Editor’s note, May 31, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below originally published on October 6, 2024. This unconventional advice column offers you a unique framework for thinking through moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Stay tuned for more original Your Mileage May Vary columns coming in June.
A DNA test upended my family. Do I side with my grandmother — or her secret child?
I don’t know what I owe my newfound relative.
My grandmother had a teenage pregnancy she hid from her family before giving birth in secret and immediately giving the child up for adoption after birth. I accidentally discovered this after I received a message on an ancestry DNA website from someone closely related genetically to me. She told me she knew barely anything about her birth parents and was desperate to just have an answer. I accidentally exposed this secret to my mother and grandmother by asking if anyone knew who this person who messaged me was.
My grandmother was horrified, and wants nothing to do with her. How do I respect the choice my grandmother felt she had to make at that time in her life and protect her peace, while also acknowledging that this person should be able to at least know who the people who created her are and prominent family medical history? I feel guilty for exposing this secret accidentally but now I feel like I have an obligation to protect my grandmother and offer this person some peace of mind.
Dear Caught-in-the-Middle,
Your question reminded me of an idea from Bernard Williams, one of my favorite modern philosophers. He said that someone facing a moral trade-off can make what is, all things considered, the best decision, and — even though it was the right call — find that it still results in some cost that deserves acknowledgment or feels regrettable. Williams called that cost “the moral remainder.”
Regret is a trickster of an emotion. We’re used to viewing it as an indication that we’ve done something wrong. But as Williams explains, sometimes all it means is that reality has forced upon us an incredibly hard choice between two options, with no cost-free option available.
Your grandmother is not in the wrong for giving up her child all those years ago — or for wanting to keep her distance now. As you said, it’s the choice she “felt she had to make at that time in her life.” Pregnancy outside of marriage, especially in her generation, often came with a massive serving of shame, and the fact that she felt the need to hide it from her family and give birth in secret suggests this was a pretty traumatic experience.
It’s understandable if she’s scared to reopen that trauma now. She has a right to decide if and how to process it — a right to self-determination.
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At the same time, her grown child is not wrong for wanting answers today. The desperation felt by this newfound relative of yours is the “moral remainder” of your grandmother’s decision.
As technology shifts over the generations, moral norms shift along with it. When your grandmother gave up the baby for adoption, she had no idea DNA testing would become commonplace — but it has. And as cheap testing kits like 23andMe have exposed all kinds of family secrets, more and more kids who’d been kept in the dark are making their experiences known.
Some were never bothered by their obscured origins, but discover an extra measure of joy and connection once they meet long-lost relatives. Others say they always suffered from an uneasy sense that they’re different from their siblings. Still others say it’s important to know your biological family’s medical history, especially with the advent of precision medicine.
All this has led to an increasing belief that children have a right to know where they came from — a right to self-knowledge.
Take it from Dani Shapiro, author of Inheritance, who found out as an adult that her beloved father was not her biological father. She writes:
The secret that was kept from me for 54 years had practical effects that were both staggering and dangerous: I gave incorrect medical history to doctors all my life. It’s one matter to have an awareness of a lack of knowledge — as many adoptees do — but another altogether not to know that you don’t know. When my son was an infant, he was stricken with a rare and often fatal seizure disorder. There was a possibility it was genetic. I confidently told his pediatric neurologist that there was no family history of seizures.
Some bioethicists, like Duke University’s Nita Farahany, are also building this case. Following the famous proclamation from Ancient Greece — “Know thyself!” — Farahany argues that people have a right to self-knowledge, including when it comes to medical information. She writes that “access to that essential information about ourselves is central to the self-reflection and self-knowledge we need to develop our own personalities.” It helps us shape our own lives and empowers us to make choices about our future.
That means that self-knowledge is actually a subset of self-determination — the exact same value that your grandmother is asserting. And it seems only fair for us to acknowledge that if your grandmother is entitled to that, then so is her child.
If both people have a right to self-determination, and their rights are in conflict with each other, then … well … what do you do?
Even John Stuart Mill, the 19th-century English philosopher who literally wrote the book on liberty, didn’t think that anyone’s right to liberty or self-determination is an absolute right. Instead, it’s a qualified right — the kind that we generally honor but that can be restricted to protect the interests of others.
So it feels appropriate here to strike a balance between your grandmother’s wishes and her child’s. There are a few different ways to do that, but here’s one: You could assure your grandmother that you won’t pressure her to talk to the child or hear any more about her, but you will give the child family medical information and a general understanding of her birth story, including the aspect that might feel most important to her: why she was given up for adoption.
Without mentioning your grandmother’s name or any details that would make it easy for the grown child to track her down, you could say something like, “Your birth mom is one of my relatives. She got pregnant as a teenager and didn’t have the means or support to take care of you. She made the hard choice to give you up for adoption in hopes that you’d have a better life than she could provide. She doesn’t feel comfortable being in contact now, and I feel that I need to respect her wishes and her privacy, but I hope this message brings you at least a little bit of peace.”
Ultimately, you won’t have total control over what your relative does with this information, because internet sleuthing is a force to be reckoned with. And you won’t be able to control whether she feels fully satisfied with what you tell her. That’s a feature of this kind of moral dilemma: You can’t please everyone 100 percent, but you’re doing what you can to honor the values at stake.
