When a DNA Test Reveals Your Daughter Is Not Your Biological Child

As DNA-testing companies sell millions of kits, they’ve started to rearrange families. The tests have reunited long-lost cousins and helped adoptees find their birth parents, donor-conceived kids their sperm donors. They have also, in some cases, uncovered difficult family secrets.

Earlier this year,  I heard from dozens of people who took a DNA test only to discover their fathers were not their biological fathers. Many of them belonged to a private Facebook support group called DNA NPE Friends—where NPE stands for “not parent expected”—that sprang up to connect the thousands of people who’ve had their identities altered by a DNA test.

There are other sides to the story, too. The creator of DNA NPE Friends, Catherine St Clair, recently created a group for the fathers. One such father is Christopher, whose real name we are withholding at his request. Earlier this year, after buying his now-15-year-old daughter an AncestryDNA