abundant family”—a notion of family that extends beyond the typical notion parents and children—are more likely, over time, to put genetic knowledge in its proper place as a source of identity determination, but not an absolutely necessary source.

    What about truth? How can wanting to know truth be dismissed as somehow unethical or immoral? How can truth be immoral? Couldn’t it reasonably be argued that trying to deprive someone of their birthright—of information most other humans have—is deceptive and unethical or immoral?

    Let me tackle the second question first! I think it is indeed deceptive and, generally speaking, unethical to not tell a donor conceived person that they are donor conceived. What about not giving people access to genetic knowledge by, for example, using an anonymous donor? The central argument of the book is that that too is, in general, unethical (I wouldn’t call it deceptive, though, unless it’s paired with non-disclosure).

    I’ve almost answered your second question, but not quite, because you put things in terms of people having a “birthright” to genetic knowledge and I didn’t use that term in my answer. I don’t use the language of “birthright” for two reasons. First, just as a philosophical matter, I’m not entirely sure what I think about natural rights in general, so my thinking just doesn’t tend to run in the direction of explanations that appeal to natural rights. But even if it did, I think it’s well worth asking what makes something a right in the first place. In other words, I’m not satisfied with saying, “Well, it is my right to have this information and there’s nothing more to be said.” I think rights call for explanations, so even if I did want to put things in terms of rights, I would still want to go on to do all the stuff I do to explain what gives rise to the right.

    Your first question—about whether truth, or wanting the truth, can ever be immoral—is super interesting. I don’t think truth, as such, is either moral or immoral. It’s just the truth! Facts are neither moral nor immoral. But I think that wanting the truth can be immoral. Suppose I want to know some embarrassing fact about you so that I can blackmail you. My wanting the truth, in that case, would be immoral.

    Now, wanting genetic knowledge is not at all like that. I’m just giving a case where it seems pretty clear that wanting the truth can be immoral. My point is just that if someone wants to defend the right to genetic knowledge, it’s probably not best to make that case by claiming that it is never wrong to want the truth. We need to know why people want the truth…and that returns us to some of what we discussed about interrogating the source of the desire for genetic knowledge.

    Who benefits and how do they benefit by wanting to discourage the gaining of this information?

    This is a great question, and it’s not one I take up in the book, at least not in detail. I think there are four broad communities that benefit from practices of anonymity. The first community is heteronormative parents who want to pass as a “traditional” family and don’t want anyone—least of all their child—to know that they have a donor conceived child. I think this interest is often born out of a sense of shame about being unable to conceive, combined with the kinds of worries you mentioned above (e.g. that a child who knows they are not genetically related to one of their parents will, as a result, love them less).

    The second community is non-heteronormative families—gay and lesbian couples for example—whose status as parents has been, and to some extent still is, legally and socially tenuous. Living with the prospect that the donor might swoop in and claim parental rights—and that the law might side with the donor —is profoundly unsettling. A friend of mine describes it as living with a feeling of “terror,” and recent developments in the legal landscape in the United States—like the recently “Don’t Say Gay” law passed in Florida, the legal attacks across the country on reproductive rights, and the legal attacks in some states on trans people—show that that feeling is not remotely unfounded. I think those of us that have not lived with the prospect of having your family torn asunder—or your whole identity targeted—by the law can have trouble understanding the force of this concern. It’s understandable—to put it mildly—why, in that context, people might care that the donor is anonymous.

    The third community, of course, is the fertility industry which has a massive interest in ensuring a supply of donors and avoiding limits on how many offspring can be conceived with the gametes of one donor.

    The fourth are prospective donors who donate to make money and also to help people who cannot conceive, but do not want any involvement at all with their genetic offspring.

    How much should we care about these interests? Let me start with the fertility industry. I am not an expert on the fertility industry (and, I’ll add, I have absolutely nothing to do with it), but I have little-to-no sympathy with their set of concerns. The same goes for prospective donors who want to be anonymous—I argue in the book if you’re going to donate, you shouldn’t be an anonymous donor. I can understand, of course, why a donor would want to be anonymous. But I argue that those interests really don’t count for much at all.

    I am, however, sensitive to the interests and concerns of the first two groups I mentioned. Crucially, I don’t think such concerns win the day. In the book, I consider why prospective parents may prefer to use an anonymous donor and—while I understand where those preferences come from—I find them wanting when compared to a donor conceived person’s interest in having genetic knowledge.

