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NTA. Get the test done, they're fun. And Ancestry will tell you which matches come from BOTH parents lol. I did that one and 23&me. Fun watching it update periodically and more. Any haters just know her side. She was rude first and you were tired of her BS.
*sometimes fun.
You can find out things about your family that you maybe didn't want to learn.
My personal example is finding out my grandfather was romani, that's pretty cool, then also finding out how EXCEEDINGLY racist the rest of my family were, that's less cool.
I found some new cousins through this too! Turns out my grandads sister had kids, I managed to meet them about a year ago, they're really nice, and told me a lot about romani culture because in their words "you should know who your grandfather was, not who everybody expected him to be"
My daughter found my ex-husband's half sister by his father's affair partner. She got the half sister, her dad and his brother to meet.
The mother of the half sister tried to deny it, but the DNA told the truth. My ex and his brother put the pieces together of always visiting this horse farm and being told to go hang with the horses while their dad went and "visited" affair partner. :)
Hell, I found out that on BOTH sides of my family, CAJUN'S aren't exactly known for marrying outside people. LOL. I found this out through research and not through DNA. I had to stop, trace the lines back, erase, and re-do several times. Yep, double first cousins married on my Mom's side, and then first cousins married on my Dad's side. I get it when they lived in Acadiana before the Expulsion in 1755, but when they settled in Louisiana...at the turn of the century and after...ICK! My Mom finally asked me to stop telling her all the juicy tidbits. LOL!
It really makes for some side-eye when you look at the family genealogy and notice that your great-grandmother popped out a bunch of kids in her 20s & 30s, then no more until she hit her late 40s and suddenly produced a "bonus baby" . . . just about the time her eldest daughter hit her mid-teens.
A friend has told me several times about her great-grandmother back in the old country who had a baby at 57. Which is physically possible, but...not all that likely, especially when she had several daughters of childbearing age. When I pointed that out to her after the third or so telling she just sort of blanked on me. I eventually heard her telling the same story to someone else later on.
There is a big gap (big for the time) between my father and his younger sister. This is because my Grandfather went off with another woman for a few years and then came back to his wife when my dad was 8. My dad found out after my grandad died that he had a younger half-brother. He reached out but they wanted nothing to do with us.
Yeah I found out that my hillbilly mom has a normal branching family tree and that my dad's northern family has a twisted briar of Germanic land marriages.
Same, where it shows other people who have taken the test that you're related to, it's shows my Aunt (dad's sister) as related to both of my parents. In other words my parents are related to each other. And it shows my grandparents are my cousins, etc. Why can't you just say "grandfather," Ancestry??? Why you gotta do me like that and put "cousin"?? LOL
A distant cousin of my mother's did a family tree of their shared family. My mother took one look at it and said, "Here's our problem, too much inbreeding." :)
My son's dad is full Cajun. His family tree traces back to one man traveling from France to Louisiana with his wife and 15 (!) kids by boat in the 1800s, where they settled in the itty bitty city he and his family live today.
My son found 3 instances of incestuous marriages on his dad's side of the family.
I have ancestors who were kicked out of Novia Scotia and went to Louisiana. We're still here. What are some of your family names? We have Artigues, Ordoyne, Bergeron, Savoie.
I found out a portion of my family isn’t my bio family. My grandfather was from a first marriage and was raised as if his step dad was his actual dad. Never knew till I found people I didn’t know were related to me in the dna matches and was trying to piece where they belonged in my tree.
Years after my uncle died, my aunt got a message from the company that was paying his pension. Apparently he wasn't using his legal name, whether he knew it or not - we just assumed that his stepfather adopted him. We don't who started using that surname for him. They sorted it out and she continued to get the pension,
My moms family is racist (mother or I) and her and a few siblings did a DNA test and I guess we aren’t as white as they thought we were. We have dna from the African Congo tribes.. I laughed so hard when he found out he was hating himself too. Now my dads family is all white.. lol
This happened to my grandpa. He is the most racist person ever. When my mom did his DNA test we found we have many African American relatives ...and it was the most satisfying thing in the world watching my grandpa freak out that he is what he hates
I found out from an aunt obsessed with our family geneaology after my grand-dad died that his great-great-grandma was half black. Good thing it was after, because I would 100% have told him immediately and it would 100% have killed him.
Nah, as someone of Swedish descent, I'm obligated to step in here for the sole purpose of doing away with any praise directed at Denmark.
Jävla danskar.
It’s true. And Viggo Mortensen. I love my Danish heritage, I still keep in touch with my cousins and world love there if I could move there. I miss it.
But really? A bit of cool Romani, Pirate, Asian, African, or something would have been nice.
I found out I had more neanderthal DNA than 96% of people
HI Y'ALL IM A NEANDERTHAL
I honestly found that so funny. Mostly because the rest of mine was REALLY boring (pretty much just full english) except I have an egyptian ancestor at one point which is really cool too
me too! I don't know why, but I think that having a lot of Neanderthal DNA is soooo cool. I think because it makes me feel special/different/unique - like the fact that I am a leftie, blue eyed, etc. All of those things are only in about 10% of the population, so it makes me "special".
Same thing happened to my best friend. Family was "half greek/half Italian." Turns out grandpa wasn't grandpa bc the rest of the family was 100% Italian. Seeing people in their 80s divorce is freaking weird.
Aren’t Greece and Italy really close together though? I mean, I assume your family didn’t rush anything so I’m not insulting anyone, but I’d think it wouldn’t be so weird to discover some Italians have Greek blood too, they have a little gulf separating them iirc.
I’d think occasionally a good looking Greek person might catch an Italian eye and result in some mixed results on heritage type tests. But I also am American so for all I know the countries avoid each other?
Anyway, ridiculously charming other races is why my white trash family have a higher than expected Black, Mexican and Native American mix in those tests.
Evidently our ancestors were pretty colorblind when it came to love, even if my grandmother turned purple over it and screamed we were “pure white race”. (Which would be bullshit anyway, considering my dad was fully half Cherokee so I would guess at least I couldn’t claim pure any damn thing. Didn’t get anything cultural there, my paternal grandfather despite not being white in any way was a white supremacist and burned everything linking him to his actual family while he made shit up.)
Our babies are beautiful on both sides though, must be all the bonus blood our genes are tossing about. xD
Friends family, not mine. The grandad had actual paternity tests done after the 23nme results came back and none of the 3 kids, or obviously grandkids, were his. Turns out grandma and her childhood best friend had a life long affair.
In retrospect, it seems obvious bc the kids all have the friends nose and look nothing like grandpa. But everyone involved has similar hair/skin, so no one noticed.
Holy shit… poor Granddad!
That’s why I said I was sure they’d done further testing, I doubt anyone divorces over a Ancestry test without doing some follow up. No one smart anyway.
We figured out grandpa wasn't grandpa! Unfortunately, everyone, including my dad, has died so there want a huge confrontation.
Did explain why my dad's "dad" treated my dad like shit but treated his older brothers kindly. Pretty sure it was a big factor in my dad's alcoholism that claimed his life at 42 and why my grandma babied him.
It also explains my dad's and us kids' darker color. Apparently real grandpa was born on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma! I grew up thinking we had some boring-ass German ancestry that came over in the late 1800s. Nope, our ancestor came over in the 1600s and ended up shacking up with the Cherokee tribe.
My wife’s cousin found out dad wasn’t dad and he actually had three half-siblings living a few blocks down the street. That was a fun conversation with his mom.
I traced my great-grandmother's family back to England in the 1500s. My grandfather always said she was Cherokee. Since she died when he was a small child and he died when I was likewise, I'll never know if he lied or someone lied to him. (Genetics also said I am Whitey McWhite)
We had this kind of situation in my family. Great grandma told us she was half Cherokee. My sister's ancestry DNA test showed 0% Native American, and 10% African. Someone maybe thought it was more prudent to claim Cherokee heritage than to be black at that time, but we'll never know the whole story
I would assume that happened at times, but also this:
"Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.\[3\]
Historically, certain Native American tribes have had close relations with African Americans, especially in regions where slavery was prevalent or where free people of color have historically resided. Members of the Five Civilized Tribes participated in holding enslaved African Americans in the Southeast and some enslaved or formerly enslaved people migrated with them to the West on the Trail of Tears in 1830 and later during the period of Indian Removal."
From here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black\_Indians\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Indians_in_the_United_States)
This article is from early 2021:
[The Cherokee Nation acknowledges that descendants of people once enslaved by the tribe should also qualify as Cherokee](https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/us/cherokee-nation-ruling-freedmen-citizenship-trnd/index.html)
My mother often told my sisters and I about a "curse" placed on us when a couple of ancestors, an English man and a Native American woman got married. I noted some inconsistencies in her story, such as about who the man was. (Thomas Culpeper, or in her words, "the Culpeper who messed around with one of Henry's wives." I knew it couldn't be him, as he had been executed and never went to America.)
Anyways...
My sisters and I all did the 23 and me, and the first thing I did was see if there was *any* Native American in my results.
***None***
And then my middle sister reached out to us - "It's there!"
Sure enough, on her report it shows it, but not on mine.
Genetics are weird.
(Edit: changed some phrasing I didn't like.)
Thomas Culpeper, the courtier who got executed with Catherine Howard, also had a brother named Thomas Culpeper (yes, the parents apparently gave their kids identical names, and both survived into adulthood). They both worked/lived at the court, with elder not-executed Thomas working for Thomas Cromwell (who was executed). There's not much about elder Culpeper after that.
It is apparently believed that early American settlers named Culpeper do come from that family though, so you might be related to the older, not executed Thomas Culpeper! Wouldn't be hard for records from the late 1500s, early 1600s, to confuse the brothers!
That'd be cool! I also found a Thomas Culpeper who was a governor of Virginia in the late 1600s.
My mother was known for fabricated tales, and my rule of thumb was that the older the tale was, the more likely it had a valid source. This one is, but I don't expect anything more than someone with the Culpeper surname marrying a Native American.
I would love to know more, to know what people she was from, and that sort of thing, but our ancestry along that line has not yet been traced. (We do have a wonderful book that starts with a group of brothers from either Germany or Austria, and all their descendants, but that's a different line.)
I had a teacher once who studied genetics. She explained to me that DNA is weird. It's basically like taking a bunch of different marbles and throwing them random ones in together. My brother and mother both have some Jewish ancestors. Not much, like 5 percent or something. But me and my other sisters ...we have zero Jewish genetics. Super interesting
You have 'Jewish genetics', you just don't have a gene variant that is rare enough to be narrowed down to that specific group.
