Chapter 1
A Social and Scientific Phenomenon

Family secrets are no longer remaining secret. Advances in science and technology have far outpaced our ability to deal with the consequences of these family discoveries regarding parentage and/or race and ethnicity. Adoptions, non-paternal events (NPE), donor conceptions, and hidden racial heritages are being revealed at an increasing rate.

In part, what’s fueling these unexpected and disorienting discoveries are the proliferation of consumer DNA tests and easy access to genealogy websites, such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and MyHeritage.

As of 2019, approximately 26 million Americans have taken a consumer DNA test, about two out of ten people. Since then, it’s estimated that number has increased, exceeding over 100 million. Of those 100 million plus people about four in ten (38%) have had unexpected familial results.1 And that’s not counting the other family members, parents and siblings, who also are impacted by these surprises.

Behind these numbers is devastating trauma, which tears families apart and often leaves the discoverer, or the “family secret,” stranded and isolated. Ancestry recognizing the increase in unexpected discoveries has a warning in their privacy statement. “You may discover unexpected facts about yourself or your family when using our services. Once discoveries are made, we can’t undo them.”2

Not only are they irreversible, they also leave the discoverers feeling betrayed. Over and over again the people I interviewed for this book expressed their feelings of being betrayed by a parent or parents who kept their biological identities from them. When they learned that their parents had lied to them, that sacred bond between them and their parents was shattered. Their trauma was amplified by their family’s inability to understand the impact of the secret, telling them it doesn’t matter and that they’re still the same person.

But to the discoverer, it does matter. And they’re not the same person anymore.

Late discovery adoptee Brad Ewell from Chapter 13 explained, “It absolutely matters when you wake up one day and you find out you’re not the kid of the people who raised you. It’s three years now and I still struggle with it.”

Unexpected parentage is not the only surprise people who take consumer DNA tests experience. Many also find out that their race or ethnicity is different than what they were told—a shift that in some cases challenges their ideas about minorities and religion.

As Libby Copland points out in The Lost Family, these identity changing discoveries force you to rethink what you’ve known about race and religion, about your place in the family and your role in the world.

Besides DNA tests, family secrets are also revealed by family members in times of extreme emotional stress, as if the secret keeper can no longer remain quiet.

Robin from Chapter 19 learned she was donor conceived during a heated argument with her mother.

“I don’t know why I bothered with all that trouble to be artificially inseminated to have you,” her mother shouted at her.

Robin said, “That shut me up.”

Besides shutting her up, her mother’s shocking revelation left her questioning her very existence.
. . .

The first step toward understanding the impact of uncovered family secrets is to give them voice. . .

From the Texas policeman who discovered his biological father is a murderer; to the Seattle CEO who suffered for her Black identity only to find out she isn’t Black; to the Chicago area high school guidance counselor who suddenly had forty-nine half-siblings—these stories and the others in What They Never Told Us sit at the forefront of a changing social landscape we’ve yet to understand or cope with—challenging our notions of identity, race, ethnicity, and what constitutes a family in the twenty-first century.