By Sherrie L. KappaMy biological mother met my biological father in Alexandria, Virginia. I was told she met him after she had locked her keys in her car and he was a local fireman who came to help her.

I was born in 1961 in West Virginia and adopted by a family that had a 9-year-old biological daughter. My adoptive father was a coal miner and a pastor of a church, and my adoptive mother did not work.

They had not planned to disclose my adoption to me, but I learned about it by accident when I was 13 years old and  found a letter my adoptive mother had written to another pastor’s wife in which she stated she had two adopted children—a teen daughter and a young son. My best friend was there with me and she confirmed that I was adopted and that everyone knew but me. Too scared to ask my often abusive, narcissistic mother, I waited until my father came home from work. He verified that it was true. He was a sweet man and hated lies. I think it was a relief to him.

That weekend he took me to meet my biological mother. He said he’d met her when she was only a few months pregnant. She was a waitress in a bar, and he was at the bar, he said, trying to save souls. He told her that she should be taking better care of herself, and she told him that she didn’t want the child and that he could have it when it was born. He gave her his phone number. In September of that year, she called and told him I had come early and was sick. I’d been diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome, and the doctors transfused my blood. My biological mother signed the forms to relinquish me for adoption and left the hospital before my adoptive parents arrived to pay the hospital bill and bring me home.

Several months after I found out about being adopted, I ran away to my biological mother’s home and met three half siblings. I learned that she’d also relinquished a 6-year-old son the same year I was born. My birthmother called my adoptive father to come pick me up and also called police to scare me into not coming back. Needless to say, I did not have any further contact with my birthmother until my older brother came looking for me when I was 16.

My adoptive father had a heart attack and died that same year, after which my adoptive mother decided I needed to work to pay rent, so I attended high school during the day and worked a full-time job at night at the local hospital. On my days off, I cleaned for her. She took my entire check every month. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless you’ve lived through it. She informed me that I would not be going to college; she wasn’t going to pay for a child that was not her blood.

I graduated high school when I was 17, immediately married my brother’s best friend, and got out. About six months later, we moved to the same town in which my biological mother and her family lived. My biological mother adored my husband, and this paved the way for me to try to be a part of her life. I lived right up the street from her house for four years, and although she never once visited me, I was invited to her home on the rare occasion. I believe I valued those visits much more than she did

I asked my birthmother who my father was. She said his name was Bennie H., he lived in Mockingbird, Texas, and worked for Bekins Transportation. She said he had blue eyes and his wife was Chinese, but she didn’t know much else. She’d  told him she was pregnant, and he took off. For many years I tried to find Bennie H. I called Bekins. I found out there is no Mockingbird, Texas, so called Information for towns all over the state. Most of the operators were kind; they would give me five numbers and five addresses at a time. I wrote nearly 100 letters. And when I had the money, I called as many numbers as I could.

In the early 1980s, along came the Internet, and I wrote or called every Bennie H. I could find, without luck. Lots of Google searches, lots of Yahoo searches. I couldn’t find any Bennie H. in Texas.

My life often interrupted my search, but I never gave up. I worked full time, divorced, re-married, and raised a son. I went back to school to obtain a degree, often working two jobs.

Along came Facebook. Same searches. Nothing new.

In 2016, my best friend and I discussed her search. She was looking for a grandfather, and she suggested I join a Facebook group for people using DNA to search for family; she also suggested several DNA testing sites that she was using. I sent my test to Ancestry and found a group on Facebook that had “search angels.” They pointed me toward several adoption registries, and I signed up with all of them.

About three days later, I got an email that one of the Angels had found a Bennie H. in an old 1961 Dallas city registry.  And there he was, listed as living on Mockingbird Lane. As it turned out, this was actually the address of Bekins, his employer. He lied to my mother so she wouldn’t track him down. The “angel” also gave me information on a Bennie in Kansas and one in North Carolina.

I called the number in North Carolina. It was the right one. I talked with his brother, and Bennie had been there all along, about a three-hour drive from my front door. He had died just eight months before my call. I talked to an aunt and uncle who told me about two sisters on the east coast and two in Texas, but they didn’t want to give me any other information. But I stalked, and within two days I had the married names and the telephone number of all four sisters.