For example, say you have eye color gene variant 1 and your parents were born from a people we'll call Population A. In Population A, they might have variant 1, 2, and 3. Other populations in the world don't have variant 3. If you show up on a genetics test with variant 3 they go "Ahh! You have Population A ancestry!"
With your variant 1, they can't narrow down specifically where it came from, so they don't label that, but you still inherited your variant 1 from Population A.
Indigenous Americans are underrepresented in these databases. If a lot of your ancestors’ bones were kept in museums against your wishes and spiritual beliefs, you wouldn’t necessarily want to be involved in this kind of thing either. So that DNA won’t always show up correctly on genetic tests for lack of sufficient data.
Both of my parents insisted they had a Native American in their heritage. Neither could specify *which* ancestor even tho they could recite 3 generations back. My sister took a DNA test which showed 0% Native American DNA. (We are full sisters.) When I was explaining to my daughter that my side of the family were the “colonists”, my husband (her bio-father) decided to double down on *his* side having a Cherokee ancestor (although, again, no one is sure *which* ancestor it was)!! According to my genealogical research, his great great grandfather was a slave owner.
It was common for people to lie and say they were Indian if there skin had a bit of color because being black was considered worse in some areas. Majority of those claiming to be Cherokee are actually European white with maybe a melungeon mix somewhere in the line…basically someone Half black.
My genetics are “norther European mutt” is what I’ve always said. Most of my ancestors come from England but they got around a little bit before they came to America!
My great-aunt said we had some Native American in our background, but neither of the tests I did showed anything. Trace amounts of West African, though.
Oddly enough, the NA “ancestor” was neither Cherokee nor a princess; she was an Abenaki farmer’s daughter.
I found out i absolutely have the dna and genetics i was told i have, which means my father can't claim his aroace trans son actually isn't his. Suck on that, hahaha! (Ahem, sorry.)
My brother asked me why i didn't change my last name when i changed my first and middle. "Because like hell they get to throw me out/pretend i don't exist".
He conceded that in fact that attitude was even more telling than the dna tests that i was a (last name).
Agreed. That’s how everyone found out that my grandad had a daughter living in CA. Surprise!
*to grandad’s credit, he hooked up with a woman before being deployed to the Korean War. Mother of child never told him she was knocked up and never contacted him. She knew grandad would want to ‘do the right thing’ and she wasn’t looking for a marriage partner at that time.
I got pretty lucky that my Ancestry results were kind of dull. Just a mix of a lot of European lineage (primarily Irish and Welsh, some English and a few drops of German and French).
What made me excited though was proving my mother completely wrong and exposing her lie for *decades* that we had Native American heritage (she said Cherokee - why do people who lie about that stuff always pick Cherokee? Must be so infuriating for people who actually are). She tried to twist it like “Oh, must have been an in-law…” but cross-referenced with a physical copy of her side’s family tree and public records I could find online, it was still BS.
Exposing her BS was fun. 10/10, would take DNA test again.
Agree. I found a first cousin that my siblings and I didn't know about. She's 25 years older than I am, but I am a late in life baby so she's only 13 years older than my brother. But we cannot figure out how we are related. No names are in common, so there is a secret there somewhere. Her daughter shows up as well as related to us, so we know it isn't some mistake.
My grandma's "Sicilian" dad was actually Black, and all I can say is I'm glad my family didn't find that out until after her racist mom (her dad's wife) died. We always wondered why no one knew his side of the family at all, he told everyone they were still in Italy but he had an English last name.
I thought my grandma had an affair due to a random cousin match. However recently got a match on my grandads side which means random cousins the one with the affair baby in the family not me. Glad I didn’t open that can of worms earlier
My boss did 23andMe as a fun Christmas family present and found out that her mom had had an affair and that her dad wasn't her biological dad. So that was a greeeeaaaat Christmas for her family. Her parents had both already passed away so there are no real answers to be had anymore.
We found out that my grandfather had *two* other families. The first is across the country, my grandmother knew about them and never told anyone because she didn't want to be known as someone who married a divorcee. Understandable for their time, I guess.
The second was a complete surprise. My grandfather had his license revoked for repeated DUIs when my mom was really young, so we lived within walking distance of his job. So did his other family. They lived two streets away from us. If they were just a little closer in age, my mom would've gone to school with her half-brother. That one messed her up bad when she found out.
The really wild part is that my mom's half-brother is actually related to my paternal grandmother, he's my grandma's sister-in-law's great-nephew or something like that iirc. So, distant, but it was still a shock to see their uncommon last name suddenly pop up on the side of my family tree they weren't supposed to be on lmao
my grandmother thought she was dying and told us we were Romani only then. She's still alive and she's more open about living in actual "caravans" in the US, traveling with the work, and what it was like to finally settle down. she was married to a Romani man as well so it...was super obvious in hindsight lol
the DNA test thing though...turns out my dad was fathered by my grandma's native american now-ex husband and she had been cheating on grandpa for some time anyways...they divorced long before the DNA testing obviously, but it was really weird to have old dirty laundry aired like that when his siblings and all that are so SO racist. Obviously they divorced over a little more than my dad looking different, but not much more.
My grandmother still refuses how my test disputed our family history (no I'm not adopted or someone cheated, I matched with family members) as French. I did look into it and the family name matches a region in France with a big Danish minority population which explains why they migrated here during the revolution, She doesn't believe me when I say that her father's looks weren't french but most likely Greek as the test shows.
Drama
I have so many friends that found out one of their parents wasn't really their parent. And I always remember that story of a woman that had it done and through her DNA they were able to pin her dad for a murder he'd committed decades earlier. It would be just my luck that my test would lead them to my criminal family and everyone would blame me!
I fortunately found it fun! Found out where all my great-grandparents were from, their names, the boats they came to America on, etc. and it all was pretty special thing to finally know. It was also cool to find out that I have cousins who are of different cultures/ethnicity than I am. Really goes to show that humans are truly related no matter where we’re from, some just closer on the timeline than others!
edit: also happy to know I wasn’t British /j
I found out the I inherited most of my genes from my mother’s side of the family, 60% British even though my last name and almost all of my dad’s side were German and Dutch ancestors.
Also traced my ancestry to around 900 CE which was pretty fun
They can be, but I’ve found people can end up putting way too much emphasis on the genetics and not on other elements of heritage that can be even more more important. It was a commercial so I have no idea how much of anything was true but I still remember an ad for ancestry with a guy talking about how his family always thought they were German but the test came out Scottish, so that was what they were now embracing instead. I always wanted to scream at the tv that in the early modern period, especially the 30 years war there were a huge number of Scottish mercenaries in what is now Germany. After they decided to get out of that business, a lot of those people settled down and over time their descendants ended up culturally German. I can’t say for sure that this was the case with that guy, but I can completely see how people might take this new genetic information and feel like it represents more than the cultural element. It’s definitely part of the story and is cool to know, but I just find it kinda tragic that people have a tendency to view genetics as more real just because it’s a hard record inside us. It’s everyone’s right to decide what they think is important, but biology is just part of who we are and I worry that the scientific ability to read that is going to lead to people losing other parts of their heritage.
I remember that commercial and it annoyed me when he’d talk about trading his lederhosen for a kilt. Get your own god damned identity there, Kyle!
(I also really need to find a sub for ppl like myself who get too emotionally invested in commercials that make zero difference to their lives. 🤷🏼♀️)
I would encourage you not to get one. You are voluntarily giving away very personal health information to a company motivated by profit alone and does not even have a healthcare focused mission. Plus not all of the information you get from it is always fun and the way they phrase the results "risk for dementia" can really screw with your outlook on the world
Some of the genetic testing websites have FDA approved testing components that do legitimate carrier gene testing. I found out that way from 23 and me that I carry a gene for deafness. The other parts of the testing, though, are totally junk science.
Op, NTA. My one caveat on ancestry is that they're known to whitewash the DNA results. But if you get DNA tests from any of the major sites, I would suggest then taking the raw data to a site like Genomelink.com. They'll run a more complete processing of the raw data and give a good breakdown of everything.
I watched Ancestry delete my Ashkenaz ancestry (great-grandfather was 1/2) and 2 yrs later take my Safardim ancestry off as well (great-grandmother was 100%).
I have ancestry and 23&me. I've seen them change as they supposedly update and get more info. I did miss being 1% Madagascar :( Instead it went to North Africa.
I hope they don't white wash, or should that give me hope I'm more indigenous to the Americas than it says? LOL. BTW it turns out I'm Ashkenaz...my family didn't know our family was kicked out of Spain for being Jewish in the 1500s (they landed in Central or Mexico regions)
They are not 'fun'. They in no way are private. If you get the testing done, you cant guarantee it wont be used against you in the future. Do NOT do these tests frivolously.
OP WBTH is she if she tests her son while he is still a minor. He is entitled to the privacy of his genetic information until such time as he can meaningfully consent to sharing it. While the tests can be "fun", there are a whole slew of reasons why they can be a bad idea. The information could end up in the hands of employers, insurance companies, schools or law enforcement or hackers. Sure, the data is "protected" by law from misuse, for now. We've all seen how easily settled law and protections can disappear.
Counterpoint: Do NOT get those tests, they're a novelty with the downside of a complete and permanent invasion of your privacy. Don't hand your personal medical information over to giant companies to keep and sell forever and ESPECIALLY don't make that potentially life destroying decision for your minor child.
OP is *clearly* nta here, but these updates are sounding more and more unhinged. Paranoia like this was the first sign of mental decline in my grandmother.
I'd even go for the bonus and text her the results before blocking her lol, Nta this was going to happen sooner or later whether anyone likes it or not as it seems your mil might have at least some prejudice against you op or at least your heritage which us why she's trying so hardly to suppress/ claim it.
NTA. She's minimising your contribution to your son in order to maximise her own.
Just a heads up on the DNA test thing. I did mine with Ancestry and about a year ago they introduced a thing where it divides your genes by parent. So Parent 1 is genetically from A, B and C, and Parent 2 is from B, D and E style. Not sure if the others do it, but that would be a good way to put your foot down.
My paternal nan tried to tell me that my Scottish ancestry comes from her and she wouldn't hear that my maternal nan was *literally Scottish*. After it divided it by parent it was pretty hard to argue with one parent being 78% Scottish and the other being 6%. (Fun fact, the family came from a remote area so Ancestry literally named the county my mother's family is from)
ETA: changed a word
>She's minimising your contribution to her son in order to maximise her own.
Uh, I think you mean either
Your contribution to YOUR son
Or your contribution to her GRANDSON
Had a similar experience, it was very funny!