If you want, you might choose to meet with the grown child without involving your grandmother. Or you might decide that your notion of kinship isn’t rooted in biology and you don’t feel any particular need to bond with someone new to you.
Either way, what I love about Williams’s idea of the “moral remainder” is that it encourages you to view everyone in this tricky situation (including yourself!) compassionately. Regardless of which specific step you take next, you can move forward from that place of compassion.
Bonus: What I’m reading
- 23andMe is floundering, to the point that the company’s CEO is now considering selling it. As Kristen V. Brown notes in The Atlantic, that would mean “the DNA of 23andMe’s 15 million customers would be up for sale, too.” It’s one of the many reasons why I’ll never spit into one of those test tubes.
- I recently reread the philosopher Susan Wolf’s 1982 essay “Moral Saints,” and it feels more on point than ever. Wolf argues that you shouldn’t actually strive to be “a person whose every action is as morally good as possible” — and not just because those people are incredibly boring!
- David Brooks is not my usual cup of tea, but I appreciated him writing in the New York Times about how, contrary to popular opinion, “emotion is central to being an effective rational person in the world.”
Facts Only
A woman received a message from a close genetic relative on an ancestry DNA website.
The relative knew little about her birth parents and sought answers.
The woman’s grandmother had a teenage pregnancy she concealed from her family.
The grandmother gave the child up for adoption immediately after birth.
The woman accidentally revealed the secret to her mother and grandmother by asking about the relative.
The grandmother was horrified and wants no contact with the child.
The child desires knowledge of her biological family and medical history.
The woman feels guilty for exposing the secret but also obligated to help the child.
Philosophers like Bernard Williams discuss the "moral remainder" in such dilemmas.
Bioethicists argue for a right to self-knowledge, including biological origins.
DNA testing technology has exposed many family secrets, shifting moral norms.
The woman considers sharing medical information and context without revealing her grandmother’s identity.
The child may still pursue further contact or information independently.
Executive Summary
A woman discovered through a DNA test that her grandmother had a secret child given up for adoption decades ago. The revelation was accidentally exposed to her family when she inquired about the unknown relative who contacted her. The grandmother, traumatized by the past, wants no contact with the child, while the child seeks answers about her biological origins and family medical history. The woman feels torn between respecting her grandmother’s privacy and acknowledging the child’s right to self-knowledge. Philosophical perspectives from Bernard Williams and bioethicists like Nita Farahany highlight the tension between self-determination and the moral remainder of past decisions. The situation reflects broader societal shifts due to DNA technology, which has exposed long-held family secrets and raised questions about the rights of adoptees to know their biological heritage. The woman considers sharing limited medical and contextual information with the child while respecting her grandmother’s boundaries, though she cannot control the child’s potential actions or satisfaction with the disclosure.
The dilemma underscores the complexity of balancing competing moral values, where no solution fully satisfies all parties. The woman’s potential actions—such as meeting the child independently or providing anonymized information—are framed as attempts to honor both her grandmother’s autonomy and the child’s need for answers. The discussion also touches on the ethical implications of DNA testing companies, which may commodify genetic data, and the evolving norms around family secrets in the digital age.
Full Take
This narrative presents a deeply human dilemma where technological progress collides with long-held family secrets, forcing a reckoning with competing moral claims. The strongest version of this story acknowledges the legitimacy of both the grandmother’s trauma and the child’s need for self-knowledge, framing it as a clash of equally valid values rather than a simple right-or-wrong scenario. The philosophical concept of the "moral remainder" is apt here—it recognizes that even the best decision in such cases leaves unresolved costs, a useful antidote to the binary thinking often imposed on ethical dilemmas.
Patterns detected: none. The piece avoids manipulation tactics, instead offering a nuanced exploration of conflicting rights and the limitations of individual agency in resolving them. The root cause lies in the tension between pre-digital-era privacy norms and the irreversible transparency of genetic testing. Historically, adoption secrecy was often enforced by societal stigma, but modern technology has dismantled those barriers, leaving families to navigate the fallout without clear ethical roadmaps.
The implications extend beyond this family: DNA companies profit from data that can upend lives, yet there’s little societal consensus on how to handle such disclosures. Who bears the cost of these revelations—the individuals whose secrets are exposed, or those denied access to their origins? The piece wisely resists prescribing a single answer, instead inviting readers to consider how they would balance autonomy, truth, and compassion in their own lives.
Bridge questions: How might adoption laws evolve to account for the inevitability of genetic discovery? What obligations, if any, do biological families have to adoptees in the age of DNA testing? And how can we design technologies that respect both privacy and the right to self-knowledge?
Counterstrike scan: If this were part of a coordinated campaign, the playbook might exploit emotional leverage—either vilifying the grandmother as selfish or the child as entitled—to polarize audiences. However, the actual content resists this framing, presenting both perspectives with empathy and intellectual honesty. No structural alignment with manipulative tactics is detected.
Sentinel — Human
The content is highly coherent and demonstrates a strong human voice, skillfully integrating personal experience with complex philosophical reasoning to explore a moral dilemma.