I called and I wrote to each of them. We talked and texted and became friends. A few months later, I met two of them and the uncle on the east coast, and we made plans for all five sisters to get together. They shared pictures of Bennie, and although he didn’t look like me, I tried really hard in my head to make my blue eyes look just like his. And the curl in my hair to match his. And in my mind, his father, my grandfather, looked so much like my son.

I obtained his military records and learned that he has O+ blood, which I’m pretty sure my biological mother has as well. I am A negative—slightly rare, though not enormously so. So I called my maternal half-sister and asked if she thought our mother has type A blood. “Oh sure”, she says, “she does.”

I’d been asking the eldest paternal sister to do take an Ancestry DNA test so I could see “sister” come up on my computer screen. While waiting on my own DNA test results, I built an extensive Ancestry tree, tracing Bennie all the way back to 1040, to the original “H.”

Nine months into this journey, the eldest sister finally took the test.

In the middle of this madness, I received my DNA test results and saw those Hs. Among my matches was a second cousin, Leslie, who contacted me. She wasn’t from the H family, she said. “We’re the C family and you are my cousin.” We puzzled back and forth about this for several months, but we couldn’t seem to agree on how we were related so I let it go.

When my new paternal sister’s DNA results came in, they showed that we are not a match. They were Bennie’s children. I was not his child. We share cousins approximately six to eight generations back. We connect to the same H ancestors I observed among the 1,500 or so DNA matches. I cried. My new “not my sisters” cried. I have been looking for these girls all my life. I’d become attached. I loved them.

But they don’t belong to me at all. They are not family. They told me it didn’t matter, but oh boy, it sure does.

My mother at that point was old and sick so I didn’t call her directly to ask again who my biological father was. Instead, I called my maternal half-sister. She asked my mother, and my mother once again lied, insisting that Bennie H. was my father. She said the DNA was wrong and I was lying. I upset my mother, and my sister told me never to contact them again—any of them. A few cousins still talk to me on Facebook, but I won’t be getting any invitations to the family reunions.

After crying on the phone to an Ancestry representative for nearly an hour, asking if my DNA results could somehow be wrong, the representative explained to me that DNA does not lie. With her help, I started over with my Ancestry DNA tree. My new tree had only two leaves—one for me and one for my biological mother. Within a day, new half-sister, Lisa, turned up in my matches. I contacted her, and she said it was possible that we were sisters, that her father had many extramarital affairs. But, she said, he was mean, an alcoholic, and a pedophile, and the four living siblings didn’t want anything to do with me. I cried more. My new family didn’t want to talk to me at all. They were ashamed that I was alive. Two others are already dead and don’t get an opinion. She gave me that one day in which to ask questions, which she answered, and then she blocked me on Ancestry and on Facebook, as did all her (my) other siblings and their children.

I pull up my bootstraps and keep going on in this mad world.

But I have my father’s name—the real one—William C. And pictures shared on Ancestry. In them is my face, my son’s face. There’s no denying this DNA. By gosh, I actually look like someone.

I am one of 12 children between these two biological parents, and none other than my younger maternal half-brother wants me. He tries, but he has his own very full life with not a lot of time for a sister four hours away. He doesn’t want to get in between all the madness of my relationship with my maternal siblings and my biological mother, who don’t want me in their lives, but he and I do talk, and he is my one and only lifeline.

My adoptive siblings, a brother and a sister, now no longer talk to me either. They told me years ago that I should not have tried looking for biological family, that I should have been happy with the one I had. They say that they know I never wanted to be in their family. (They’re most certainly right about that one.) So I’ve had to let them go as well.

As for my friends and cousins, I wish they’d stop saying, “But at least you had a good family to raise you.” They only see what I have allowed them to see. I’ve gone through the gamut of emotions over this: anger—lots and lots of anger; grief over of losing someone I never met, over losing someone I looked for 40 years, over losing sisters that were not my sisters. I feel disconnected every single day.

I’m not putting all this out here so anyone will feel sorry for me. My story is much nicer than that of many I have read. I now know my truth. I have a wonderful husband. He works hard, he loves me, and is my best friend. I have the very best son. He’s much like his dad—he works hard and he loves his momma. He has a hard time with relationships though; he’s had no family around him growing up—no aunts, uncles, cousins, or siblings. No one. Much like me. All alone, always. He doesn’t want children. And his aloneness makes me saddest of all.Sherrie L. Kappa lives in North Carolina with her husband and fur baby. She’s a medical staff professional and volunteers with a DNA research group. To date, she’s helped 34 individuals find and connect with their biological family.