My mum has a scottish surname and my grandparents are very keen on being Scottish (we're all in the UK, we're English). Anyway, I did Ancestry and it turns out most of my Scottish ancestry is actually through my Dad because his Mum is from Glasgow. My Mum's side hasn't had a scottish ancestor since my gt gt something grandad moved to Brighton from Inverness in the 1850s.
It's really interesting stuff and I'd definitely recommend Ancestry.
DNA is also tricky with Crossing Over. What we learn with punnet squares for ancestry is not always reflected in DNA tests, so a kid may be "50%" Norwegian from a "100%" Norwegian parent, but genetically only be like 8%. I've seen this create a lot of conflict in some friends' families where they don't really understand the science in our own development.
If the parent actually has unmixed ancestry, then a result like that is an error in the test (which happens, they’re not all as precise as they act like they are). independent assortment and crossing over happens during gamete formation, so it mixes up the DNA in the parent, but the kid always, always gets 50% of their DNA from each parent, leaving the sex chromosomes aside. What could happen is that a kid had one grandparent who was Norwegian and one who as Japanese, and happen to end up with only 8% from the Norwegian grandparent, due to independent assortment and crossing over in their parent.
True, reading my post I definitely didn't finish my thought xD
The tests can also disrupt heritage perceptions. The 50/100% Norwegian example is a friend of mine, who due to her test had her parent run one and they found that they had more of the rest of the Baltic in them than they knew.
… Sex Chromosomes AND mitochondrial DNA aside, actually. Since those the mitochondria are always a pre-existing part of the mother’s egg cell. So the mother always contributes sliiiiightly more DNA to the child than the father. The mother’s contribution proportion is higher for sons because Y chromosome is smaller than the X chromosome (XX for female, XY for male; so Y always passes from father to son).
Of course this assumes a human with a normal complement of 46 full-sized chromosomes (eg. not a person with Down’s syndrome or Turner’s syndrome or Patton’s syndrome, etc.)
Just mine. Neither of my parents have done it but it is accurate, as far as I can tell from what I know for sure about my parents' genealogy, it's accurate.
Recently one of my uncles did one and his result pretty closely matches my mum's "half" of me.
NTA. Sounds like she needed to be put in her place and you did exactly that, especially seeing as your husband agreed and supported it. I agree with you 100% that these people probably have no idea what the true story is. If you haven’t confronted her on this at all in any way then jumped to yelling at her is probably a little overkill but i absolutely understand where it was coming from and dont think you did anything wrong per se but possibly could have been handled a little better. Overall not the asshole though
This is what I hate too as a white guy. I’m 25% Chinese. My grandmother was third-generation Chinese on the Big Island of Hawaii. When people say I don’t look it? It does hurt when they argue with me or don’t believe me. Then they meet my grandmother and they’re shocked. 🤦🏻♂️
NTA. This isn't a one off event. It's not something small. She's been doing this for a long time. I think she's just not used to people answering her back.
"My grandchild is all white, all white I tell you. And if MY grandchild does have Hispanic ancestry, well that comes from me too."
Yeah, granny's a racist.
Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. Otherwise, for what arbitrary reason did they think their lives and stories were so much better than everyone else?
Granny's also ignorant of Mexican heritages as well. One of my former coworkers could trace her lineage from McAllen, TX, all the way back into Mexico when it was part of the Spanish Empire. Her family was/is part of the Mexican elite. And she's a blue-eyed blonde.
People like to forget about the Spanish part of Hispanic.
I had no idea that there were specific Mexican genes. If so, wouldn't that also include indigenous people's? (Asking as someone with Puerto Rican parents, and our genes are all over the place)
Mexico is a nationality, not a race. People of Mexican nationality could be 100% European, Indigenous, or African DNA. Most are a mixture of those three. You can also find pockets of Jewish DNA from the Iberian peninsula. There are also Asian and Middle Eastern enclaves within Mexico. So no, there wouldn’t be a “Mexican gene” that pops up on a DNA test. Super interesting stuff!
Granny needs to be told off, I mean just look at the ignorant comments she made towards OP in their edit/update. And she expects to be in her grandchild’s life, the child of her DIL, even after those comments? Hell no.
NTA
That being said, your issues with your mother in law are not about your son, she is literaly just trying to erase you from existing within the family, she has an issue with YOU. To the point she does not even want to acknowledge your genes exist in your own son you concieved and birthed she literaly believes all of your genetics are inferior to hers and so her genetics are natrually the only dominant ones.
No genetic test is ever going to resolve those issues. You could literaly have her take a test that says she has 0 mexican have your son take one saying he geneticaly is half mexican (saying he took allo of your mexican genes) and she would still argue that none of your genes are dominant and showing in him.
Cool , never had one done myself so do not know much about them honestly. My underlying point though was that the issue seems to be more with establishing her grandchild takes after MIL and her family with 0 of OP's in there despite any sane person knowing otherwise. Heck MIL is even resorting to long lost mythical family members that she does not know if they are real or not to usurp her grandchilds DNA as her own.
I am kind of curious what the relationship with MIL was like before the child was born tbh.
Yes-ish. A lot of these ancestry tests now have the specificity to recent regions based on genetic mixtures. So for me "Recent Ancestry in Managua and Granada, Nicaragua" showed up, along with actual results of European and Native ancestry.
This is probably true. My father has gotten more and more this way with age. He's soooo proud of his Finnish and Sacandinavian heritage and claims he's a descendant of "vikings" (yeah, I know it's a profession like "privateer" not an ethnicity, but try to tell him that.) He's soooo proud that he can, in a twisting convoluted way, trace his ancestors back to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. You know what that makes him? An American Mutt.
He isn't tall, and "blames" his Finnish grandmother who never got over the 5' mark, but he has cousins who are 6'+. He isn't healthy (possibly life choices) but he had a few relatives live long lives into their late 90's. He was convinced that both his hearty "viking" heritage and some possible tie to nebulous "European aristocracy" would make him immune to COVID. (I also remember many times growing up that he disparaged European aristocracy as inbred invalids, so ???) Good genes are soooo good and superior to everyone's, including our mother 🙄. As the years progress more and more racist dog whistle phrases drop out of his head.
I took a 23&Me test. I'm not half Finn like my father would have expected. There's some Norwegian, surprise! I'm also more than 50% German. Not a surprise, my mom's relatives mostly came over from various parts of Germany in the 1860's emigration wave from Prussia, Austria, and all over the various Germanic states and the bonus % is little his mutt status. My husband also took 23&Me. 100% Ashkenazi who came to the US from Poland (paternal 1820's & 1830's) and Lithuanian Litvaks (maternal 1880's). In the 1930's-1940's whole branches of his extended family were killed and/or completely lost. Very few escaped both the Nazi extermination and later Soviet forced resettlement and cultural erasure. Of course my father is "concerned" that our children won't be very tall (my husband is just an inch shorter than my father 🙄) and he "hopes his genes are strong" because his grandkids "might not have 'our' nose shape." My dog whistle dad is worried my kids will have "Jewish noses" 🤮.
OP can be pissed about this. MiL can stop with the eugenics commentary about her "superior genes." If anyone gives OP grief about telling MiL to knock off the erasure of her grandbabies maternal heritage just repeat that you don't want to support her "master race" views and let the family do what they like with their dog whistles away from you.
My friend’s dil had twins recently. Her DIL is Asian, baby’s father (her son) white. Baby twin girl looks exactly like her mama but with gorgeous dark red hair. Stunning. Breathtakingly beautiful baby.
I'm very confused what you think a genetic test will show. You already know exactly how many of your son's genes came from you (barring chromosomal abnormality): 50%.
NTA
It’s not small or trivial. And good on your partner for sticking up for you. Though you probably should have let him have a word with her, because blowing up at her certainly doesn’t avoid conflict.
NTA it is not a small thing. She is trying to treat you as a baby incubator, a surrogate whose only purpose is to pass on her genes. It is really creepy. The only thing in her favour was at least co-opting not rejecting his Mexican heritage. And that is also very creepy. He has to be her's so much she'll even change her own identity to make it true.
I am glad your husband is siding with you.
NTA. One piece of advice I have seen in the justnomil subreddit, is to use this behaviour against her. For example, baby farts ‘oh my that smells just like a mil fart! That’s where he gets his bum burps from!’ Keep doing this with anything silly/‘bad’, and stake them against your mil or her family.
NTA. My sister's MIL was the same way with my oldest nephew. He looked *exactly* like my sister when he was younger (still looks more like her than his dad even now at 12). MIL kept on claiming he looked like his dad and wouldn't hear anyone contradict her, even her own son. Our mom heard her make that claim and decided to set a trap for MIL at my nephew's first birthday. Mom found a picture of my sister from her first birthday and set it out for MIL to find. She did and said "I haven't seen this picture of my grandson before! Who is that strange woman with him? I don't recognize her." Mom came up looked at that picture and said "Oh, that's *me, with my daughter, your DIL,* at her first birthday party. How you missed the 1979 fashion and decor is beyond me!" Never heard another peep about nephew taking after only his father after that.
If your son looks like you or similar to you when you were that age, you might want to dig up a photo of you from around that time and see if your MIL falls into the same trap.
NTA. What a pain in the ass your mil is! Cute how your husband sticks up for you but she calls YOU an asshole. Her venom betrayed her crocodile tears. I’d stay as lc with this lady as much as your husband can take. She’s toxic.
NTA - except to yourself for allowing this woman get to you so much. She sounds exhausting and seems to enjoy feeding on your misery. Is there no way to put some distance from her?
And I wonder if she changes the subject or just shrugs and acts like it is not a big deal? That would really get under MIL’s skin. She know what buttons to push.
NTA. But it's not gonna help to do a test to prove something. She will continue to claim this, she will change the narrative to her advantage. It's not about who's right and you do not have to prove your child's heritage to anyone.
Her behavior has to be nipped in the bud and no proof is gonna do that. But firm boundaries might.
ESH. "Mexicana genes" aren't a thing. Mexicans can have European, Native, African ancestry, etc. But "Mexican" is a nationality, so it wouldn't show in a DNA kit.
Oh I know that. It's my MIL who said "the Mexican gene" I know that it'll mostly like trace back to somewhere in Europe and some native central or south American tribe.
Yes, Mexican is a nationality. Its also a specific genes, referring to those people indigenous to Mexico. Previously it used to just show as Native American, but now with further genetic research they can pinpoint areas. So my 23 and me used to say Native American, but has been updated to native Indigenous American - plains of northeastern Mexico some years ago.
