Think I've discovered my father is not my father!

[whojamaflip]

Let me start by saying I'm not particularly bothered by this - my childhood was somewhat difficult so this may be relief!

I've had notification from ancestry that a close relative has been identified through DNA.

By the name it looks like it's my brother but we only share 25% according to the results. All dna links are on my maternal side.

I've been struggling with my family tree and dna links of 3rd cousins which have come up because no matter how I tried I could not make the link to these people through my tree - common ancestors do not match on my paternal side.

Am I right in thinking 25% indicates a half sibling or have I read this wrong?

Is your brother getting matches from the paternal side?

I have a 1742 match with ancestry and a 926 match with a chap who has the same surname. After stalking the internet I saw that the first person has a dm from our home town originally but has passed and was the same age as df. The second is in the US, no info as such. But, there used to be a US airforce base near us back in the day.
So I have an older dm and cousin (who I never knew about as he was a bachelor).
Not sure what your dm is hiding, unless she knew about your dfs affairs.

Sounds like your mum might've had an affair?

Did you have any inkling of this growing Up?
A feeling that you didn't have the usual family resemblance to your Father?

@whojamaflip how do you know your mum is actually your mum? did she also take a dna test???

I am a bit confused but

my children on 24 and me come back as clearly mother daughter and are labelled as such no confusion

if my brother uploaded his dna it would show he was my brother I believe ?

my kids have a sperm donor and he had not joined the site but his 2nd 3rd visions are on there and the relationship is explained clearly

does your “Dad” have a living relative who can donate and upload his dna ? he would not show up as your uncle and that would clarify things for you

btw your mums reaction really tells you everything you need to know , doesn’t it ? Sorry

Perhaps your "father" is not the biological father of either of you.

She's definitely related to me as I have dna matches on my mothers side which all fit very neatly into my family tree on that side. So the dna connection between dm and myself is true.

Actually that is a possibility I hadn't considered. Not sure how common sperm donor use was back in the 1970s though? Not something I know much about.

I had an unexpected DNA test result - my mum's side weren't who I expected to see at all, and my ethnicity result was utterly baffling (40% from somewhere I had no connection to - or so I believed).

You can trace the mystery side of your family from your DNA matches if you're curious. There are guides online, and there are pages on Facebook where people who know what they're doing will act as 'search angels' to help.

How are you feeling about it?

I don't know - he's coming up to see me in the next couple of months so will bring his laptop and we will have a dig into his matches and see.

"Not sure what your dm is hiding, unless she knew about your dfs affairs."

I think that you may have it the wrong way round. It would appear that it is the DM that had an affair.

In the 1970s it was all very secretive and taboo. Doners were anonymous and recipients were told not to tell their children.

This is what made sense to me after reading your posts. I'm sure there were informal ways to get a sperm donor that could have been arranged even if not "banks". Perhaps your dad agreed to it but might have explained why he felt distant, especially if it was a big secret that could not be discussed in the open.

Sperm donor would fit with them being married for quite a while before you came along?

Just to come at this from another angle. Is it possible that you have a nephew / uncle with the same name? The likely male relationships at 1772cms are grandfather, nephew, uncle or grandson. At 1772cms this person is extremely unlikely to be a full sibling to you.

Also, you can see your mothers side on Ancestry. Can you see your paternal side? Are there any high paternal matches? If so, how high are the cms?

Quite common. In some ( a few) circumstances the women inseminated weren't aware donor sperm was used, in others the women were told their husband's sperm would be mixed with donor sperm and the baby could be their husband's so no point swelling on it.. In others they were told donor sperm would be used but advised not to tell the children.

Oh wow, I suppose no one imagined you could map it in the future. Mixing it makes sense, you would never know for sure, which might have helped people accept the idea. But I suppose over time, you would always be guessing and it could be hard to not know for sure.

Sorry! I meant to add that half sibling is also one of the most likely scenarios.

Women getting pregnant isn't always by choice. Be careful how you proceed if your dm is adamant that you /tests are wrong.
Hopefully some less brutal skeletons and you find some nice relatives op....

Db asked dm about it and she is adamant ancestry have ballsed up the tests and are wrong. Refuses to talk about it and just shuts db down when he tries. I haven't mentioned it at but it may explain why dm was so against me doing an ancestry test when I mentioned it to her.

There's no nice way to say this: it's possible that your DM was raped. That would explain her hostility to you taking the test and her shutting-down of any talk on the subject.

This is such a good set of programmes on BBC sounds 'The Gift' stories uncovered after DNA test
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p0gd2dgb

Lots of examples about how different families turn out to be a bit more complicated.
It's actually put me off testing! And I feel sorry for a friend, a student anonymous doner, who thought he was doing a kind thing but was too young at the time to really think it through. It was a different place, parentage in the past.

I don't have experience of ancestry mapping but purely in term of genetics, each parent has two copies of each chromosome, one of which they pass on to each child. It is theoretically possibly that your father passed on to you a combination of chromosomes, and to your brother an entirely different set (ie the other copy). You would therefore share no paternal DNA with your brother.
On average full siblings share 50% of their DNA, but the real figure can vary from 0% - 100%. (it's very unlikely though...)

1970s -yes, there were plenty of sperm banks and fertility clinics offering insemination by donor.

Controls were only put in place fairly recently - this century, I believe. They proved necessary because a handful of donors fathered HUNDREDS of children each. Some of them were actually the doctors who ran fertility clinics. There are some documentaries about that. The people sharing DNA from these prolific inseminators are still finding each other via online test services.

I also wanted to raise the caution that your mother may have been raped, OP. I see others have done so.

I have family members who used sperm donors in the 1970s as the husband had fertility problems. They were not able to use the same donor each time so the children are biological half siblings.