By B.K. Jackson

Libby Copeland

Just over a decade ago, when autosomal DNA tests first hit the market, offering consumers a new tool for advancing genealogical research and a way to discover genetic cousins, few imagined how popular these tests would become. In this short span, more than 30 million Americans have traded a hundred bucks and a spit or swab sample of DNA for a backward glimpse into their ancestry.

The majority of testers get precisely what they pay for—a pie chart indicating their ancestral heritage and a list of DNA cousin matches. They learn from whence and from whom they came—information that makes them feel better connected to their forebears and more knowledgeable about themselves in some essential way. Countless others, however, get much more than they bargain for and—sometimes—more than they can handle. For these consumers, DNA testing leads to a genetic disconnect from their families and the erasure of an entire swath of their self-knowledge. They discover that they’re genetically unrelated to one or more of their parents.

Even more shocking than the existence of these genetic disconnects is their sheer numbers. Although no one knows exactly how many testers have discovered misattributed parentage—and estimates within the general population are likely overstated—headline after headline and the swelling ranks of secret Facebook groups devoted to supporting those disenfranchised from their families suggest the numbers are significant.

These genetic seismic events are only part of the reason many view direct-to-consumer DNA testing as a Pandora’s box. Just as no one could have guessed how many genetic identity crises might arise in the wake of testing, the depth and breadth of the potential repercussions were unimaginable, as were the contours of the ethical and moral dimensions.

More than anything, the widespread availability of DNA tests has created a nation of what Libby Copeland, in her extraordinary new book, calls seekers. Although rigorously researched and dense with information, “The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are,” is a page-turner. The author, an award-winning journalist, crisscrossed the country talking to industry leaders, educators, and influencers. She immersed herself in the wide world of DNA testing, followed debates on social media, and attended conferences, and yet she wondered whether the velocity of change in the industry was so great that even she couldn’t keep up. And at the same time, she worried that the media saturation about DNA testing was so thorough that what she’d learned was already old news. “But then I would remember that I was in a bubble,” she writes. “The people who were getting DNA kits for Christmas had no idea what was coming for them. And the ramifications of what they might find would not be short-lived; rather they amounted to a fundamental reshaping of the American family. It was something they would deal with for the rest of their lives and pass on to the generations that follow.”

I thought I knew a great deal about DNA testing and had a reasonable grasp of its myriad ramifications until I read “The Lost Family,” in which Copeland expertly drives home how much bigger the subject is than most of us—even those of us deeply affected—realize. She takes readers through the history of genetics and all of its promise, then explores equally its dark side—eugenics and the dangers of genetic essentialism—and considers the broad range of ethical minefields planted by present day DNA testing. “One of the central conundrums of spitting into a tube is the way one person’s rights so often collide with another’s after the tube is sealed and sent in,” Copeland observes. And so many rights are at stake—from the right to privacy with respect to genetic data to the right of offspring to know who their parents were and what their health risks might be.

As she delved deep into her research, Copeland came to believe “we are embarking on a vast social experiment, the full implications of which we can’t yet know.” But what follows suggests that the boat left the dock some time ago and is churning in choppy waters. While the full implications are beyond imagining, the author does a stellar job of exploring the implications that have become apparent. She dissects DNA testing and explores it from every aspect, mapping the perspectives of all involved—the test makers and takers, the lawyers, the genetic and forensic genealogists, the ethicists who ponder the ramifications, and the people who are on the receiving end of contact from test takers—and shows what the stakes are for each.

As intriguing as all that is, Copeland is nowhere more captivating than when she’s telling the stories of the seekers—the “people obsessed with figuring out just what’s in their genes”—and follows them down the rabbit holes that swallow them as they try to figure out where they come from. She categorizes seekers into three groups: avid genealogists for whom DNA testing is just an extension of their research; those propelled by suspicions that something is off-kilter in their families or who know they have biological family to find, such as adoptees, donor-conceived people, and other NPEs; and the hapless folks who tested for “recreational” purposes and were rocked by a finding they never saw coming.