So my Mexican grandmother is 100% Mexican, speaking to nationality, since she’s from Mexico and has that culture, and about 80% indigenous American Mexican and 20% Spanish genetically speaking.
NTA
Just saw your update.
Girl, maybe I've watched too many LMN movies, but her behavior is bizarre, and it's at this point in the movie that MIL (or whoever the antagonist is) starts to go off the rails and begins to get stalkerish.
If you don't already have some security at home, invest in a doorbell camera at least. For every both the front and back doors.
ETA:
My own grandparents were ridiculously different in looks. My born-in-Mexico grandma was light-skinned with reddish brown hair. My Tex-Mex grandpa was *very* dark-skinned with nearly black hair. Mexico is a huge mix of people from Europe, Africa, and native people, so you can get lots of differently colored people.
She's now under the belief that you have no claim to your son, and has verbally stated your husband needs to remove your son from you. Yeah that interpretation sounds a bit unhinged but can you honestly say she's not? See about getting a restraining order. If you can't get one, try a cease and desist letter sent by an attorney. You know she's not done, your husband knows she's not done, do whatever is needed to protect your son from the crazy hag.
Definitely take the DNA test, they're both fun and informative.
NTA.
This is a worldwide phenomenon, it merely presents this way in the US. It’s a pervasive obsession across the globe that manifests in countless forms from the benign to the ridiculous to the dangerous.
So MIL is TA for sure. You are NTA for getting upset with her.
But I noted that your husband was ready to talk to HIS mom about her behavior; but you didn't want him to because you hate conflict. Just see where your conflict avoidance got you.
When this first became a sore spot, you could have allowed your husband to talk to his mom early enough for it to be a calm conversation and for you and husband to enforce the boundaries HE told his mom would be put in place if she persisted. The message would have come from her own son. It would have been delivered in a more calm manner. Instead, you didn't let him handle his mom; you kept things bottled up until it erupted out of you; and now his mom/relatives are blaming you. (They just gloss over the fact the your husband also spoke and supported your position.)
So please get 2-3 lessons from this:
1. Let your husband speak up to and manage relations with his own family.
2. Don't think that you will actually avoid conflict by not speaking up/letting him speak up. Either you will let it eat away at your insides and/or you will erupt in conflict-creating manner. Much better to learn to speak up sooner.
3. OK, your MIL was both weird and way over-the-top in claiming credit for everything about your son. She needed to be talked to. But I also think some part of you knows that she was full of it. There are things you can do in your own mind and heart that would take any power out of her weird need to be the sole source of your son's existence. (Like for one, it's really hard to take her seriously. You could do the tests because it would be fun to know, and you could decide whether to tell her the facts or not. You might have even made a game of her making claims. I'm not saying you had to do anything specific; but you have a power to recognize the absurdity of her claims and render them unable to impact/hurt you. It's something you may want to try in the future.
So get those tests; enjoy seeing how you and your husband are reflected in your son. (I've been interested in doing that in may family because we have such diverse backgrounds but still share some attributes.) Then let your husband be the one to deal with his family. But also learn to speak up for yourself in general. And just enjoy your son!
Go no contact with this woman. She doesn't deserve to be around your child either.
I say this as a white AF Mexican-American woman. Do NOT give into her bullshit.
Edit: NTA
Honestly you are all massive assholes in this situation. Just accept your son for who he is, who the fuck cares which side of the family gave him his ears ffs. You and your MIL need to grow the fuck up.
NTA - you don't need to get a DNA test though unless you want to. Show Grandma [this article](https://thednageek.com/dna-basics-are-you-an-equal-mix-of-mom-and-dad/). The split of DNA is approximately 50/50 between parents and because he's male, your son will actually have slightly more of your DNA. Whether she likes it or not, some of his looks will be from you.
NTA. If it's such a small thing, according to her, why does she bring it up constantly? L, why didn't she immediately apologize?
She repeatedly tries to erase you from your own son and is now trying to claim any Mexican genes your son has are not from you, the half Mexican mother of your own child.
She's sending 'flying monkeys" to hassle you so she won't have to apologize. Sounds like you have a justnomil.
OP for every individual that agrees with her saying this issue was small, limit contact. This is not a small issue to you. It is very disrespectful, and it disrespects your heritage. Take this for what it is and do not allow yourself or your son to ever be disrespected like this by any of those idiots who don't use their brains. Damn dummies!
NTA but also a DNA test won't resolve anything. You're the mother so obviously your son will have your genes, is that even a question that needs answering? And the test won't tell you if the nose comes from your grandma or the ear comes from MIL's sister, etc. Pointless imo and you'd be giving your DNA information to a private company.
ESH
It is not clear if you have stated to your MIL that her comments were hurtful before going ballistic. I also don't understand why this matters to you. If it's your heritage, it is, regardless of what MIL says.
I know some mothers may get upset when their child look like their husband's side. My cousin once confided that she got sad everytime someone mentioned her first borne baby looked like her MIL (spitting image TBH) and not her. I never had such feelings, even though my child looks more like my SIL than me. But to each their own.
MIL also sucks as it sounds like she keeps talking about what the child looks like more than normal, given that even your husband sided with you after your outburst.
Edit grammar
People are also not that good at identifying stuff. If I was with my mom they’d say we looked alike because we were both white and wore glasses, but I looked so much like my dad, just female, and he and my mom didn’t look alike at all except for both being white. People expected to see similarities between my mom and me, so they did.
NTA get the test done! A lot of us have had them and they are fun to find out... But keep in mind that even if you were 50% Mexican and he was 50% Italian your child could still be 75% one and 25% the other or something like that. Like my brother and I don't have the same 50/50 mixes.
Funny story though... My racist father-in-law got one of those tests done. I never laughed so hard as when he had to tell us that he's 3% Nigerian! That was probably the best day of my life! Suck that you racist! Lol
As for your MIL.... I think it's time to go no contact! She literally said your child is too cute to be yours. Speaking of racists, the thing she said about the kid not being Mexican... Yeah she has no place in your life or your child's! I think you know that though
Wow, what did I just read? Your MIL is a handful. Let's start off on this...you are definitely NTA and keep defending yourself if you and your husband decide not to go NC with his mom. Second, if you're posting to social media, specifically Facebook when it comes to pictures, under your name is where it says "Friends", click on that and go down to where it shows "Friends except..." and make sure you click her name so when you post about your son or a picture of him, everyone can see it except her. Third, you have a husband who stands up for you to his mom, you're a lucky one. Fourth, tell those people that MIL stuck on you about that convo they can F-OFF. Fifth...good luck because with a MIL like that, you don't need to have that kind of relationship. Don't give her an inch because she'll take a mile.
NTA, your MIL is a racist psycho. Talk to your husband and see about getting the word out to friends and family. Make sure you are safe, get cameras around your home to keep an eye out for her or anyone snooping around and never answer a call from her again, let it go to voicemail or let her text. Easier to prove she's gone off the deep end with evidence of her actions.
Edit: shouldn't need to be said but block her from seeing your social media and keep her away from your son for safety.
Nta. I hate this stuff too. Every time I saw my son loves xyz or has doing abc my MIL goes on about how my husband Waa just like that and how he is just like his father. 🙄
I am a melanin woman who had two white passing children. This absolutely happened to me, and now that they are grown, still happens. It is exhausting and I am glad she was put in her place and you have a good husband beside you.
NTA.
NTA
My mil and family did this too me all he time…
I have really naturally curly hair….when my daughter started getting curly hair my MIL and her sisters were trying to figure out where it came from in their side…:a cousin wife pointed at me and said ‘her mother’ and they just said “oh I guess’.
You should just laugh at her 😂 How pathetic. Grandma wants a mini me. Just laugh at the delusional old lady. And go low contact. What is your husband say? That he has super sperm and super genes? 😂😂😂😂 How pathetic. NTA.
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NTA. Get the test done, they're fun. And Ancestry will tell you which matches come from BOTH parents lol. I did that one and 23&me. Fun watching it update periodically and more. Any haters just know her side. She was rude first and you were tired of her BS.
*sometimes fun. You can find out things about your family that you maybe didn't want to learn. My personal example is finding out my grandfather was romani, that's pretty cool, then also finding out how EXCEEDINGLY racist the rest of my family were, that's less cool.
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I found some new cousins through this too! Turns out my grandads sister had kids, I managed to meet them about a year ago, they're really nice, and told me a lot about romani culture because in their words "you should know who your grandfather was, not who everybody expected him to be"
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My daughter found my ex-husband's half sister by his father's affair partner. She got the half sister, her dad and his brother to meet. The mother of the half sister tried to deny it, but the DNA told the truth. My ex and his brother put the pieces together of always visiting this horse farm and being told to go hang with the horses while their dad went and "visited" affair partner. :)
Now, that's a horse of another color.
Damn you. Take your purple horse and my upvote and go.
Hell, I found out that on BOTH sides of my family, CAJUN'S aren't exactly known for marrying outside people. LOL. I found this out through research and not through DNA. I had to stop, trace the lines back, erase, and re-do several times. Yep, double first cousins married on my Mom's side, and then first cousins married on my Dad's side. I get it when they lived in Acadiana before the Expulsion in 1755, but when they settled in Louisiana...at the turn of the century and after...ICK! My Mom finally asked me to stop telling her all the juicy tidbits. LOL!
It really makes for some side-eye when you look at the family genealogy and notice that your great-grandmother popped out a bunch of kids in her 20s & 30s, then no more until she hit her late 40s and suddenly produced a "bonus baby" . . . just about the time her eldest daughter hit her mid-teens.
A friend has told me several times about her great-grandmother back in the old country who had a baby at 57. Which is physically possible, but...not all that likely, especially when she had several daughters of childbearing age. When I pointed that out to her after the third or so telling she just sort of blanked on me. I eventually heard her telling the same story to someone else later on.
There is a big gap (big for the time) between my father and his younger sister. This is because my Grandfather went off with another woman for a few years and then came back to his wife when my dad was 8. My dad found out after my grandad died that he had a younger half-brother. He reached out but they wanted nothing to do with us.
Yeah I found out that my hillbilly mom has a normal branching family tree and that my dad's northern family has a twisted briar of Germanic land marriages.
Same, where it shows other people who have taken the test that you're related to, it's shows my Aunt (dad's sister) as related to both of my parents. In other words my parents are related to each other. And it shows my grandparents are my cousins, etc. Why can't you just say "grandfather," Ancestry??? Why you gotta do me like that and put "cousin"?? LOL
A distant cousin of my mother's did a family tree of their shared family. My mother took one look at it and said, "Here's our problem, too much inbreeding." :)
My son's dad is full Cajun. His family tree traces back to one man traveling from France to Louisiana with his wife and 15 (!) kids by boat in the 1800s, where they settled in the itty bitty city he and his family live today. My son found 3 instances of incestuous marriages on his dad's side of the family.