    I’ll also add that I think I think the best way to address the legitimate concerns of the first two communities is not by upholding practices of anonymity—which, as we all know, are increasingly impossible to uphold in the world of 23andMe etc.—but rather to transform the cultural norms and beliefs about the nature of families so that, for example, infertility is not a source of shame, the bionormative family is not seen as the “gold standard” (to borrow a phrase from Charlotte Witt) of family forms, and the law provides protections for non-traditional family forms.

    You stop short in your book of weighing in on the right to know. Could you look at this and comment not as a philosopher but as a person with curiosity. Reverence for ancestors has been communicated since the beginning of time. Genealogy is the world’s leading hobby. People have always and will continue to want to know where they come from. If the vast majority of people in the world, now and apparently in all time and all cultures, were able to know who their parents are and that knowledge mattered to them, is it reasonable to think it isn’t a problem for those of us who are deprived of that information? Perhaps reduce it to an absurd point. Say, bread isn’t necessary for life, but if 95% of the people in the world want bread and are allowed to have it and you can’t have bread, wouldn’t you be upset, and might you not wonder why you are not entitled to have bread, even if it weren’t vital to your life? Why are all the philosophical arguments you construct necessary if, as the studies you cite suggest, the majority of donor conceived people feel that genetic information matters? Why is their lived experience not enough to demonstrate that, for whatever reason, they feel impoverished by not having the same genetic information others have?

    I want to reject the dichotomy between looking at things as a philosopher and looking at them as a person with curiosity! For me, philosophy is all about being curious and trying to get to the heart of things. To be sure, I don’t think it is the only or the best way to be curious or to get at the heart of things: music, poetry, art, fiction, creative non-fiction, not to mention all the other academic fields of study, are also conduits for curiosity and thinking things through. Philosophy is just one way. But it’s a way that speaks to me. There’s not “Philosophy me” and “Here’s what I really think me.” It’s all just me!

    So, when I consider your fantastic questions as a person with curiosity, I unavoidably take up a philosophical perspective. And when I do, it seems to me that it’s not enough to note that lots of people want something in order to conclude that they should have it or are entitled to it. Now: it’s definitely relevant. Indeed, my whole argument against anonymity is centered on the fact that the majority of donor conceived people want genetic knowledge. But—at the risk of sounding like a broken record—I think all desires, all wants, are candidates for critical scrutiny. We should scrutinize the forces that generate the wants, desires, interests, and aims that people have. Sometimes we’ll see that the forces are benign or even positive. Other times we’ll discover that they’re not positive. And still other times, we’ll discover that it’s a mix.

    The point is just that we shouldn’t treat people’s desires, interests, or aims as beyond scrutiny and as the thing that settles the matter of what people should have or be entitled to. We need an account of what is behind the interests, desires, etc. I try to provide such an account when it comes to the desire for genetic knowledge—among the population at large, not just among donor conceived people. And I try to show that even if certain problematic cultural forces are in play, the desire for genetic knowledge is nonetheless worthwhile and should be respected. Anyway: that’s why I spill so much ink on this topic.

    Daniel Groll is an associate professor in the philosophy Department at Carleton College in Northfield, MN and an affiliate faculty member at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. He writes on a variety of issues in ethics and is currently spending time thinking about the nature and significance of family resemblance. When he’s not doing philosophy, he’s probably making music for kids with Louis & Dan and the Invisible Band. Get a 30% discount on Conceiving People with the code AAFLYG. Find him on Twitter @dang_pigeon.

    April 11, 2022 0 comments
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  • Short TakesShort Takes: Books

