DNA for adopted kids.

donalh087

Hi, one of my kids is adopted from Africa. We have very little information regarding his origins and would love to find more. I am considering having a DNA test done but would like to know more than country of origin. Has anyone had one done?

Hermy

There's an ongoing thread about this in the Genealogy forum which might also be worth posting in.

Wesser

A DNA test is unlikely to help you here it will just say there is an African lineage here and that's it.
It is a total money scam don't waste your money
Let the child research his own background when she turns 18.

_Brian

donalh087 wrote: »

Hi, one of my kids is adopted from Africa. We have very little information regarding his origins and would love to find more. I am considering having a DNA test done but would like to know more than country of origin. Has anyone had one done?

I'd tend to think this would be of passing interest but likely to show noting of real interest..

We're building a library of reading material, honestly the girls only read it a bit, but its there for the future should they want it.. We have some DVD's detailing cultural and social celebrations, these have been really popular and watched over and over particularly at important times, we celebrate important cultural dates ourselves with traditional meals and decorations, it makes it real and normalises it.
We find that staying close to a support group, country specific if you can has been very successful, regularly meeting other adoptive families where sometimes adoption is talked but mostly its to share time with similar families to normalise the adoptive family unit.. We like to rent a large house for the weekend and maybe 4-5 adoptive families whom we're close to share it, great fun.

We did a roots trip last year with the girls, aged 7 & 13, it was nothing short of amazing and we will definitely do another as soon as we can.

BottleOfSmoke

It's likely that you won't even get the single country of origin.

I am half African, and did the Ancestry DNA test. My Irish details were correct to within the Irish province. The African side was a breakdown that included a list of 12 countries. There was a bit of guff about migration patterns etc to try and explain why it was so generic.

Ancestry also matches you with genetic matches. Of my 4,200 matches (mostly distant cousins but a few 2nd/3rd/4th cousins), only about a hundred had African ancestry. I suspect that many of those are African American mixing with my Irish line. That was the case with my closest match with African ancestry.

So bear in mind that these kits are relatively expensive, and although getting very popular in the United States - the companies don't have the big sample size from the African continent.

donalh087

That answers that really. My child is Ethiopian but there are quite a few ethnic groups there and as there is absolutely no possibility of finding his birth parents I was was hoping to narrow down to a province - even a town. Clearly DNA testing is too early in it's life cycle. He is still pre-teen and doesn't see why he should have to learn anything about Africa :-) Hopefully in a few years, when he does show interest, DNA testing will have stronger results.