to think people should at least get a basic grounding in genetics before they cast aspersions on my fidelity/ relationship history?

[IntergalacticHussy]

I'm sick of acquaintances and sometimes complete strangers coming up to me and demanding to know why my kids look different to one another.

Yesterday was a prime example; bumped into an acquaintance i've known for a few years who took a look at my dcs and just blurted out 'so why do they have such different colour hair?' in this really quite aggressive way.

A list of possible answers flashed through my mind

1. Because. obviously they're not identical twins; there's years between them!
2. I don't bloody know, ask a geneticist!
3. start mumbling about dh's sperm, my eggs and recessive genes in a pseudo-scientific manner

Just to underline what he meant, he then started mumbling on about his own kids (who look totally different!) and how people must think he only fathered one of them. Bit weird really, maybe this he's projecting his own insecurities onto my kids.

This is just one example of the conversations i end up having with people i barely know, day after day. As it happens they have the same dad, but if they didn't, it wouldn't concern you anyway, I feel like saying. If we were friends, that would be the kind of thing you'd already know about my family and the fact that you have to piss about asking daft questions just underlines the fact that we don't know each other well enough to be talking about such personal things - in the bloody supermarket of all places!

It takes two to get pregnant. Why would you have a kid with someone without commitment? I don't get it. I suppose the Dads know that the children will be brought up without their help so they don't need to worry so much, and there's no shame or embarrassment. (Which is so much better than it used to be, and not that long ago either.) And the mums know the same.

I must admit, I can't see it as that rude, OP, unless they were rude in their manner and their stance? In that case, yes, it's rude, but otherwise it might be just that people are being curious and friendly.

Oh ignore me. It's been a long week.

Have a nice weekend OP.

Gooseberry - many married men walk out on their pregnant partner.

Many of these dumped married women go on to re-marry and want to have new children with their new partner.

(If by commitment you mean marriage)

'It takes two to get pregnant. Why would you have a kid with someone without commitment? I don't get it.' It's not about you, so you don't have to 'get it'. But just so you know, it's precisely attitudes like yours that make people like me feel awkward.

I have 6 dc in my lives:
DD1 from my first partner
DD2 my foster dd
DS1 mine and DHs only biological child together
DD3 long term foster dd
DS2 long term foster ds
DD4 adopted dd

None of them look anything like the other or us. No one has ever commented on their looks but we often get comments about our large family. DHs reaction is usually to mutter (truthfully) "they all have different fathers but I stay with her (whilst glaring at me).

You should have more confidence in your choice. Other people's attitudes are nothing compared to the other stuff going on in your life.

Wow ps: you must have the most amazingly generous spirit. Wow. That's incredible.

Gooseberry - perhaps she doesn't want to discuss what a shit her first partner was in front of his daughter.

We got told by our local university's genetics department that DH could not be DD1's father as he had brown eyes and she has blue eyes...strange really as her eye colour is the only thing she has got from me and the rest of her is the spitting image of DH. DD2 looks completely different to DD1 so am just waiting for the comments about whether they have the same father

I did rather thoroughly put my foot in it last week . Walking to school with DS, we ran into one of his classmates, who was walking with a girl and a young woman. DS said 'That's [boy's name] and that's his twin sister.'
I told DS not to be silly, the girl might be the boy's sister but wasn't his twin (as she was about 6 inches taller than him). We caught up with him and I smiled at the woman with them, who looked to be early 20s and said 'Are they both yours?'
'I'm their big sister,' she said. from me. 'You'd never think they were twins, would you?'
[wants to hide head in bucket emoticon]

i have twin aunts just a few years older than me. they each had 4 kids, one aunt (married to a Greek) had 4 dark hair/eye/skin children. the other married an english guy & had 1 blonde & 3 very orange red haired kids.
dsis & i are both 'typical' english - sort of blonde & blue eyes, as are our kids.

we are all kinds of short/tall/skinny/fat.

you can just see strangers trying to work it all out when we meet up - often in the day during school holidays, when the dh's are at work, so their influence can't be seen. doesn't help that, of course, we're often yelling 'mum, grandma' etc as we mess around/go for walks/entertain kids.

"...you'd never think they were twins, would you"

Well you could just say -- they've got different dads. Where's the shame in that?

colditz to answer your question from the other page (sorry came off mumsnet) her eyes are more hazel green but only changed from blue/grey when she was 2!

Dp and I both have dark hair & blue eyes, dd1 dark hair & green eyes, dd2 fair hair & blue eyes.

Have mixed race friends and the father was always asked if their dd1 was his when she was a baby. Blond hair but looked exactly like him. How rude.

I've been told to my face that I'm wrong about being a twin . If you can think of a snappier comeback for that than 'oh, OK then' I'll be grateful

carikbue - who one earth was it from the genetics department who made that ridiculous remark!?

or on earth, even? (Brain is clearly switching off, must be time to go to bed!)

When someone asks you why your children look so different, simply reply, I don;t know, why are you so rude? and walk away

Seveal people have told my mum that I look just like my dad - he's my stepdad!

I think people just say things for the hell of it sometimes!

Tell them that your bio kids all looked so similar that you swapped one at soft play.

My aunt (with 2 adopted children from different parents) often got told how alike they looked or how like her or her DH they looked. People just spout rubbish.

I always think it's funny when people remark how much like DH our boys look like. What are you supposed to say? "phew" or "thank goodness for that 'cos I wasn't too sure he was the father".

coolbeans, my dp is black, I am white, we have two dds - one is black and one is white. So she is constantly taken for the nanny, and I am taken for a hooar who has taken up with different fellas, at least one of them a coloured.

A local childminder told me she was once in Tesco with three of her mindees: a black child, a white child and a Chinese child. Two older women nearby started giving her the evils, and one hissed to the other: "Look - three fathers - that is DISGUSTING!" She, of course, turned and said, "Yep, three mothers too!"

Actually, I've been quite surprised to find that people do, still, have certain perceptions of white women with black children. I've always rather enjoyed the gap between my public image (very respectable, pillar of the community, and of course heterosexual) and the reality, which rather disconcerts people when they discover I'm not actually terribly respectable after all. But having a black child gets me certain kinds of looks in the street - not from everyone, not from most people, but from some - something I thought was a thing of the past, this thing that I"m some kind of loose woman.

Genetics are strange. Me and my sister don't look alike but my dad has recently had 2 girls with his new wife (so our half sisters)
and one looks just like me, one looks just like my sister.

edam - we were at an open day at our local uni and were at the genetics dept stand; when we expressed surprise that they were trying to tell us that you can't have a blue-eyed child if there is a brown-eyed parent (as both DH and I remember enough basic biology to know a bit about this), they said that they had encountered quite a few people expressing surprise at their opinions. Apparently they'd told every family visiting them that day that had one brown eyed parent/blue eyed child that they couldn't be genetically related .

That's dreadful Carikube!

I do think genetics are weird. My two have different dads and they are almost little clones of each other. However my DS also looks very like his dad. I'd be interested to see pictures of DDs half sisters as babies to see if there is any likeness at all there, because I am yet to see her anything like her father at all.