    Surviving the White Gaze

    by bkjax April 1, 2022
    April 1, 2022

    Rebecca Carroll, author, cultural critical, and podcast host, was adopted at birth by a white couple and raised in a predominantly white community in rural New Hampshire, where, as the only black resident, she’d see no one who looked like her until she was six years old. Her father was a high-school art teacher and her biological mother, Tess, had been one of his students. When Tess became pregnant by her older boyfriend who lived in Boston, the teacher and his wife adopted her daughter. Growing up in this white family in this white community, she had no touchstone for what it meant to be black, no mirror of her own blackness to reflect and illuminate who she was. And worse, no one cared. Her only point of reference as a child was Easy Reader from The Electric Company, whom she fantasized was her father. When she first encountered a black person in real life—her ballet teacher—she wondered, “Did she know Easy Reader from The Electric Company? Did she go home at night to live inside the TV with him and the words and letters he carried around with him in the pockets of his jacket?” As she grew older, Carroll was aware of being seen by this teacher in a way her parents did not, yet she was also aware of the differences. “I felt small pangs of fragile awareness regarding who I might be, what my skin color might mean. There were days when I wanted to be, or believed I was, black just like Mrs. Rowland, but it also seemed as though I would have to give something up in order for that to remain true.” She was increasingly aware that unlike her teacher, she moved through the world with the “benefits afforded by white stewardship.” As a transracial adoptee, Carroll had to hurdle barrier after barrier merely to become authentically who she was always meant to be. And considering that the most formidable obstacle to her ability to truly recognize and finally claim her identity as a black woman was her family—both her adoptive parents and her white birthmother—it was an extraordinarily lonely struggle carried out by a force of one. How, isolated in an overwhelmingly white world, could she know what it meant to be black? While Carroll’s adoptive parents were largely oblivious to her need to understand, absorb, and assert her racial identity, her birthmother, Tess, aggressively denied her daughter’s racial and cultural heritage. When they began a relationship, 11-year-old Carroll was curious about and soon enamored of her mother, but learned there was a cost to the relationship. She carried that burden for a long time, making excuses and ignoring her intuition as her birthmother did everything possible to torpedo her growing attempt to construct an understanding of herself as a black woman—gaslighting her, subjecting her to blatantly racist comments, and effectively dispossessing her of the right to her own blackness. She straddled two worlds, ill-fitting in one and made to feel like an imposter in the other.

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  • ArticlesDonor Conception

    Q&A With Peter Boni

    by bkjax March 28, 2022
    March 28, 2022

    In 1995, when Peter J. Boni’s mother experienced a stroke after open heart surgery, the walls she’d built to hold back a secret for nearly half a century crumbled. In rehab, she began to tell visitors what she never told him—that his father wasn’t his father, that he’d been donor conceived. And so began a quest to learn the truth of his origins and the nature of the societal forces that led to the circumstances of his birth—the subject of his new book, Uprooted: Family Trauma, Unknown Origins and the Secretive History of Artificial Insemination. Roughly halfway through his narrative Boni says, “Never doubt my resolve.” But his dogged determination is evident from the first page. Early on, it’s clear that after serving as a US Army Special Operations Team Leader in Vietnam, he was the go-to guy in his business sphere, where he was a successful high-tech CEO/entrepreneur/venture capitalist and more—and he tore into his personal mystery with the same can-do attitude—a tenacity that fueled him through the 22 years it took to solve the puzzle of his parentage. Uprooted is comprised of four parts that add up to exceptional storytelling. It’s compelling memoir of a troubled childhood with an unwell father, a determination to succeed, and the challenges of grappling with the emotional fallout of his family’s secrets. It’s also an exhaustive and insightful account of the history of assisted reproductive technology; a cogent indictment of the flaws of the largely unregulated, multi-billion-dollar industry; and a rallying cry for advocacy with a prescription for change. Boni’s scope is ambitious and he succeeds on every level. Donor conceived people will see themselves reflected in his moving testimony about the consequences and repercussions of the inconvenient truth of donor conception. Many will feel seen and heard as he describes genealogical bewilderment and the roiling emotions aroused by the revelation of family secrets, the shattering of comfortable notions of identity, and the lack of knowledge about his genetic information. It’s a must-read not only for donor conceived people but also for donors and recipient parents as well as fertility practitioners, lawmakers, behavioral health providers, and anyone contemplating creating a family through assisted reproduction. While the actors in a deeply flawed industry who are motivated solely by profit aren’t likely to be swayed by Boni’s arguments or embrace his suggested reforms, Uprooted may fuel a wildfire of advocacy that has the potential to give rise to meaningful legislation, transparency and accountability, and a true cultural shift.

