Always believed i was adopted or similar. Please help me understand dna

Mojisola

Grumpelstiltskin said:

I hope the OP doesn't think she will magically have a name for her potential father just pop up from the computer.
The chance of him having his DNA on even the most common site - Ancestry is very small.

The advantage of dna is that he doesn't have to be on there - if a relative has tested, the links will show.

I'm trying to confirm a great-grandfather and am getting hits from second cousins that are helping a great deal.

Grumpelstiltskin

Mojisola said:

Grumpelstiltskin said:

I hope the OP doesn't think she will magically have a name for her potential father just pop up from the computer.
The chance of him having his DNA on even the most common site - Ancestry is very small.

The advantage of dna is that he doesn't have to be on there - if a relative has tested, the links will show.

I'm trying to confirm a great-grandfather and am getting hits from second cousins that are helping a great deal.

Agree but it needs research to find that Joe Bloggs who is a potential second cousin is related to  Tom Brown who is the potential father and if you have never done any family history research before chances are you don't know where to start.

As you know the fact that Tom Brown is mentioned on a family tree ( that presumes he is dead as living people should be private ) doesn't always mean the relationship is correct as some family trees are flights of fancy.

raineydays

Thankyou for all your comments
In all honesty my only thoughts right now is confirming my brothers are my brothers. Half or full. So I need to work out the best/cheapest way to do so.
That is my only concern right now. This is a huge shock. Lots of talks with my mother are needed.

Thankyou so much for each and every comment 

lincroft1710

I think it is fairly safe to say that your mother would know definitely that your brothers are at the least your half brothers.


An ex of mine, estranged from their parents and the youngest of 5 or 6 (can't remember) always claimed their biological father was not their mother's husband but a family friend.

RAS

Having "solved" two cases of illegitimacy in my family tree I know it is possible to identify the father in some cases.   Neither case was evident when I got my test results.

One appeared about 18 months later, after I'd identified my other close contacts. It took over a year to confirm the suspected identity of the match because records were closed during lock-down. And there is only one person who could be the parent based on the DNA and documentary evidence.

In another case, the owner had not put a tree on-line. But then asked me about a surname that is on my tree and also belongs to a shared match. I explained the shared match and how both of us link to other matches. They have since gone silent. There's enough on the minimal tree they later put up for me to work out the possible relationships and to identify them IRL. However, they plainly aren't ready to explore further.

Even so there are a limited number of options given the dates and location. I could probably identify the parent, certainly eliminate most options, but its a large family and would require several tests to achieve that. And it's potentially upsetting for several people. 

But in another historical case, I and several cousins have drawn a blank so far.

RAS

raineydays said:

Thankyou for all your comments
In all honesty my only thoughts right now is confirming my brothers are my brothers. Half or full. So I need to work out the best/cheapest way to do so.
That is my only concern right now. This is a huge shock. Lots of talks with my mother are needed.

Thankyou so much for each and every comment 

Answering this specific question.

Do you know that each of your brothers actually wants to be tested? Some may prefer not to know either about the question or the answer.

Looking at these sibling tests on-line the ones I saw cost a little more or less then the cost of three standard DNA tests on offer. Are they have no further functional use.

If you need to test two more brothers, it's cheaper to do the standard tests.

The other issues are that;

With the sibling test, you learn how you, mum and sibling are related, so it tell you if you two are full or half siblings, but it doesn't tell anyone if brother 1 and brother 2 are descended from the same father unless you run another test specifically answering that question.

Standard DNA tests propose possible relationships. You share 50% DNA with each parent, and about that with each full sibling. So when two people share 50%, it could result from full siblingship or parentage and a standard test will recognise that. Half siblings and full first cousins share 25% (ish) of their DNA, so it will propose those two possible relationships as well possibly niece/nephew with aunt/uncle and grandchild/grandparent. Some of those options are going to be impossible in practice, but you need to be aware that there's more alternatives to consider.

harrys_nan

I think you will be much better off taking a test with Ancestry. It will mean joining up
Ancestry and setting up a tree, but once you get the DNA results, you can upload them to other sites like Gedmatch and My Heritage. You cannot upload any test taken elsewhere to Ancestry but Ancestry does have an extensive database.
There are family history groups on Facebook that have some great people on there that will help you and point you in the right direction.

Maskface

So basically your mum wasn't in a stable relationship and had sex with other men? Wasn't it easier to just say that in the first place? 

RAS

I think we need to remember that when the OP was born the world was very different. 

I'm a bit older and have some first hand experience of how difficult it was for women whose relationships were strained.

Few married women worked, and family allowance wasn't paid for the first child. And you couldn't get credit without your husband guaranteeing the sum, even a decade after the OP was born. Most workers were paid weekly in cash.

So if the husband went off with another woman, there was no money coming into the house unless he came back to give the family part of his wages. 

Divorce was difficult to obtain and very much frowned on. If you belonged to a church, seeking a separation would often get you black-balled. And unless you could get a legal separation, you could not claim child maintenance. If it was alleged the woman had committed adultery, she'd lose the children to the father, regardless of his behaviour. It was not unknown for men to get custody, realise how difficult it was to match work and child care and put the children in care rather than allow them to be returned to their mother. 

So women could be trapped in a marriage with an unreliable and erratic husband, perhaps "consoled" by someone who would put food on the table, but then further trapped by the fear the children would be removed from them if they tried to end the marriage.

The OP's mum expected to be in a stable relation, but the pressures of life pushed her to make difficult choices. 

Maskface

I get that but the whole story seems rather convoluted and has been confusing to follow. That one simple revelation made it a lot easier to understand rather than the pretexts of the 'Husband' as if neither he or the mother were biological parents to the op. As soon as that bit of information was added I completely understood the whole situation. Beforehand I really was lost. Basically both parents slept with other people. To word it as a story about the husband sleeping with more than one woman while neglecting to mention the mother had actually had children with more than one man is massive drip feed.




Mum had children with more than one man. Job done.