“I didn’t meet my girlfriend until 12 years after our daughter was born”
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Interesting to actually put faces to the people being discussed in the piece.
(it let's you scrub through the video timeline, and skip parts of the exposition! it contaminates the documentary's artform!)
In the trailer, it looks like Madi's parents had a bit of mixed feelings on her meeting Aaron - one was happy, the other scared. Since she ultimately ended up moving to live with him (or in the same building?), I wonder how they've reacted since then.
She's an adult so I guess the moving around bit is around right on time anyway, but it does bring up an interesting consequence to this sort of meet-up for younger children, where the kids believe that they'd enjoy living with their biological parent more than they enjoy living with the people that raised them. And it's certainly possible that they might.
I'm convinced that if you want to know what my father was like, look at my youngest child. He's very different from his two older brothers as my father was different from the rest of his family. And in the same ways-- studious, indifferent to sports (in Boston! Holy shit!). It's definitely not environment. We'll all be watching a game (even my wife) and he'll go read history or something.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-three-...
In 1995, after a struggle with mental illness, Galland committed suicide. That same year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lawrence Wright published an article in the New Yorker shedding light on a disturbing psychological study. The scientific inquiry, masterminded by prominent psychologist Dr. Peter Neubauer and his Child Development Center, set out to answer the fundamental question of nature vs. nurture. Through the now-defunct Louise Wise adoption agency, an unknown number of twins and triplets were placed in different homes and secretly observed for years by researchers who diligently made home visits. (Parents were told these visits were standard, to track the adoptive children’s progress.)
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Hers was a hodgepodge of lists and memories written under duress (“Mom: Write or death!”). Favorite color: “Black. Like my soul.” Favorite holiday: “Halloween (because candy and murder).” She liked Alfred Hitchcock films. “Basically,” she wrote, “I’m an angsty teen in a child’s body.”
This kid’s 11?"
Forget the mother, make an entire article about that kid. Heck, let her write that article.
Genes are account for about 50% of the differences between people (with the other 50% being environment), so I don't know if "mere passage of genes" is a phrase that really makes sense. (Actually, "nurture" is less, because the 50% environmental component includes surroundings that parents have no control over: https://www.medicaldaily.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate-50-yea...)
Can you imagine? Forty five years of not knowing who your real father is because someone refused to face reality! Unfortunately reading these threads on Reddit made me realize my story is all too common. All I can say is highly recommended if you're trying to discover your true roots.
https://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2018_46/2646241/18111...
Long (and his mother) are in the middle, Bryce and Alice on the right, Madalyn is 2nd from left. Jessica (Alice's mother, and now Long's girlfriend) is at far left.
It's a funny story for me - one year in the fall, when I was about 12, my mom got in contact with her biological daughter, my oldest half-sister, so boom, new sister for Christmas.
Next year, my father confirmed that he was the biological father of my older half brother - boom, new brother for Christmas.
I sat both my parents down very seriously and said "This shit has got to stop. It's becoming a trend. Are there any others out there? Even the tiniest possibility?"
The other side of my family sought me out when I was 26. My siblings are all 20 years older than me and my nieces and nephews all 6-10 years younger than me. They're nice people but they lived fairly normal New England Catholic upper-middle-class lives. I pretty much grew up broke and on the street in the seedier areas of old New York. We have very little in common.
It's probably my fault that everything didn't gel, but it's difficult accepting a completely new family as an adult when you already have struggles with your existing one.
Moreover, my father was a complete creep and I learned why my mother stayed away from him. The whole experience was very uncomfortable and very sad and we haven't spoken since.
Just before I got to this paragraph I was thinking how this article could have been a science fiction short story similar to ones I'd read back in the 80s or 90s.
I'm still waiting for my flying car, but we may be living in the future after all.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sperm-donor-dad-when-st...