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  • Short Takes: Books

    Body Work

    by bkjax March 15, 2022
    March 15, 2022

    In Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, prolific essayist Melissa Febos, author of the memoir Whip Smart; Abandon Me; and the bestselling essay collection Girlhood, blends memoir with insight and guidance about the art of writing, primarily for an audience of memoirists. Why highlight a book about the craft of writing in a magazine for adoptees, donor conceived people, and others who’ve experienced misattributed parentage? What does it have to do with you? Possibly everything. You needn’t be a writer to be inspired and educated by Body Work. The author’s razor-sharp insights are pertinent to anyone who wants to excavate their own truths; interrogate their traumas and their shame; and, especially, take ownership of their narratives. To be adoptees or NPEs* means that part of our stories—the most foundational parts—were taken from us before we could ever know them. They were stolen for a host of reasons, but typically to keep others from facing uncomfortable truths—a theft that not only deflected shame from them but projected it onto us, suggesting that we are its source. Secrets were kept from us, and our stories were rewritten to better fit others’ narratives and preserve their integrity at the expense of our own. Our stories may be hidden behind closed doors, guarded by gatekeepers who insist we have no right to try to open them. If we persist and manage to unlock the doors, those for whom secrecy was in their best interest may tell us that what we discover is not ours to share. Sometimes we tell ourselves these lies.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    A New Guide for NPEs & MPEs

    by bkjax December 10, 2021
    December 10, 2021

    Everyone who’s had a DNA surprise will recognize themselves in the pages of Leeanne R. Hay’s NPE* A Story Guide for Unexpected Discoveries. Hay, a freelance journalist who’s earned certificates from the University of Florida College of Social Work, has crafted a memoir/guidebook hybrid, drawing substantially from her own NPE story and those of others to illustrate common experiences and issues that arise when family secrets are revealed and individuals learn that the families in which they were raised may not be their families of origin. In 2017, on a whim, Hay purchased a DNA test, the results of which were shocking. Not only did she learn that the man who raised her was not her father, she discovered at the same time that her biological father was a man she’d known and loved since she was a child. And there began a quest to learn as much as she could about her origins, her ethnicity, and how such a monumental secret could have been kept from her. She felt rage toward her mother, by then deceased, bewilderment about her ethnic identity, and, soon, an overpowering sense of anger and helplessness. If you’ve had a DNA surprise, these feelings likely will be all too familiar, and Hay offers the much-needed comfort that comes from knowing that you’re not the only one whose ever had these experiences and emotions or the only one who doesn’t know which way to turn. She offers gentle guidance about the range of situations and complications that may arise, from how to communicate an NPE discovery to others, how to use DNA to search for family, how to communicate with new relatives, and how to contemplate and make a name change, as well as the steps needed to move forward. She addresses the emotional pitfalls, including isolation, loss, and grief, and the repercussions for others who are affected by an MPE’s discovery. In addition to noting helpful resources, Hay also advises readers about the need to carefully assess resources to determine if they are truly helpful, expert-based, and reputable.

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  • AdoptionArticles

    A Q&A With Gabrielle Glaser

    by bkjax May 5, 2021
    May 5, 2021

    In 1961, a New York couple sent their seventeen-year-old daughter Margaret to Lakeview Maternity Home on Staten Island, where she gave birth to a boy she named Stephen. In love with her eighteen-year-old boyfriend, George, she was determined to keep the child, but was pressured by her parents as well as social workers at the home and the personnel of the Manhattan adoption agency—Louise Wise Services—to relinquish the baby for adoption. Margaret and George planned to marry, and during the many months when she was separated from Stephen, Margaret held out hope that she and George would prevail against a system that was cruelly stacked against them and regain custody of the child. Ultimately, she was coerced into giving up her parental rights. The boy was adopted and his name changed to David. Margaret had been advised to move on, to forget about her baby. She never did. She went on to marry George and have a family, and all the while her son was never far from her thoughts. Through the years, as health problems emerged in her family, she contacted the Louise Wise agency to provide medical updates for the boy’s parents. The response was always curt. In the early 1980s, inspired by the rise of adoptee activism, Margaret began to search for her son, both for reassurance that he was well and also so he could know she’d never forgotten him and had always loved him. At one point, after her son’s 20th birthday, she gathered her courage, made elaborate preparations to make herself appear undeniably respectable, and knocked at the door of Louise Wise Services, hoping at most for information about her son, and at least for the opportunity to leave her contact information so that he could find her if he wanted to. Four times she rang the bell and tried to plead her case, and three times she was ignored. When she rang for the fourth time, the receptionist advised her that she’d call the police if Margaret didn’t leave. Devastated, Margaret collapsed to the floor and sobbed.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    An Excerpt from Twice a Daughter, by Julie Ryan McGue