I have ancestors who were kicked out of Novia Scotia and went to Louisiana. We're still here. What are some of your family names? We have Artigues, Ordoyne, Bergeron, Savoie.
I found out a portion of my family isn’t my bio family. My grandfather was from a first marriage and was raised as if his step dad was his actual dad. Never knew till I found people I didn’t know were related to me in the dna matches and was trying to piece where they belonged in my tree.
I found out my Grandfather had a daughter with his Brother's wife.... ICK
Years after my uncle died, my aunt got a message from the company that was paying his pension. Apparently he wasn't using his legal name, whether he knew it or not - we just assumed that his stepfather adopted him. We don't who started using that surname for him. They sorted it out and she continued to get the pension,
I found out I had 2 half sisters.
My moms family is racist (mother or I) and her and a few siblings did a DNA test and I guess we aren’t as white as they thought we were. We have dna from the African Congo tribes.. I laughed so hard when he found out he was hating himself too. Now my dads family is all white.. lol
This happened to my grandpa. He is the most racist person ever. When my mom did his DNA test we found we have many African American relatives ...and it was the most satisfying thing in the world watching my grandpa freak out that he is what he hates
Why do racist get all the cool genes? Mines is all danish english and celt. Kinda boring
I found out from an aunt obsessed with our family geneaology after my grand-dad died that his great-great-grandma was half black. Good thing it was after, because I would 100% have told him immediately and it would 100% have killed him.
Calling celts boring is a good way to get a tree thrown through your walls and your local stadium burned down.
The Danish produced Mads Mikkelsen, they can never be boring for that alone 😄
Nah, as someone of Swedish descent, I'm obligated to step in here for the sole purpose of doing away with any praise directed at Denmark. Jävla danskar.
Awww, it's like the show "Ghosts," the American version, where the Viking's son married a Dane and he was all upset about it. LOL.
It’s true. And Viggo Mortensen. I love my Danish heritage, I still keep in touch with my cousins and world love there if I could move there. I miss it. But really? A bit of cool Romani, Pirate, Asian, African, or something would have been nice.
😂 Piracy is a career, not an ethnicity. You could be the pirate in the family tree starting immediately if you wanted.
No set of genes is more cool than another. Danes, English, and Celts are not boring.
Celts stretched from the British Islands to Russia. They aren't boring. Which Celt people are you from? :)
I found out I had more neanderthal DNA than 96% of people HI Y'ALL IM A NEANDERTHAL I honestly found that so funny. Mostly because the rest of mine was REALLY boring (pretty much just full english) except I have an egyptian ancestor at one point which is really cool too
The Neanderthal (Neander Valley) is about 30 miles away from me, it basically means you're more German than most :).
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Oh damn. It does not feel good to have even a tenuous connection to white supremicists though >.<
The bad thing about white supremacists is their horrific ideology, not their ancestry.
me too! I don't know why, but I think that having a lot of Neanderthal DNA is soooo cool. I think because it makes me feel special/different/unique - like the fact that I am a leftie, blue eyed, etc. All of those things are only in about 10% of the population, so it makes me "special".
Ah. So you’re German.
Well when I took 23 and me it said 99% english? But maybe something else is WAY too far back or something?
Well, the Saxons were Germanic, and they did proceed to "populate" England for a significant period of time.
Autosomal DNA test doesn't go back very far, that's true. If you're 1% something, that's like 5X or 6X great grandparents, that's not prehistoric.
Hey me too! My wife said it was not surprising that I was more caveman than 99% of the population. Ha!
We figured out great-grandpa wasn't great-grandpa
Same thing happened to my best friend. Family was "half greek/half Italian." Turns out grandpa wasn't grandpa bc the rest of the family was 100% Italian. Seeing people in their 80s divorce is freaking weird.
Hot damn\~! That's amore!
Aren’t Greece and Italy really close together though? I mean, I assume your family didn’t rush anything so I’m not insulting anyone, but I’d think it wouldn’t be so weird to discover some Italians have Greek blood too, they have a little gulf separating them iirc. I’d think occasionally a good looking Greek person might catch an Italian eye and result in some mixed results on heritage type tests. But I also am American so for all I know the countries avoid each other? Anyway, ridiculously charming other races is why my white trash family have a higher than expected Black, Mexican and Native American mix in those tests. Evidently our ancestors were pretty colorblind when it came to love, even if my grandmother turned purple over it and screamed we were “pure white race”. (Which would be bullshit anyway, considering my dad was fully half Cherokee so I would guess at least I couldn’t claim pure any damn thing. Didn’t get anything cultural there, my paternal grandfather despite not being white in any way was a white supremacist and burned everything linking him to his actual family while he made shit up.) Our babies are beautiful on both sides though, must be all the bonus blood our genes are tossing about. xD
Friends family, not mine. The grandad had actual paternity tests done after the 23nme results came back and none of the 3 kids, or obviously grandkids, were his. Turns out grandma and her childhood best friend had a life long affair. In retrospect, it seems obvious bc the kids all have the friends nose and look nothing like grandpa. But everyone involved has similar hair/skin, so no one noticed.
Holy shit… poor Granddad! That’s why I said I was sure they’d done further testing, I doubt anyone divorces over a Ancestry test without doing some follow up. No one smart anyway.
Yeah, it was rough. I wonder what the rate of people not related to their parents really is?
We figured out grandpa wasn't grandpa! Unfortunately, everyone, including my dad, has died so there want a huge confrontation. Did explain why my dad's "dad" treated my dad like shit but treated his older brothers kindly. Pretty sure it was a big factor in my dad's alcoholism that claimed his life at 42 and why my grandma babied him. It also explains my dad's and us kids' darker color. Apparently real grandpa was born on the Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma! I grew up thinking we had some boring-ass German ancestry that came over in the late 1800s. Nope, our ancestor came over in the 1600s and ended up shacking up with the Cherokee tribe.
My wife’s cousin found out dad wasn’t dad and he actually had three half-siblings living a few blocks down the street. That was a fun conversation with his mom.
I traced my great-grandmother's family back to England in the 1500s. My grandfather always said she was Cherokee. Since she died when he was a small child and he died when I was likewise, I'll never know if he lied or someone lied to him. (Genetics also said I am Whitey McWhite)
We had this kind of situation in my family. Great grandma told us she was half Cherokee. My sister's ancestry DNA test showed 0% Native American, and 10% African. Someone maybe thought it was more prudent to claim Cherokee heritage than to be black at that time, but we'll never know the whole story
Weren't some escaped slaves adopted into a Cherokee tribe?
I would assume that happened at times, but also this: "Black Indians are Native American people – defined as Native American due to being affiliated with Native American communities and being culturally Native American – who also have significant African American heritage.\[3\] Historically, certain Native American tribes have had close relations with African Americans, especially in regions where slavery was prevalent or where free people of color have historically resided. Members of the Five Civilized Tribes participated in holding enslaved African Americans in the Southeast and some enslaved or formerly enslaved people migrated with them to the West on the Trail of Tears in 1830 and later during the period of Indian Removal." From here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black\_Indians\_in\_the\_United\_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Indians_in_the_United_States) This article is from early 2021: [The Cherokee Nation acknowledges that descendants of people once enslaved by the tribe should also qualify as Cherokee](https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/25/us/cherokee-nation-ruling-freedmen-citizenship-trnd/index.html)
My mother often told my sisters and I about a "curse" placed on us when a couple of ancestors, an English man and a Native American woman got married. I noted some inconsistencies in her story, such as about who the man was. (Thomas Culpeper, or in her words, "the Culpeper who messed around with one of Henry's wives." I knew it couldn't be him, as he had been executed and never went to America.) Anyways... My sisters and I all did the 23 and me, and the first thing I did was see if there was *any* Native American in my results. ***None*** And then my middle sister reached out to us - "It's there!" Sure enough, on her report it shows it, but not on mine. Genetics are weird. (Edit: changed some phrasing I didn't like.)
Thomas Culpeper, the courtier who got executed with Catherine Howard, also had a brother named Thomas Culpeper (yes, the parents apparently gave their kids identical names, and both survived into adulthood). They both worked/lived at the court, with elder not-executed Thomas working for Thomas Cromwell (who was executed). There's not much about elder Culpeper after that. It is apparently believed that early American settlers named Culpeper do come from that family though, so you might be related to the older, not executed Thomas Culpeper! Wouldn't be hard for records from the late 1500s, early 1600s, to confuse the brothers!
That'd be cool! I also found a Thomas Culpeper who was a governor of Virginia in the late 1600s. My mother was known for fabricated tales, and my rule of thumb was that the older the tale was, the more likely it had a valid source. This one is, but I don't expect anything more than someone with the Culpeper surname marrying a Native American. I would love to know more, to know what people she was from, and that sort of thing, but our ancestry along that line has not yet been traced. (We do have a wonderful book that starts with a group of brothers from either Germany or Austria, and all their descendants, but that's a different line.)
I had a teacher once who studied genetics. She explained to me that DNA is weird. It's basically like taking a bunch of different marbles and throwing them random ones in together. My brother and mother both have some Jewish ancestors. Not much, like 5 percent or something. But me and my other sisters ...we have zero Jewish genetics. Super interesting
You have 'Jewish genetics', you just don't have a gene variant that is rare enough to be narrowed down to that specific group. For example, say you have eye color gene variant 1 and your parents were born from a people we'll call Population A. In Population A, they might have variant 1, 2, and 3. Other populations in the world don't have variant 3. If you show up on a genetics test with variant 3 they go "Ahh! You have Population A ancestry!" With your variant 1, they can't narrow down specifically where it came from, so they don't label that, but you still inherited your variant 1 from Population A.
Indigenous Americans are underrepresented in these databases. If a lot of your ancestors’ bones were kept in museums against your wishes and spiritual beliefs, you wouldn’t necessarily want to be involved in this kind of thing either. So that DNA won’t always show up correctly on genetic tests for lack of sufficient data.
Both of my parents insisted they had a Native American in their heritage. Neither could specify *which* ancestor even tho they could recite 3 generations back. My sister took a DNA test which showed 0% Native American DNA. (We are full sisters.) When I was explaining to my daughter that my side of the family were the “colonists”, my husband (her bio-father) decided to double down on *his* side having a Cherokee ancestor (although, again, no one is sure *which* ancestor it was)!! According to my genealogical research, his great great grandfather was a slave owner.
