In favour or against?

Even with a good amount of information from social services, you would still not know the full list of ethnicities and countries in your child’s background.

Our culture chooses one line of our lineage to identify ourselves with, and we say we the (insert your surname) are like this. Yet, 100% of individuals in your lineage are equally essential to your existence, you literally cannot remove 1 person from the list.

In my case all four of my grandparents have a different background, yet, we identified with one, particularly in cooking. We cooked Italian food and I don’t really know anything about Brazil for example. Had I adopt someone with my background I would have made an effort to learn and bring all those 4 lines more equally.

Parents must support their children in the development of their identity. In adoption there are further matters to consider around identity as our choices would likely be different to those of the birth family. If you are born in the UK and your parents in China, they may not necessarily teach you everything about China, you may not consume media, and the favourite takeaway in your house may be Portuguese. Adopters would of course make a different choice and put more weight on the known background information.

DNA testing does not provide an entire picture, that is, your lineage may include 10 ethnicities, your test may tell you about 6 of them. Those are true but you still don’t know about 4. Furthermore your full biological sibling who share an identical lineage may show a different list from those 10.

The information would still be most valuable. Because growing up with elements of a culture, normalised into your sense of self, would have a significant impact on your connection to it.

There are still big concerns around DNA testing. Parents must make choices on behalf of their children for the adult they’ll become and hope they would have made the same choice. Giving someone’s DNA to a private organisation is a considerable ask. That organisation may be hacked, lose the database, files could become corrupt, the company may be bought and the data used for all sort of reproachable purposes.

Yet, the fact remains, that bit of extra information could really make a positive impact in someone’s sense of self.