    by bkjax May 3, 2021
    May 3, 2021

    Lisa gives me a warm hug, and I introduce her to Jenny. “This is my twin sister.” Her eyes flick from Jenny to me several times. “Wow. You two really do look alike.” Jenny laughs and glances over at me. “About a month ago, we learned through DNA testing that we’re identical.” This isn’t a setup. Jenny and I hadn’t planned on bringing this up today. Tagging on to my sister’s comment, I’m conscious of keeping my voice free of accusation. “When we were adopted, Catholic Charities told my parents that we were fraternal twins. Perhaps you can shed light on how this mistake might have happened?” A slight frown erases Lisa’s smile. “Before coming over here to meet you, I studied your file. Your birth mother did not deliver you here at St. Vincent’s but at a maternity hospital. Whatever information was sent over from the hospital is what would have been captured in the records. I’m sorry for the error, but I’m happy you found out the truth.” So there it is, an apology, leaving me with no one to blame. Lisa’s perfectly arched eyebrows frame her blue-green eyes. Her smile reappears. “Since you’ve already viewed the old photographs down the hall, I’ll show you a few other areas, and then we can finish in the chapel.” We follow Lisa to the old elevator. As she walks, the social worker gathers her long brown hair into one fist and then drops it behind her shoulders. I remember this habit of hers from the post-adoption support group meeting last month. The format of the meeting was simple. After signing in, we went around the U-shaped conference table and stated our name, disclosed whether we were an adoptee, birth parent, or adoptive parent, and then we shared where we were in the search and reunion process. If we brought someone with us, we introduced them. For the icebreaker piece, Lisa asked that we offer a response to this question: “If you could say one thing to the family member you seek, what would that be?”

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  • BooksShort Takes

    Folksong — An Excerpt

    by bkjax February 19, 2021
    February 19, 2021

    DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE Are we better off forgetting the details? I started writing this memoir as a way to process my mother’s death and remember the events surrounding it as they happened before coping mechanisms settled in to destroy the memories in order to protect me. But I haven’t yet been able to write about the actual moment of her death. I’ve been avoiding it. I’ve been avoiding reliving those moments because writing them down will make them real again in my mind and bring me one step closer to a breakdown. My mother went out of this world like she came in. “The Red Menace,” as she was called by someone along the way—probably my father, made her own choice as to when to go. There was no peaceful exit, even though we were there, holding her hands and singing to her. A timebomb went off and simultaneously destroyed her body and my life. Perhaps that sounds dramatic, but I was simply not prepared for the devastation left in her wake or for the PTSD I experienced, like a soldier having returned from war. I’ll be honest: I was a little worried about my mental health in the months after she died. I was able to cope better when I was with my brothers and sister. Maybe something about being together again reminded me that, in spite of the years apart and the distance between us, we are still a family. We grew up together and got on each other’s nerves as children (and still do now as adults). When we are together, I remember I am not just an interloper to their happy little trio. Nothing has changed.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    We Are All Human Beings

    by bkjax February 16, 2021
    February 16, 2021

    Paul Kimball, a 58-year-old successful musician and actor, has wrestled throughout his life with feelings of abandonment after having been adopted. He was born to a young interracial couple, his father an Armenian immigrant from Iraq and his mother a professional cellist from California. His father wasn’t prepared to marry, and his mother may have been fearful of scandalizing her parents—this was the early 1960s, when having a baby out of wedlock was still taboo and interracial coupling still stigmatized—and they planned to abort the baby. It’s not clear what led to a change of heart, but they soon split up, and his mother relinquished Paul when he was one-week-old. He lived in foster care for the next four and a half months, and on his first birthday he was adopted by a loving couple. To examine and give voice to his feelings, he’s written a memoir, We Are All Human Beings: An Adoptee Ponders. It’s an especially apt title because, like many adoptees, Kimball has more questions than answers. He explores the joys, heartbreaks, and complications of reuniting with his birth parents and grapples with the emotional consequences. Here, he offers an excerpt, Chapter 12, which not only describes his initial connection with his birthmother, Wendy. It also expresses his passion for the cello, as evidenced by a tribute to the renowned cellist Jacqueline Du Pre. He wrote the tribute to Du Pre many years before he’d learned about his birthmother and before he’d discovered she, too, played the cello.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    Ancestry Quest