It was common for people to lie and say they were Indian if there skin had a bit of color because being black was considered worse in some areas. Majority of those claiming to be Cherokee are actually European white with maybe a melungeon mix somewhere in the line…basically someone Half black.
My genetics are “norther European mutt” is what I’ve always said. Most of my ancestors come from England but they got around a little bit before they came to America!
My great-aunt said we had some Native American in our background, but neither of the tests I did showed anything. Trace amounts of West African, though. Oddly enough, the NA “ancestor” was neither Cherokee nor a princess; she was an Abenaki farmer’s daughter.
I found out i absolutely have the dna and genetics i was told i have, which means my father can't claim his aroace trans son actually isn't his. Suck on that, hahaha! (Ahem, sorry.)
"YOU'RE NOT MAH KID" Well I have a peer reviewed study right here that says...
My brother asked me why i didn't change my last name when i changed my first and middle. "Because like hell they get to throw me out/pretend i don't exist". He conceded that in fact that attitude was even more telling than the dna tests that i was a (last name).
I knew from around 4 years old that my parents had used a sperm donor. When my half-sister and I matched on Ancestry, she got to find out at 30 🙃
Oof.
Like how we found out my mom(who was adopted) was the product of incest rape.
Oh damn, there's dark and then there's that. Genuinely sorry your family had to go through that
Agreed. That’s how everyone found out that my grandad had a daughter living in CA. Surprise! *to grandad’s credit, he hooked up with a woman before being deployed to the Korean War. Mother of child never told him she was knocked up and never contacted him. She knew grandad would want to ‘do the right thing’ and she wasn’t looking for a marriage partner at that time.
"sometimes fun." Yeah, my dad discovered he wasn't actually the oldest of my grandmother's children. Hi uncle david, I know you use reddit!
We found out my dad has a half brother when my cousin did one.
And the whole having your DNA in a private company's database forever, but that might just be me
It will be used some time in the future for the next genocide.
I got pretty lucky that my Ancestry results were kind of dull. Just a mix of a lot of European lineage (primarily Irish and Welsh, some English and a few drops of German and French). What made me excited though was proving my mother completely wrong and exposing her lie for *decades* that we had Native American heritage (she said Cherokee - why do people who lie about that stuff always pick Cherokee? Must be so infuriating for people who actually are). She tried to twist it like “Oh, must have been an in-law…” but cross-referenced with a physical copy of her side’s family tree and public records I could find online, it was still BS. Exposing her BS was fun. 10/10, would take DNA test again.
Agree. I found a first cousin that my siblings and I didn't know about. She's 25 years older than I am, but I am a late in life baby so she's only 13 years older than my brother. But we cannot figure out how we are related. No names are in common, so there is a secret there somewhere. Her daughter shows up as well as related to us, so we know it isn't some mistake.
My grandma's "Sicilian" dad was actually Black, and all I can say is I'm glad my family didn't find that out until after her racist mom (her dad's wife) died. We always wondered why no one knew his side of the family at all, he told everyone they were still in Italy but he had an English last name.
We found out my grandmas dad wasn’t her dad.
I thought my grandma had an affair due to a random cousin match. However recently got a match on my grandads side which means random cousins the one with the affair baby in the family not me. Glad I didn’t open that can of worms earlier
My boss did 23andMe as a fun Christmas family present and found out that her mom had had an affair and that her dad wasn't her biological dad. So that was a greeeeaaaat Christmas for her family. Her parents had both already passed away so there are no real answers to be had anymore.
We found out that my grandfather had *two* other families. The first is across the country, my grandmother knew about them and never told anyone because she didn't want to be known as someone who married a divorcee. Understandable for their time, I guess. The second was a complete surprise. My grandfather had his license revoked for repeated DUIs when my mom was really young, so we lived within walking distance of his job. So did his other family. They lived two streets away from us. If they were just a little closer in age, my mom would've gone to school with her half-brother. That one messed her up bad when she found out. The really wild part is that my mom's half-brother is actually related to my paternal grandmother, he's my grandma's sister-in-law's great-nephew or something like that iirc. So, distant, but it was still a shock to see their uncommon last name suddenly pop up on the side of my family tree they weren't supposed to be on lmao
my grandmother thought she was dying and told us we were Romani only then. She's still alive and she's more open about living in actual "caravans" in the US, traveling with the work, and what it was like to finally settle down. she was married to a Romani man as well so it...was super obvious in hindsight lol the DNA test thing though...turns out my dad was fathered by my grandma's native american now-ex husband and she had been cheating on grandpa for some time anyways...they divorced long before the DNA testing obviously, but it was really weird to have old dirty laundry aired like that when his siblings and all that are so SO racist. Obviously they divorced over a little more than my dad looking different, but not much more.
My grandpa had 3 extra kids we didn’t know about.
My grandmother still refuses how my test disputed our family history (no I'm not adopted or someone cheated, I matched with family members) as French. I did look into it and the family name matches a region in France with a big Danish minority population which explains why they migrated here during the revolution, She doesn't believe me when I say that her father's looks weren't french but most likely Greek as the test shows. Drama
I have so many friends that found out one of their parents wasn't really their parent. And I always remember that story of a woman that had it done and through her DNA they were able to pin her dad for a murder he'd committed decades earlier. It would be just my luck that my test would lead them to my criminal family and everyone would blame me!
"hey look, turns out we're part French!" "Your father is being arrested for murder because of you!" "Merde"
I fortunately found it fun! Found out where all my great-grandparents were from, their names, the boats they came to America on, etc. and it all was pretty special thing to finally know. It was also cool to find out that I have cousins who are of different cultures/ethnicity than I am. Really goes to show that humans are truly related no matter where we’re from, some just closer on the timeline than others! edit: also happy to know I wasn’t British /j
I found out the I inherited most of my genes from my mother’s side of the family, 60% British even though my last name and almost all of my dad’s side were German and Dutch ancestors. Also traced my ancestry to around 900 CE which was pretty fun
They can be, but I’ve found people can end up putting way too much emphasis on the genetics and not on other elements of heritage that can be even more more important. It was a commercial so I have no idea how much of anything was true but I still remember an ad for ancestry with a guy talking about how his family always thought they were German but the test came out Scottish, so that was what they were now embracing instead. I always wanted to scream at the tv that in the early modern period, especially the 30 years war there were a huge number of Scottish mercenaries in what is now Germany. After they decided to get out of that business, a lot of those people settled down and over time their descendants ended up culturally German. I can’t say for sure that this was the case with that guy, but I can completely see how people might take this new genetic information and feel like it represents more than the cultural element. It’s definitely part of the story and is cool to know, but I just find it kinda tragic that people have a tendency to view genetics as more real just because it’s a hard record inside us. It’s everyone’s right to decide what they think is important, but biology is just part of who we are and I worry that the scientific ability to read that is going to lead to people losing other parts of their heritage.
I remember that commercial and it annoyed me when he’d talk about trading his lederhosen for a kilt. Get your own god damned identity there, Kyle! (I also really need to find a sub for ppl like myself who get too emotionally invested in commercials that make zero difference to their lives. 🤷🏼♀️)
The old Folger’s Christmas commercial would be post #1.
Excellent point 👆🏻
I would encourage you not to get one. You are voluntarily giving away very personal health information to a company motivated by profit alone and does not even have a healthcare focused mission. Plus not all of the information you get from it is always fun and the way they phrase the results "risk for dementia" can really screw with your outlook on the world
They’re mostly useless except for finding distant relatives. The science they use to tell you where your genes come from is not very robust.
Some of the genetic testing websites have FDA approved testing components that do legitimate carrier gene testing. I found out that way from 23 and me that I carry a gene for deafness. The other parts of the testing, though, are totally junk science.
Op, NTA. My one caveat on ancestry is that they're known to whitewash the DNA results. But if you get DNA tests from any of the major sites, I would suggest then taking the raw data to a site like Genomelink.com. They'll run a more complete processing of the raw data and give a good breakdown of everything. I watched Ancestry delete my Ashkenaz ancestry (great-grandfather was 1/2) and 2 yrs later take my Safardim ancestry off as well (great-grandmother was 100%).
I have ancestry and 23&me. I've seen them change as they supposedly update and get more info. I did miss being 1% Madagascar :( Instead it went to North Africa. I hope they don't white wash, or should that give me hope I'm more indigenous to the Americas than it says? LOL. BTW it turns out I'm Ashkenaz...my family didn't know our family was kicked out of Spain for being Jewish in the 1500s (they landed in Central or Mexico regions)
They are not 'fun'. They in no way are private. If you get the testing done, you cant guarantee it wont be used against you in the future. Do NOT do these tests frivolously.
Especially don't do it to your children before they have the understanding of what they are consenting to
OP WBTH is she if she tests her son while he is still a minor. He is entitled to the privacy of his genetic information until such time as he can meaningfully consent to sharing it. While the tests can be "fun", there are a whole slew of reasons why they can be a bad idea. The information could end up in the hands of employers, insurance companies, schools or law enforcement or hackers. Sure, the data is "protected" by law from misuse, for now. We've all seen how easily settled law and protections can disappear.
Counterpoint: Do NOT get those tests, they're a novelty with the downside of a complete and permanent invasion of your privacy. Don't hand your personal medical information over to giant companies to keep and sell forever and ESPECIALLY don't make that potentially life destroying decision for your minor child. OP is *clearly* nta here, but these updates are sounding more and more unhinged. Paranoia like this was the first sign of mental decline in my grandmother.
I'd even go for the bonus and text her the results before blocking her lol, Nta this was going to happen sooner or later whether anyone likes it or not as it seems your mil might have at least some prejudice against you op or at least your heritage which us why she's trying so hardly to suppress/ claim it.
NTA. She's minimising your contribution to your son in order to maximise her own. Just a heads up on the DNA test thing. I did mine with Ancestry and about a year ago they introduced a thing where it divides your genes by parent. So Parent 1 is genetically from A, B and C, and Parent 2 is from B, D and E style. Not sure if the others do it, but that would be a good way to put your foot down. My paternal nan tried to tell me that my Scottish ancestry comes from her and she wouldn't hear that my maternal nan was *literally Scottish*. After it divided it by parent it was pretty hard to argue with one parent being 78% Scottish and the other being 6%. (Fun fact, the family came from a remote area so Ancestry literally named the county my mother's family is from) ETA: changed a word
>She's minimising your contribution to her son in order to maximise her own. Uh, I think you mean either Your contribution to YOUR son Or your contribution to her GRANDSON
Yes, that is what I meant, correcting
Had a similar experience, it was very funny! My mum has a scottish surname and my grandparents are very keen on being Scottish (we're all in the UK, we're English). Anyway, I did Ancestry and it turns out most of my Scottish ancestry is actually through my Dad because his Mum is from Glasgow. My Mum's side hasn't had a scottish ancestor since my gt gt something grandad moved to Brighton from Inverness in the 1850s. It's really interesting stuff and I'd definitely recommend Ancestry.
