DNA Evidence

For the first year of her life, my daughter was an orphan. She does not know--nor will she likely ever know--who conceived her or why she was left in front of a photo shop the day after her birth. She will never know what her 'birth parents' looked like or if she has siblings or cousins still in China--or potentially adopted by another family.

Orphanage picture; they add extra clothes so the child looks healthier

These are difficult things for me to wrap my head around. I know my wife has trouble just reading those first three sentences. It's hard for us to think about Grace's life before we adopted her or her 'other' family. Neither of us were adopted. Everyone close to us growing up knew who their birth parents were. My best understanding of being an orphan came from Annie and Oliver Twist. How could I possibly empathize with how my daughter feels?

Now, my heart aches whenever Grace talks about family tree school projects or asks about her birth mother. On her Gotcha Day, we make it a point to think about Grace's birth mother and thank her for the courage to recognize that she wasn't able to care for her baby and give her up. Right now, Grace is content with her life and her family. As she grows older, will this change? Will she increasingly yearn for her birth mother and Yingtan City, the place of her birth? In a fit of anger for some future grounding, will she yell, "you're not my real daddy!!!!" That would break my heart, yet as difficult as it is for me to hear Grace talk about her birth mother, it must be a hundred times harder for my little girl to think that she may have been 'unwanted.' 

Recently, we came across a Facebook post that mentioned 23andMe DNA testing. Betsy and I looked it up and we were excited about the possibilities. Grace could discover other siblings or distant cousins. Could it give her a better sense of herself when she's older? We decided to buy a DNA kit and encouraged the other girls from her orphanage to do the same. Who knows, maybe the 'Yingtan Sisters' (the name we gave the girls from her orphanage) really are sisters!

The package arrived in the mail. It could not have been easier. Grace had to spit into a test tube multiple times up to a 'fill' line.

"I spit in a tube just like daddy!!!"

Then, we dropped it in the mail and sent it back to the company.

Inside this box is a tube of spit

In a matter of weeks, we got her DNA results!

Unfortunately, we did not find that Grace has any siblings, first, or second cousins. We were also disappointed that the other families from Grace's orphanage haven't shown a desire to get the DNA test done. The results were that Grace is 96.7% Chinese, 2.28% Korean, 0.6% Japanese, and 0.4% 'broadly East Asian.' We also discovered that Grace is distantly related to Yo-Yo Ma on her mother's side. Grace was extremely excited to do the test and ecstatic to learn she's related to Yo-Yo Ma. However, in the future, I fear that she'll be dissatisfied with the generalities of 23andMe's results.

But here's a video of Yo-Yo Ma with Sting

There are other places to get DNA tests. NationalGeographic.com (link to buy their test) and ancesty.com (Ancestry's link) are two other popular DNA testing centers. We really want to do them all (at least the reputable ones anyway) so hopefully Grace can discover something more about herself. I can see how other families might be reluctant to do these tests. Some parents feel like they could just get their child's hopes up. Other families might be of the opinion that "this is the only family that matters now; why confuse the child with knowledge about other relatives?" or "my child is already confident in herself; if she wants to do a DNA test later in life, we will certainly support her."

I think a lot of this depends on the child. Grace was enthusiastic about the DNA test and is eager to try others. From my standpoint, more information about Grace's heritage will help her feel more grounded. Any relatives of Grace's we find will be my relatives too, so I look forward to hearing more about Grace's ancestry and family connections!!