    by bkjax February 8, 2021
    February 8, 2021

    Award-winning journalist Mary Beth Sammons has collected the accounts of people who’ve explored their ancestry, whether through family history, genealogical research, ancestry travel, or DNA testing, and she’s discovered a common denominator among the ancestor seekers. Overwhelmingly, the storytellers find in the discovery and sharing of their stories an experience of healing, a greater sense of wholeness, and a broader understanding of the threads that run through all humanity. In Ancestry Quest: How Stories from the Past Can Heal the Future, Sammons takes as her subject the growing phenomenon of DNA testing and the passion for genealogical research. She describes the quests of seekers in search of their lineages—their quests to solve known family mysteries, to grapple with unexpected revelations, or to look for knowledge with which to better understand their health. For many of these seekers, she writes, “this process has recast entire lives with surprises including shocking lineages, long-lost siblings, and family secrets that might have been buried for decades. For many, it has opened question about heritage, ethnicity, race, culture, and privacy.” And for others, she demonstrates, it validates both vague intuition and long-held suspicions.

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  • ArticlesDNA & Genetic GenealogyDNA SurprisesFamily Secrets

    Q&A with Author Libby Copeland

    by bkjax August 20, 2020
    August 20, 2020

    How long did you spend researching and writing The Lost Family? Altogether, about three years. I first wrote about Alice Collins Plebuch’s fascinating genetic detective story in The Washington Post in early 2017. The response to that story, which was hundreds of emails from other consumers sharing intimate and moving DNA testing stories, convinced me the topic needed to be a book, and I started researching for the proposal soon afterward. But the bulk of the work was done during 2018 and 2019. In The Lost Family, I revisit Alice’s story and tell it much more fully. I was able to travel to Washington State and spend time with her, as well as do historical research going back a hundred years to illuminate her family’s astonishing story. And as I follow her story, I also tell many other tales from people I Interviewed—wrenching, moving stories of how this technology is changing how we see ourselves and how we talk to one another, not to mention how we think about truth and the past. What so intrigued you initially that you were willing to devote so much time and attention to this issue? Did you realize early on how complex the subject would be? I was really intrigued by the idea that questions about genetic origins and family could lead individuals, families, and the culture at large to deep explorations of essential human questions about identity, what makes a family, and how we define ethnicity. The science was indeed quite complex, and so were the experiences of people affected by this technology. I got to interview a lot of genetic genealogists about their techniques and the history of the field, and to tour a DNA testing lab and speak with a number of scientists and historians about human genetics and autosomal DNA testing.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    Who’s Your Daddy? The Age-Old Question

    by bkjax February 10, 2020
    February 10, 2020

    Many of us are preoccupied with the question “Who’s your daddy?” and pin our hopes on science—a DNA test—to provide clarity. According to Nara B. Milanich, author of “Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father,” the question has been asked for millennia, but it wasn’t until the early 20th century that people looked to science rather than society for the answer. And while the conundrum has been debated through the ages and far and wide, it’s a far more complex matter than it appears to be, the author argues. Despite science, she insists, there’s still no consensus about who is a father or what it means to be a father. While the need to pinpoint paternity has been driven for various reasons throughout history by a variety of stakeholders—mothers, putative fathers, potential heirs, lawyers, champions of eugenics—there are modern twists. “The orphaned and the adopted have asked this question in relation to lost identities,” says Milanich. “More recently, assisted reproductive technologies—gamete donation, surrogacy—have raised old issue in new ways.” A professor of history at Barnard College, the author traces the history of the understanding of paternity across time and cultures and analyzes the many ways fatherhood is defined—socially, legally, politically, and biologically—and explores the consequences and implications of the different means of establishing paternity, which, she observes, bequeaths not only one’s name but also identity, nationality, and legitimacy.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    A Broken Tree

    by bkjax October 15, 2019
    October 15, 2019

    It’s surely not hyperbole to say that “A Broken Tree: How DNA Exposed a Family’s Secrets”—a new book by Stephen F. Anderson—is the mother of all NPE (not parent expected) stories. It’s hard to imagine a more epic or stranger-than-fiction tale of misattributed parentage than this. Anderson stared down a series of family mysteries and over decades employed DNA and oral history in an attempt to solve them. He describes his family of nine children as nothing like the “Leave it to Beaver” family he grew up watching on television. He knew his was different, but it took decades to learn just how different. Because his mother, Linda, had little interest in settling down to raise kids and clean houses, and his father, Mark, a fire truck salesman, was on the road a great deal of the time, his older sisters took on much of the burden of caring for the younger children. There were rumors and whispers among the siblings of family secrets, but they were too disjointed and fragmentary to be understood. He turned to the person he most expected to have answers, but was rebuffed. He visited his oldest sister, Holly, to record stories about the family, and she refused to share a single recollection.