Copeland spoke to more than 400 such seekers during the course of her research, and she braids many of their stories throughout the text to illustrate why and how people seek and the ways their lives are changed by the pursuit of truth. There’s the geneticist who found that the man she believed was her father was not genetically related. There’s the foundling who had been placed in a basket and left in front of the home of a pastor. There are the seekers who search and are shut out by their biological relatives. There’s the woman in her fifties who developed symptoms that might have been related to ovarian cancer. She’d recently been given information suggesting she was half Ashkenazi Jewish, which meant she might have a BRCA1 or 2 variant, increasing her risk of breast and ovarian cancers. A medical grade DNA test didn’t suggest that she had the variants, but her doctors thought a radical hysterectomy was still warranted by her Ashkenazi heritage. She took a DNA test to learn more about that heritage, and the results showed she had no Ashkenazi ancestry. She discovered she’d been adopted. The worst part, perhaps, was that others in her family knew and didn’t stop her from having the surgery.

But the anchor of the book is the story of Alice Collins Plebuch, a super tech nerd who used her exceptional skills in a two-decades’ long quest to learn more about her family history only to stumble on a spectacularly thorny family mystery. “It is a strange thing to look in the mirror at the face you’ve grown old with and find you don’t quite recognize it,” she told Copeland.

And through Alice’s efforts to understand her unexpected DNA test results, Copeland, weaving her story throughout the book, traces the genesis of a seeker. “Even if you didn’t mean to ask the question, once it’s asked, it will be answered. And once it’s answered—well, for many people, there’s something pretty compelling about knowing there’s a mystery man out there who gave you half your genetic material. How do you not open that box? How do you not want to see your face in his, or to hear the timbre of is voice? How do you not wonder: Would he like you? Would he be glad you came into his life? This is how seekers are made: One question lead to another.” But, she’s quick to observe, there’s no telling how the objects of one’s quest will respond to those questions—an uncertainty that drives an enormous amount of anxiety and, potentially, trauma, for which, she adds, there’s a dearth of supportive services.

These stories involving DNA testing, Copeland says, reveal “how it can delight—and how it can disappoint.” And through them she’s able to pose the big questions:

Is it better to know the truth a test reveals?

Who owns a secret?

What does it feel like to have been lied to?

What is it that forms identity? Is it cultural or biological?

What is it that makes family? Is it blood or care?

Oddly, one of the book’s numerous strengths is that it raises many questions Copeland can’t answer but that provoke thought and debate. “The rise of consumer genomics poses questions about the emphasis we put on genetic identity and what we do when DNA test results come into conflict with the narratives we’ve long believed about ourselves,” she says. “How much of your sense of yourself should scientists and algorithms be allowed to dictate?” And further, “Who decides what story we get to tell?”

Legions of test takers will nod in recognition when Copeland acknowledges the fundamental pain many seekers experience. “Secrets, we are all discovering, have a propulsive power all their own, and time and complicity only make them more powerful.” She manages to look at the toxicity of secrets from all sides. “DNA testing has brought the past forward to the present, forcing us to grapple with decisions made long ago in different, often desperate, circumstances. If forces us to think about the people whose truths have been hushed up for decades—the teenager consigned to a home for unwed mothers, the medical student who contributed his sperm, never dreaming that sperm would become a person knocking on his inbox five decades later.”

Copeland has managed to unravel the enormous knot of a deeply complex subject—the “profound and disruptive power of DNA testing.” She’s broken it into comprehensible parts and parsed their meaning and import. “The Lost Family” is essential reading for everyone who has taken or is considering taking a DNA test, and it will be illuminating to anyone with a stake in genetic identity issues. But because Copeland’s analysis is so thorough and deeply thoughtful, and because it will humanize and contextualize genetic identity issues for those who haven’t yet been touched by them, the book should be read by everyone. No one is immune to the reach of DNA testing. Ultimately, everyone will be affected in one way or another by this phenomenon. The information contained in this excellent book will help readers make informed decisions about testing and, equally, once they’ve tested, will prepare them for the fallout when “the roulette wheel of some unexpected revelation” stops at their families.

Look for more reviews here, and return to the home page for more articles about genetic identity.

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 20^th 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 issues 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, observing that paternity bequeaths not only individuals’ names but also their identities, nationalities, and legitimacy.

Because a woman’s pregnancy and childbirth are observable, maternity historically has been undisputed. But before science developed the means to pinpoint with certainty the biological fact of fatherhood, it was well accepted that the mystery of paternity was impenetrable. And while paternity was understood to be truly unknowable or unverifiable, it could be assumed or claimed based on a man’s relationship to a child’s mother or his behavior toward a child. Paternity could be inferred from marriage. Likewise, a man’s acceptance of responsibility for a child supported the presumption of his paternity. In most cultures and throughout history, the role of father has been accorded to the men willing to perform it.

