Curious

 Curious adjective

1.       Having a desire to learn or know more about something or someone

2.       Strange, unusual, or unexpected

This week’s prompt is simply curious. Interpret it as you will and write about it. In general, I’m curious about a lot of things. It’s that curious nature that started me on my genealogical journey to learn about my ancestors. That journey turned into curiosity to determine if, as we had suspected, we had African heritage which led to doing the DNA test. Which then turned into something strange and unexpected. And that we know from my week 1 post, was that my dad was not my biological father.

Coming up with a post for this prompt wasn’t easy. I’m curious about my heritage, I’ve got specific questions I’m trying to answer about certain ancestors, I’m trying to learn about periods of time in history and how those era’s may have affected my ancestors…and so on and so on. Ever look at a menu with too many choices and can’t decide what to order? Then you get it.

What finally sparked my curious post is the whole “my dad is not my dad” thing. Do you know there is a term for this? It is called a Non-Paternal Event” (NPE) or more commonly now called a “Non-Parental Event.” These terms reference when a presumed-to-be parent has been proven not to be the biological parent through DNA.

I’m reading a book now that dives deep into the impact of DNA testing on people and their families. Not having expected the outcome I did, it never occurred to me that I was doing anything more than scientifically proving what we believed to be true. This post isn’t about that so much as it is about the sheer volume of people that are impacted by a Non-Parental Event. I like data. So, I took a little side trip from my journey on down the line to do a bit of research.

I did an online search for “how many people have taken a DNA test for genealogy.” I found an MIT technology review that states that by February 2019 more than 26 million people have taken an at-home ancestry test. A Washington Post article from June 2021 says that close to 40 million at-home DNA tests have been sold. And in the description for a book on Amazon it claims that “By 2022, 142 million people worldwide…”. I suppose in a world of over 7 billion people, 142 million is just a drop in the bucket but it’s still a lot of people.

According to the NPE Friends Fellowship group there are a minimum of 50-100 people affected by every NPE discovery. They also estimate that approximately 5% - 10% of people who have taken an at-home DNA test have experienced an NPE. The book excerpt on Amazon puts that at 10% - 15%. They should really put a warning on these things like they do with cigarette packages. “Warning: the results of this test might change your life forever.”  Once you know, you know. You can’t unknow it.

Think about this:

·   5% of 142 million is 71,000 people; if each of those discoveries impacts 50 people, that NPE has affected 3,550,000 others.

If nothing else, it tells me that I am not alone.

I am going to learn more about groups like the NPE Friends Fellowship that are there for people like me who have had their world rocked by the NPE discovery. I think that connection with others in similar circumstances will be a good thing.