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  • BooksShort Takes

    Lost and Found: Dani Shapiro’s “Inheritance”

    by bkjax June 19, 2019
    June 19, 2019

    Author Dani Shapiro has explored family secrets from every angle in an exceptional decades-long writing career that until now yielded five novels and four memoirs. Revisiting those works, it’s tempting to believe everything she’s experienced and written has been prelude to her 10th book, the bestselling “Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.” In an earlier memoir, for example, “Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life,” she describes herself in childhood as having been strangely aware unknowns were waiting to be discovered.

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What’s New on Severance

  • There Was a Secret
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After a DNA Surprise: 10 Things No One Wants to Hear

https://www.righttoknow.us

Call Right To Know’s resource hotline to talk with another MPE be paired with a mentor, get resources, or just talk.

Original Birth Certificates to California Born Adoptees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erHylYLHqXg&t=4s

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Recommended Reading

The Lost Family: How DNA is Upending Who We Are, by Libby Copeland. Check our News & Reviews section for a review of this excellent book about the impact on the culture of direct-to-consumer DNA testing.

What Happens When Parents Wait to Tell a Child He’s Adopted

“A new study suggests that learning about one’s adoption after a certain age could lead to lower life satisfaction in the future.”

Janine Vance Searches for the Truth About Korean Adoptees

“Imagine for a minute that you don’t know who your mother is. Now imagine that you are that mother, and you don’t know what became of your daughter.”

Who’s Your Daddy? The Twisty History of Paternity Testing

“Salon talks to author Nara B. Milanich about why in the politics of paternity and science, context is everything.”

What Separation from Parents Does to Children: ‘The Effect is Catastrophic”

“This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents.”

Truth: A Love Story

“A scientist discovers his own family’s secret.”

Dear Therapist: The Child My Daughter Put Up for Adoption is Now Rejecting Her

“She thought that her daughter would want to meet her one day. Twenty-five years later, that’s not true.”

I’m Adopted and Pro-Choice. Stop Using My Story for the Anti-Abortion Agenda. Stephanie Drenka’s essay for the Huffington Post looks at the way adoptees have made unwilling participants in conversations about abortion.

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@2019 - Severance Magazine

Severance Magazine
  • About
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    • Psychology & Therapy & Coaching
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    • Secrets & Lies
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Severance Magazine
  • About
    • About Severance
    • From the Editor
    • Submission Guidelines: How to Contribute
    • Contact Us
  • Articles
    • abandonment
    • Adoption
    • Advocacy
    • DNA & Genetic Genealogy
    • DNA Surprises
    • Donor Conception
    • Family Secrets
    • Genetics & Heredity
    • Interviews & Profiles
    • Late Discovery Adoptees
    • Psychology & Therapy
    • NPEs/MPEs
    • Search & Reunion
  • Essays & Fiction
    • abandonment
    • Adoption
    • DNA surprises
    • Donor Conception
    • NPEs/MPEs
    • Late Discovery Adoptees
    • Search & Reunion
    • Secrets & Lies
  • Short Takes
    • Short Takes: Books
    • Short Takes: Film & Video
    • Short Takes: People, News & Research
    • Short Takes: Podcasts & Radio
  • Self Care & Coping
    • Coping Strategies
    • Self-Care
  • Speak Out
    • Micro-Memoirs
    • Your Video Stories
  • Resources
    • Start Here
    • Abandonment
    • Adoption
    • DNA & Genetic Genealogy
    • Donor Conception
    • Genetics & Heredity
    • Late-Discovery Adoptees
    • NPEs (Not parent expected) & MPEs (Misattributed parentage experience)
    • Psychology & Therapy & Coaching
    • Search & Reunion
    • Secrets & Lies
    • Self-Care
@2019 - Severance Magazine