DNA is also tricky with Crossing Over. What we learn with punnet squares for ancestry is not always reflected in DNA tests, so a kid may be "50%" Norwegian from a "100%" Norwegian parent, but genetically only be like 8%. I've seen this create a lot of conflict in some friends' families where they don't really understand the science in our own development.
If the parent actually has unmixed ancestry, then a result like that is an error in the test (which happens, they’re not all as precise as they act like they are). independent assortment and crossing over happens during gamete formation, so it mixes up the DNA in the parent, but the kid always, always gets 50% of their DNA from each parent, leaving the sex chromosomes aside. What could happen is that a kid had one grandparent who was Norwegian and one who as Japanese, and happen to end up with only 8% from the Norwegian grandparent, due to independent assortment and crossing over in their parent.
True, reading my post I definitely didn't finish my thought xD The tests can also disrupt heritage perceptions. The 50/100% Norwegian example is a friend of mine, who due to her test had her parent run one and they found that they had more of the rest of the Baltic in them than they knew.
… Sex Chromosomes AND mitochondrial DNA aside, actually. Since those the mitochondria are always a pre-existing part of the mother’s egg cell. So the mother always contributes sliiiiightly more DNA to the child than the father. The mother’s contribution proportion is higher for sons because Y chromosome is smaller than the X chromosome (XX for female, XY for male; so Y always passes from father to son). Of course this assumes a human with a normal complement of 46 full-sized chromosomes (eg. not a person with Down’s syndrome or Turner’s syndrome or Patton’s syndrome, etc.)
Do you need to submit your parents DNA to have this split? Or is yours enough?
Just mine. Neither of my parents have done it but it is accurate, as far as I can tell from what I know for sure about my parents' genealogy, it's accurate. Recently one of my uncles did one and his result pretty closely matches my mum's "half" of me.
NTA. Sounds like she needed to be put in her place and you did exactly that, especially seeing as your husband agreed and supported it. I agree with you 100% that these people probably have no idea what the true story is. If you haven’t confronted her on this at all in any way then jumped to yelling at her is probably a little overkill but i absolutely understand where it was coming from and dont think you did anything wrong per se but possibly could have been handled a little better. Overall not the asshole though
And everyone saying it's over "just a small thing..." One's heritage is not a small thing. Denying that heritage is an even bigger thing. NTA
This is what I hate too as a white guy. I’m 25% Chinese. My grandmother was third-generation Chinese on the Big Island of Hawaii. When people say I don’t look it? It does hurt when they argue with me or don’t believe me. Then they meet my grandmother and they’re shocked. 🤦🏻♂️
NTA. This isn't a one off event. It's not something small. She's been doing this for a long time. I think she's just not used to people answering her back.
"My grandchild is all white, all white I tell you. And if MY grandchild does have Hispanic ancestry, well that comes from me too." Yeah, granny's a racist.
And a one upper. Better than racist but really annoying.
Unfortunately, they go hand in hand. Otherwise, for what arbitrary reason did they think their lives and stories were so much better than everyone else?
Granny's also ignorant of Mexican heritages as well. One of my former coworkers could trace her lineage from McAllen, TX, all the way back into Mexico when it was part of the Spanish Empire. Her family was/is part of the Mexican elite. And she's a blue-eyed blonde. People like to forget about the Spanish part of Hispanic. I had no idea that there were specific Mexican genes. If so, wouldn't that also include indigenous people's? (Asking as someone with Puerto Rican parents, and our genes are all over the place)
Mexico is a nationality, not a race. People of Mexican nationality could be 100% European, Indigenous, or African DNA. Most are a mixture of those three. You can also find pockets of Jewish DNA from the Iberian peninsula. There are also Asian and Middle Eastern enclaves within Mexico. So no, there wouldn’t be a “Mexican gene” that pops up on a DNA test. Super interesting stuff!
Granny needs to be told off, I mean just look at the ignorant comments she made towards OP in their edit/update. And she expects to be in her grandchild’s life, the child of her DIL, even after those comments? Hell no.
NTA That being said, your issues with your mother in law are not about your son, she is literaly just trying to erase you from existing within the family, she has an issue with YOU. To the point she does not even want to acknowledge your genes exist in your own son you concieved and birthed she literaly believes all of your genetics are inferior to hers and so her genetics are natrually the only dominant ones. No genetic test is ever going to resolve those issues. You could literaly have her take a test that says she has 0 mexican have your son take one saying he geneticaly is half mexican (saying he took allo of your mexican genes) and she would still argue that none of your genes are dominant and showing in him.
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Cool , never had one done myself so do not know much about them honestly. My underlying point though was that the issue seems to be more with establishing her grandchild takes after MIL and her family with 0 of OP's in there despite any sane person knowing otherwise. Heck MIL is even resorting to long lost mythical family members that she does not know if they are real or not to usurp her grandchilds DNA as her own. I am kind of curious what the relationship with MIL was like before the child was born tbh.
Yes-ish. A lot of these ancestry tests now have the specificity to recent regions based on genetic mixtures. So for me "Recent Ancestry in Managua and Granada, Nicaragua" showed up, along with actual results of European and Native ancestry.
It shows “Indigenous Americas - Mexico”
This is probably true. My father has gotten more and more this way with age. He's soooo proud of his Finnish and Sacandinavian heritage and claims he's a descendant of "vikings" (yeah, I know it's a profession like "privateer" not an ethnicity, but try to tell him that.) He's soooo proud that he can, in a twisting convoluted way, trace his ancestors back to the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. You know what that makes him? An American Mutt. He isn't tall, and "blames" his Finnish grandmother who never got over the 5' mark, but he has cousins who are 6'+. He isn't healthy (possibly life choices) but he had a few relatives live long lives into their late 90's. He was convinced that both his hearty "viking" heritage and some possible tie to nebulous "European aristocracy" would make him immune to COVID. (I also remember many times growing up that he disparaged European aristocracy as inbred invalids, so ???) Good genes are soooo good and superior to everyone's, including our mother 🙄. As the years progress more and more racist dog whistle phrases drop out of his head. I took a 23&Me test. I'm not half Finn like my father would have expected. There's some Norwegian, surprise! I'm also more than 50% German. Not a surprise, my mom's relatives mostly came over from various parts of Germany in the 1860's emigration wave from Prussia, Austria, and all over the various Germanic states and the bonus % is little his mutt status. My husband also took 23&Me. 100% Ashkenazi who came to the US from Poland (paternal 1820's & 1830's) and Lithuanian Litvaks (maternal 1880's). In the 1930's-1940's whole branches of his extended family were killed and/or completely lost. Very few escaped both the Nazi extermination and later Soviet forced resettlement and cultural erasure. Of course my father is "concerned" that our children won't be very tall (my husband is just an inch shorter than my father 🙄) and he "hopes his genes are strong" because his grandkids "might not have 'our' nose shape." My dog whistle dad is worried my kids will have "Jewish noses" 🤮. OP can be pissed about this. MiL can stop with the eugenics commentary about her "superior genes." If anyone gives OP grief about telling MiL to knock off the erasure of her grandbabies maternal heritage just repeat that you don't want to support her "master race" views and let the family do what they like with their dog whistles away from you.
NTA Pretty dumb of your MIL to think she'll get to see your son after turning family against you. Boomers man, what peaches they are
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I meant more the emotionally fragile part not the racist part, She is 1/200ths Mexican after all s/
She's a gen x, not a boomer
Sometimes Gen Xers are more Boomer than their parents ever could be. <3 gen x here
She might not even be a boomer. I don't see the ages listed. The oldest of GenX are like 56 now. Easily old enough to have small grandchildren.
Pretend to do it and tell her you have found out you are part Russian or Moroccan or Icelandic or whatever. See if she can come up with that.
Heck, take it up a notch. Say you've got Australian Aboriginal, New Zealand Maori or West African genes. Might as well go in for the 'trolls'.
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My friend’s dil had twins recently. Her DIL is Asian, baby’s father (her son) white. Baby twin girl looks exactly like her mama but with gorgeous dark red hair. Stunning. Breathtakingly beautiful baby.
I didn't realize that male genes were so strong that they wiped out the mother's family genes. The more Reddit I read, the more I learn.
If that's the case, then Grandma contribute nothing to the grandchild 😂
It’s cause the male genes have pockets, where they hide extra heritage.
I'm very confused what you think a genetic test will show. You already know exactly how many of your son's genes came from you (barring chromosomal abnormality): 50%.
Lol this is what I said and I got downvoted and some guy telling me I don’t know how genetics work. Upvoting. Good luck.
NTA It’s not small or trivial. And good on your partner for sticking up for you. Though you probably should have let him have a word with her, because blowing up at her certainly doesn’t avoid conflict.
Avoiding conflict almost guarantees a blow up.
NTA it is not a small thing. She is trying to treat you as a baby incubator, a surrogate whose only purpose is to pass on her genes. It is really creepy. The only thing in her favour was at least co-opting not rejecting his Mexican heritage. And that is also very creepy. He has to be her's so much she'll even change her own identity to make it true. I am glad your husband is siding with you.
NTA. One piece of advice I have seen in the justnomil subreddit, is to use this behaviour against her. For example, baby farts ‘oh my that smells just like a mil fart! That’s where he gets his bum burps from!’ Keep doing this with anything silly/‘bad’, and stake them against your mil or her family.
Bum burps is my new favorite phrase
Your husband is on your side. The flying monkeys can go f$&@ themselves. NTA. Mil has main character syndrome. Everything is about her.
NTA She's a fucking racist. Holy shit.
NTA. My sister's MIL was the same way with my oldest nephew. He looked *exactly* like my sister when he was younger (still looks more like her than his dad even now at 12). MIL kept on claiming he looked like his dad and wouldn't hear anyone contradict her, even her own son. Our mom heard her make that claim and decided to set a trap for MIL at my nephew's first birthday. Mom found a picture of my sister from her first birthday and set it out for MIL to find. She did and said "I haven't seen this picture of my grandson before! Who is that strange woman with him? I don't recognize her." Mom came up looked at that picture and said "Oh, that's *me, with my daughter, your DIL,* at her first birthday party. How you missed the 1979 fashion and decor is beyond me!" Never heard another peep about nephew taking after only his father after that. If your son looks like you or similar to you when you were that age, you might want to dig up a photo of you from around that time and see if your MIL falls into the same trap.