But the lack of certainty rendered claims of infidelity insupportable and legal actions to hold putative fathers accountable unprovable. At the same time, this ambiguity upheld certain social orders, for example, it gave cover to white slave owners who impregnated slaves with impunity.

In the early 20^st century, myriad methods were developed to attempt to scientifically determine paternity. They were efforts to prove the male’s body contained the evidence and to shift paternity from a social construct—a designation based on relationships and behavior—to one based in biology. These included hereditary blood grouping, crystallography, fingerprints, genetic paternity testing, and measurements of the electronic vibrations through the blood using a machine called an oscillophore. But it wasn’t until scientific testing techniques were refined and DNA testing reached a standard of reliability that the biological fact of paternity became indisputable. Paternity thenceforth would be based on genes rather than social or political determinations. Earlier notions of identity and kinship gave way to a new standard.

The use of science to yield conclusive proof of paternity, which, Milanich says, arose from eugenics and race science, had wide application and significant repercussions. It was desirable, for example, to government agencies that sought to reduce welfare spending by shifting the financial burden to the scientifically demonstrated fathers. These techniques might be used to hold a deadbeat dad accountable, shame an unfaithful woman and strip her of her rights, or uphold privilege and paternalism.

Contemporary headlines about fertility fraud and the ethical minefields surrounding assisted reproduction support the author’s argument that despite decades of efforts by scientists to determine the criteria for establishing and legitimizing paternity, the task remains as difficult as it’s ever been. Further, society has leaned back toward a view of paternity and parenthood dictated by behaviors and responsibilities, as demonstrated by the acceptance of same-sex parenting. The experience of NPEs (not parent expected), as well, demonstrates that DNA doesn’t settle the matter of paternity once and for all. Countless individuals who’ve discovered biological fathers through DNA testing have been rejected by those fathers and may have no legal recourse. And on the flip side, in many if not most cases, men who learn through DNA that they are not the biological fathers of their children continue to fulfill the social role and responsibilities understood as those of a father. They may do so through a sense of duty, because they’re legally bound to be accountable, or because all parties involved believe fatherhood is a matter the heart, not of cells.

DNA testing has made it possible for many adoptees, donor-conceived individuals, and NPEs to discover their origins—a fundamental right asserted in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. But Milanich also explores the darker side of what she terms biological essentialism, detailing the ways in which paternity science was used for baser purposes and in a discriminatory manner, for example in Nazi Germany to determine race, or in the United States during the Cold War to expose Chinese immigrants claiming bloodlines to U.S. citizens. This discussion is especially resonant in light of current events—the government’s plan to use new rapid DNA testing of immigrants in detention facilities on the southern U.S. border, for example, or the Israel High Court granting permission for the use of DNA tests to verify Jewishness.

Those who have had DNA surprises leading to genetic identity confusion may take issue with the way their experience is described as a repetitive story line in the media—”the trope of identity lost and found”—or with the author’s suggestion that what she calls “Big Paternity” has commercialized doubt and is involved in “creating and perpetuating narratives of rampant “paternal misattribution.” Nevertheless, she raises important questions that are worth examining. She concludes that DNA hasn’t settled the matter of paternity. “It was not a lack of knowledge that produced the quest for the father; the quest was always a social and political one. The truly significant question about paternity is thus not an empirical one—who is the father?—but a normative one—what do we want him to be? Which criteria whose interests, intentions, or desires, should define paternity?”

Milanich, a skilled storyteller, offers a fascinating social history, from the earliest times and across cultures to the rise of Big Paternity, as exemplified by the “Who’s Your Daddy?” truck that winds through the streets of New York City providing mobile DNA testing, and, of course, the ubiquity of direct-to-consumer DNA testing. This deeply researched and engaging exploration will likely challenge readers’ notions about paternity and shift their perspectives. As the author explained in a recent Barnard College interview, “Tracing the rise of testing illuminates changing ideas about family, sexuality, childhood, race, nationhood, and identity.”B.K. JacksonLook for more book reviews here, and find more articles about genetic identity here. Is there a book, film, or podcast you’d like to review? Check out our submission guidelines.