Jennifer Berney explores how queer families challenge traditional notions of heredity and paternity.
paternity
Posted inEditor's Pick
How a DNA Testing Kit Revealed a Family Secret Hidden for 54 Years
A personal essay by memoirist Dani Shapiro about discovering, accidentally through DNA testing, that the father she knew was not her biological parent. In the piece she advocates for the rights of children produced through assisted reproduction, after decades in which those of parents and donor prevailed, and children were kept in the dark about […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Bastard: Neither of My Parents Was Exactly Who I Thought They Were
In this personal essay, author Elizabeth Wurtzel shares the bombshell that was recently dropped on her — that her father was not Donald Wurtzel, but rather civil rights era photojournalist Bob Adelman — and tries to make sense of her mother’s choice to keep the secret of her affair (and her daughter’s true paternity) for […]
Posted inNonfiction
Gravity
‘My daughter doesn’t have a father, or, she has two fathers, since I don’t know which man her father is. One of her fathers says it’s like Schrödinger’s cat in there.’