New Siblings, Old Secrets | Hacker News Reader

New Siblings, Old Secrets

sfchronicle.com

13 pointslibbyc8 comments

At home genetic testing is changing what we think of as family. We keep seeing stories of people who are excited to learn they have a bunch of half-siblings, stories of people who are devastated to find out their parent was a serial cheater, stories of old people who are now living in fear that their indiscretion from fifty years ago might suddenly be found out.

It'll be interesting to see if this leads to a rise of therapists as people try to cope with these new realities.

Another interesting note, as an engineer, these stories are the perfect example of the need for forward secrecy. People shouldn't be able to discover your fifty year old secrets. :)

It will be even more interesting to see if this changes the root behavior. Will people still cheat if they know there’s a high likelihood that it will come to light? Will people still agree to get married if these outcomes become more common?

A lot of people have pushed for mandatory paternity testing and it’s usually rejected at the state level. This looks a lot like de facto mandatory paternity testing.

Seems like it will lead to positive outcomes tbh.

> Will people still cheat if they know there’s a high likelihood that it will come to light?

Probably, but they're probably more likely to use contraception and/or get abortions.

it's fascinating, and those therapists already exist! infidelity and polyfidelity is as old as time... just that discovery is accelerated now.

i am mid-ivf cycle right now, and we expect to have some embryos left over. it's been a set of fascinating conversations with various people including my therapist over how to donate these embryos - potential full siblings of my existing child(ren) gestated and raised by other people.

we're definitely set on open adoptions if we do it though - i've seen enough donor conceived children that benefit from such a relationship. and yeah, you cannot hide any more anyway...

We still have one more in the freezer too. I'd hate to see it go to waste, so it's an interesting question as to who to donate it to and under what conditions.

I have been casually following a few general advice kind of subreddits for a long time (/r/relationships, /r/relationship_advice, /r/parenting, /r/TwoXChromosomes, etc), and there's definitely been a noticeable uptick in posts seeking advice regarding a situation where a father found out that his children were not biologically his, or children found out that their biological parents/grandparents are not who they though they were, and other similar kinds of scenarios, because of cheap, easily available genetic testing kids.

It's a fascinating and entirely predictable turn of events, and it's not going away any time soon given how useful and profitable genetic testing is.

I suspect that a few decades from now, the notion of a time where no one could know for sure if their "genetic" family was really who they thought they were (unless you're a Baratheon) will seem quaint and romantic.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll see a genuine men’s rights movement around the question of false paternity, now that it’s trivial to document.

There are many issues that disproportionately impact men — but that’s one that basically uniquely impacts men, and where women’s rights movements (such as feminism) have shown a distinct anti-male tendency.

Food for thought:

https://youtu.be/3WMuzhQXJoY

Side note only because I'm curious: As I'm looking at this the story has 2 points. How does a story with two points make the home page -- I thought they had to have 3. Has it changed/or was I always wrong/or was this manually selected for home page inclusion? Thanks for any insight and sorry this comment is, by it's nature, off topic.

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