Vox has a piece on genetic testing and what it may unravel. One portion is cautionary:
That’s when she discovered Schwartzman. And her life changed. Afraid to ask her mother about him, she went instead to her mother’s best friend for answers. The friend confirmed that Schwartzman was probably the son Pearl’s mom had given up years ago.
“You can’t know what you’re going to find. It isn’t all good stuff. It’s not all happy stuff. And maybe some secrets are better left secrets.”
At first, it was “fantasy land,” Pearl said. “I found a brother. On his part, he found his biological family.” She was happy for Schwartzman, for his relief. “I felt an immediate kinship and connection with him,” she said. “We look similar. We have similar movements.”
Now, three years after the reunion, her opinion about the experience has changed.
“I suddenly had to rewrite my own family history, which is a shock,” Pearl said. “It did not make sense in terms of all the stories I had grown up with, in terms of what my life was. It did not include [my mother] getting pregnant, having a kid, giving it up for adoption.”
…
“This was my mother’s secret,” she said.
“My mother used to say, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’ [With 23andMe,] you can’t know what you’re going to find. It isn’t all good stuff. It’s not all happy stuff. And maybe some secrets are better left secrets.”
My attitude about these issues about parental privacy in relation to adopted children is that the children weren’t asked to be born, they didn’t give consent. You give up a lot of rights when you make some decisions as an adult. Sometimes those rights you give up are precious. Sometimes it isn’t fair (consider a situation where a person who opposes abortion is raped, and so carries the baby to term). I agree that these are complex issues, and they need to aired out. But my moral stance is to first and foremost to look at the world through the eyes of future generations, who didn’t ask to be born into this world, and ask what would they want? Think about the children! It’s cliche, but it has a lot of truth to it. Some adopted children don’t want to know about their past. From what I have seen most do want to know more than they do, at least to an extent. Being a kid is hard enough.
More broadly, light is good. I’m not a Whig about progress, but both the norms and arc of Western history so far have been toward greater openness and candor. David Brin is a great science fiction author, but 50 years from now I suspect he’ll be remembered for writing The Transparent Society. It was interesting when it came out. Today it is incredibly relevant.
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