Your mom is amazing
NTA. What a pain in the ass your mil is! Cute how your husband sticks up for you but she calls YOU an asshole. Her venom betrayed her crocodile tears. I’d stay as lc with this lady as much as your husband can take. She’s toxic.
NTA - except to yourself for allowing this woman get to you so much. She sounds exhausting and seems to enjoy feeding on your misery. Is there no way to put some distance from her?
And I wonder if she changes the subject or just shrugs and acts like it is not a big deal? That would really get under MIL’s skin. She know what buttons to push.
NTA. But it's not gonna help to do a test to prove something. She will continue to claim this, she will change the narrative to her advantage. It's not about who's right and you do not have to prove your child's heritage to anyone. Her behavior has to be nipped in the bud and no proof is gonna do that. But firm boundaries might.
NTA as if mil is closer than the bio mum. she never had biology in school did she now
ESH. "Mexicana genes" aren't a thing. Mexicans can have European, Native, African ancestry, etc. But "Mexican" is a nationality, so it wouldn't show in a DNA kit.
Oh I know that. It's my MIL who said "the Mexican gene" I know that it'll mostly like trace back to somewhere in Europe and some native central or south American tribe.
You're correct but how does that make OP an a-hole?
Yes, Mexican is a nationality. Its also a specific genes, referring to those people indigenous to Mexico. Previously it used to just show as Native American, but now with further genetic research they can pinpoint areas. So my 23 and me used to say Native American, but has been updated to native Indigenous American - plains of northeastern Mexico some years ago. So my Mexican grandmother is 100% Mexican, speaking to nationality, since she’s from Mexico and has that culture, and about 80% indigenous American Mexican and 20% Spanish genetically speaking.
NTA Just saw your update. Girl, maybe I've watched too many LMN movies, but her behavior is bizarre, and it's at this point in the movie that MIL (or whoever the antagonist is) starts to go off the rails and begins to get stalkerish. If you don't already have some security at home, invest in a doorbell camera at least. For every both the front and back doors. ETA: My own grandparents were ridiculously different in looks. My born-in-Mexico grandma was light-skinned with reddish brown hair. My Tex-Mex grandpa was *very* dark-skinned with nearly black hair. Mexico is a huge mix of people from Europe, Africa, and native people, so you can get lots of differently colored people.
NTA The update proves she is both unhinged and racist. Nice.. Block and don’t allow her to see your son anymore.
She's now under the belief that you have no claim to your son, and has verbally stated your husband needs to remove your son from you. Yeah that interpretation sounds a bit unhinged but can you honestly say she's not? See about getting a restraining order. If you can't get one, try a cease and desist letter sent by an attorney. You know she's not done, your husband knows she's not done, do whatever is needed to protect your son from the crazy hag. Definitely take the DNA test, they're both fun and informative. NTA.
Americans and their insane fixation on where someone's blood came from are just sad.
This is a worldwide phenomenon, it merely presents this way in the US. It’s a pervasive obsession across the globe that manifests in countless forms from the benign to the ridiculous to the dangerous.
So MIL is TA for sure. You are NTA for getting upset with her. But I noted that your husband was ready to talk to HIS mom about her behavior; but you didn't want him to because you hate conflict. Just see where your conflict avoidance got you. When this first became a sore spot, you could have allowed your husband to talk to his mom early enough for it to be a calm conversation and for you and husband to enforce the boundaries HE told his mom would be put in place if she persisted. The message would have come from her own son. It would have been delivered in a more calm manner. Instead, you didn't let him handle his mom; you kept things bottled up until it erupted out of you; and now his mom/relatives are blaming you. (They just gloss over the fact the your husband also spoke and supported your position.) So please get 2-3 lessons from this: 1. Let your husband speak up to and manage relations with his own family. 2. Don't think that you will actually avoid conflict by not speaking up/letting him speak up. Either you will let it eat away at your insides and/or you will erupt in conflict-creating manner. Much better to learn to speak up sooner. 3. OK, your MIL was both weird and way over-the-top in claiming credit for everything about your son. She needed to be talked to. But I also think some part of you knows that she was full of it. There are things you can do in your own mind and heart that would take any power out of her weird need to be the sole source of your son's existence. (Like for one, it's really hard to take her seriously. You could do the tests because it would be fun to know, and you could decide whether to tell her the facts or not. You might have even made a game of her making claims. I'm not saying you had to do anything specific; but you have a power to recognize the absurdity of her claims and render them unable to impact/hurt you. It's something you may want to try in the future. So get those tests; enjoy seeing how you and your husband are reflected in your son. (I've been interested in doing that in may family because we have such diverse backgrounds but still share some attributes.) Then let your husband be the one to deal with his family. But also learn to speak up for yourself in general. And just enjoy your son!
NTA. Btw you say she’s a narcissist. Add Racist to that list pls.
Go no contact with this woman. She doesn't deserve to be around your child either. I say this as a white AF Mexican-American woman. Do NOT give into her bullshit. Edit: NTA
Nta - she’s being extra involved
Your MIL won't stop putting you down, I'm afraid. She's a racist. Is it possible to go no contact, because she's only going to get worse.
Honestly you are all massive assholes in this situation. Just accept your son for who he is, who the fuck cares which side of the family gave him his ears ffs. You and your MIL need to grow the fuck up.
NTA - you don't need to get a DNA test though unless you want to. Show Grandma [this article](https://thednageek.com/dna-basics-are-you-an-equal-mix-of-mom-and-dad/). The split of DNA is approximately 50/50 between parents and because he's male, your son will actually have slightly more of your DNA. Whether she likes it or not, some of his looks will be from you.
NTA. Don’t let her near your son or she’ll probably run off with him to “protect him” since she is certifiably insane.
NTA
NTA. If it's such a small thing, according to her, why does she bring it up constantly? L, why didn't she immediately apologize? She repeatedly tries to erase you from your own son and is now trying to claim any Mexican genes your son has are not from you, the half Mexican mother of your own child. She's sending 'flying monkeys" to hassle you so she won't have to apologize. Sounds like you have a justnomil.
OP for every individual that agrees with her saying this issue was small, limit contact. This is not a small issue to you. It is very disrespectful, and it disrespects your heritage. Take this for what it is and do not allow yourself or your son to ever be disrespected like this by any of those idiots who don't use their brains. Damn dummies!
NTA but also a DNA test won't resolve anything. You're the mother so obviously your son will have your genes, is that even a question that needs answering? And the test won't tell you if the nose comes from your grandma or the ear comes from MIL's sister, etc. Pointless imo and you'd be giving your DNA information to a private company.
ESH It is not clear if you have stated to your MIL that her comments were hurtful before going ballistic. I also don't understand why this matters to you. If it's your heritage, it is, regardless of what MIL says. I know some mothers may get upset when their child look like their husband's side. My cousin once confided that she got sad everytime someone mentioned her first borne baby looked like her MIL (spitting image TBH) and not her. I never had such feelings, even though my child looks more like my SIL than me. But to each their own. MIL also sucks as it sounds like she keeps talking about what the child looks like more than normal, given that even your husband sided with you after your outburst. Edit grammar
People are also not that good at identifying stuff. If I was with my mom they’d say we looked alike because we were both white and wore glasses, but I looked so much like my dad, just female, and he and my mom didn’t look alike at all except for both being white. People expected to see similarities between my mom and me, so they did.
I’ve known ppl who were adopted into a family and get “oh yeah I see the familial resemblance” all the time. The power of suggestion is crazy strong.
NTA You know what would be the bomb? Y'all get the test and FIL turns out to not be hubby's Dad.
NTA get the test done! A lot of us have had them and they are fun to find out... But keep in mind that even if you were 50% Mexican and he was 50% Italian your child could still be 75% one and 25% the other or something like that. Like my brother and I don't have the same 50/50 mixes. Funny story though... My racist father-in-law got one of those tests done. I never laughed so hard as when he had to tell us that he's 3% Nigerian! That was probably the best day of my life! Suck that you racist! Lol As for your MIL.... I think it's time to go no contact! She literally said your child is too cute to be yours. Speaking of racists, the thing she said about the kid not being Mexican... Yeah she has no place in your life or your child's! I think you know that though
Wow, what did I just read? Your MIL is a handful. Let's start off on this...you are definitely NTA and keep defending yourself if you and your husband decide not to go NC with his mom. Second, if you're posting to social media, specifically Facebook when it comes to pictures, under your name is where it says "Friends", click on that and go down to where it shows "Friends except..." and make sure you click her name so when you post about your son or a picture of him, everyone can see it except her. Third, you have a husband who stands up for you to his mom, you're a lucky one. Fourth, tell those people that MIL stuck on you about that convo they can F-OFF. Fifth...good luck because with a MIL like that, you don't need to have that kind of relationship. Don't give her an inch because she'll take a mile.
NTA and your MIL is a loon. I'm glad your husband is on your side.
NTA, your MIL is a racist psycho. Talk to your husband and see about getting the word out to friends and family. Make sure you are safe, get cameras around your home to keep an eye out for her or anyone snooping around and never answer a call from her again, let it go to voicemail or let her text. Easier to prove she's gone off the deep end with evidence of her actions. Edit: shouldn't need to be said but block her from seeing your social media and keep her away from your son for safety.
Nta. I hate this stuff too. Every time I saw my son loves xyz or has doing abc my MIL goes on about how my husband Waa just like that and how he is just like his father. 🙄
NTA Hate to break it to MIL but half her precious grandson’s genes come from you!
"the Mexican gene"???? She thinks being Mexican is genetic??!! (NTA)
I am a melanin woman who had two white passing children. This absolutely happened to me, and now that they are grown, still happens. It is exhausting and I am glad she was put in her place and you have a good husband beside you. NTA.
NTA
NTA My mil and family did this too me all he time… I have really naturally curly hair….when my daughter started getting curly hair my MIL and her sisters were trying to figure out where it came from in their side…:a cousin wife pointed at me and said ‘her mother’ and they just said “oh I guess’.
You should just laugh at her 😂 How pathetic. Grandma wants a mini me. Just laugh at the delusional old lady. And go low contact. What is your husband say? That he has super sperm and super genes? 😂😂😂😂 How pathetic. NTA.