It is generally presumed that the man who is married to your ancestor’s mother is, in fact, his biological father. The same assumption is made about the parents of your living relatives. People who work in genetics find that about 10% of people are not really the biological child of the man that they call Dad. This information could really shake up someone’s family tree!
One of the things I like best about Facebook is that I get to read the fascinating news articles that my friends post to their pages. I am lucky to have friends who frequently post articles that grab my attention and that spawn interesting comments from a variety of people who share their differing viewpoints about it. One of those articles grabbed my attention enough to make me want to blog about it.
The article is from the Canadian Children’s Rights Council. As far as I can tell, that article might have previously been posted on the Globe and Mail newspaper website. It is a rather lengthy article that brings up many interesting points for genealogists to consider.
The article says that it is widely accepted by people who work in genetics that about 10% of the population is not the biological child of the man who they believe is their biological father. In other words, these are situations where the child’s mother became pregnant from someone other than her husband.
There is the potential that at least a few of your ancestors are not related to you in quite the way that your research has led you to believe. That can really shake up your family tree! Sometimes, this type if information is discovered when a paternity test is taken.
Most of the time, though, this unexpected news is being revealed when a child has a sample of his or her DNA examined, for the purpose of ruling out or confirming diagnosis of a genetically heritable disease. Those tests usually require DNA samples from the child’s parents as well, so a comparison can be made. Here is an interesting quote from the article:
“Geneticists have stumbled upon this phenomenon in the course of conducting large population studies and hunting for genes that cause diseases such as cystic fibrosis. They find full siblings to be half-siblings, fathers who are genetic strangers to more than one of their children, and uncles who are much closer to their nieces and nephews than anyone might guess.”
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