In Praise of Spit

We talk a lot, in the international adoption world, of both the joys we've found in being parents and the unique situations we may face. Two such issues on our journey center around helping our children understand themselves, their identity, what makes them, well, "them".

The first is a practical, yet important matter. And I admit it's one that punches me in the gut a little every time I encounter it - medical forms. Each time Owen sees a new doctor or has any procedures done, now and most likely for the rest of his life, a lot of spaces on it will be left blank. We just don't know if there's a family history of high blood pressure, or cancer, or heart disease. If there's a predisposition to diabetes or alcoholism. No, it's not the worst thing in the world, but it would be nice - for him, for us, for his doctors - to know.

The other challenge is perhaps even more central to our children's well-being and sense of self. Most of us grow up hearing about, and taking pride in, the rich cultural history of our family. I've always known both my mom and dad's families hail primarily from Germany. I grew up with a framed genealogy (written in German) on the dining room wall; I know about German food, German Christmas customs, and German fairy tales. Bob believes his ancestors trace back to England and Wales. Obviously, as an adoptive family, these genetic backgrounds don't work for us as we talk to Owen about his roots.

Owen's birth mother, in the hospital forms she filled out, identified herself and his biological father as Kazakh. Our in-country facilitators separately volunteered that Owen was "100% Kazakh". And so that's what we've taught him, sharing the Kazakh culture with him, visiting the Kazakh embassy, and being always on the look out for anything related to Kazakhstan. I've always been able to see Asian features dancing across his face - those gorgeous almond eyes, the low profile of his nose. And yet, we've wondered, as we try to answer his questions and talk about his ethnicity, if there was more in the mix that created our beautiful boy; after all, Kazakhstan is smack dab in the middle of the famed Silk Road and was for many years part of the USSR.

So here's where a little spit - and science - step in. We finally went ahead and bought a 23andMe kit at Target in mid-July, had Owen spit into the little test tube container, and shipped it off. He was excited, we were excited, and last week we got the results.

It turns out that Owen's ancestry composition is 64% East Asian and Native American. And the majority of that, coming in at 35%, is ...

Mongolian.

Well, that's interesting. And yes, a little surprising to us but not totally out of left field as both Mongolian and Kazakh people have a long history of being nomadic people, working and living in the vast Steppes of central and east Asia. Their traditions, music, cuisine and native clothing share many similarities. We will be sure to add this fascinating country and it's history and people to Owen's life story.

The remainder of his Asian ancestry is Yakut, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, "broadly" East Asian and South Asian, and a tiny bit of Native American.

Honestly, we were expecting to also discover a good amount of Eastern European lineage, specifically Russian. But the results, at 20%, came back fairly evenly spread among Eastern European (defined as Russian, Polish, Ukraine and Hungary), Southern European and Northwestern European. So he's a little Balkan, British, Finnish, but not French, Italian, nor (sigh) ... German.

We are thrilled to have this information for Owen. We all enjoyed reading his reports and talking about the results. Owen particularly like learning that most likely his birth mother's ancestors started some 29,000 years ago in Siberia.

As for medical information, while we still don't know those medical form answers, we discovered that Owen is not a carrier for 39 genetic conditions that, if present, could negatively impact him or his future children. On a lighter note, Owen's DNA shows he's more likely to prefer salty or savory snacks (true), have dry ear wax and less body odor (yuck and good!), and is not likely to lose his hair before age 40 or have male pattern baldness.

23andMe says clearly that they cannot tell the precise origins of all your ancestors, and that the results are based on estimates which could change a bit over time as more DNA is collected from populations world wide. And granted, the results aren't as detailed as we may wish for, but it's so much more than we had and we are thankful for that. Hallelujah for spit!