Two letters to Harriette in the same column

[conuly]

1. DEAR HARRIETTE: I have ginger hair and hazel-brown eyes, while my wife is a brunette with brown eyes. Despite our genetics, our 2-year-old child is dark-haired with blue eyes with a speck of green. My mother and sister cannot stop insinuating that my wife may have cheated on me. I consistently reject this idea and have become increasingly frustrated over time. I know my wife is faithful and loyal as she has always been. However, the persistent remarks from them and other family members at gatherings are beginning to affect me. I am considering a DNA test, but I fear my wife will feel doubted and betrayed by suggesting it. -- Confused Father

DEAR CONFUSED FATHER: Does your wife know about your family's grumblings about your daughter? Start by filling her in. Let her know that there has been ongoing whispering by your family and how disconcerting it is. Tell her that you didn't bring it up sooner because you think it is ridiculous, but that it is getting to you now that two years later they haven't let up.

Genetics are amazing. You have to look at family history to find the links to the origins of different traits. In many families, there is a wide variety of characteristics that appear at different points in different generations.

You and your wife should decide together how to address this. You could speak to the family elders to ask them to get the family to stop with the accusations and to accept your family for who you are. You can speak to individuals or the whole family together. Or you could do a DNA test to prove your daughter's bloodlines. Whatever you do, do it as a united front.

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2. DEAR HARRIETTE: I feel for my twin brother, and I am worried about him. "Danny" no longer socializes with us like before, he rarely leaves his room and he often refuses to go to school. It seems like life has been drained out of him, and he appears depressed. I have made efforts to talk to him, but he shuts me down. I intentionally snuck into his room and accessed his social media account because I am worried about him. I saw a conversation with a friend where Danny mentioned he is terrified of being judged and hated in the family because he is gay. He overheard our dad expressing extreme disgust toward gay people. I am considering sharing this information with my mom so she can mediate and talk to Danny, but I am afraid of causing more harm. -- Gay Twin

DEAR GAY TWIN: Take the risk of admitting to your brother that you read his social media and know what he's dealing with. Assure him of how much you love him and support him for the person he is. Acknowledge that you know your father can be harsh and scary, especially on this topic. Encourage him to speak to your mother for support and also to seek advice from the school guidance counselor. He should not be alone in this. Assure him that you are there for him and will stand by his side as he figures things out. Go to your mother only if he seems suicidal or incapable of living his life.

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Comments

[redbird]

The only genetic concept worth bringing up here is the mutation. Even simple things like the blood types they use as high school examples haven't been fixed since our earliest human ancestors.

One of the standard high school examples of an inherited mutation is hemophilia among Queen Victoria's descendants. Neither she, her husband, nor any of their parents were hemophiliacs, but she got that recessive mutation from one of her parents, and passed it down to some of her descendants.

What I would actually suggest, in addition to telling his wife that his mother and sister are making ridiculous insinuations, would be to get to the root of the matter: "Mom, Sister, why are you trying to destroy my marriage?"

[conuly]

If Victoria didn't develop that gene all on her lonesome she inherited it from her mother - it's a sex-linked trait. That's why you'll pretty much never meet a woman with the condition. Unlike certain other sex-linked traits, such as color blindness or male pattern baldness, hemophilia is too big a deal to allow a child with XX chromosomes to inherit it from both sides.

[harpers_child]

My paternal grandmother was a hemophiliac. Her father was too. We don't know about anyone farther back than that.

Grandmommy had horrible periods, gave birth to three kids, and eventually got a hysterectomy that was a bad enough operation my grandfather ended up on the table next to her with a direct line going from him to her. (He was closer than the blood bank at the hospital and the surgeon figured after several decades of marriage and three kids the likely-hood he had something she didn't was low.) She got hepatitis C from a bad blood transfusion in the 70s. She was the person who taught me how to use a bandaid wrapper as a blood barrier when I was like 6.

Fun fact learned relatively recently: if you can keep a hemophiliac alive into their 70s, their clotting factor increases.

[conuly]

Your grandmother was an exception! It's a lot rarer in XX people than other sex-linked conditions.

[ethelmay]

"In my 30s, my factor VIII level (a clotting factor protein that helps to stop bleeding) was tested, and I was told I may be a “symptomatic carrier” for hemophilia—a new term for women who are carriers for hemophilia and have bleeding issues of their own. I learned that the X chromosome without the genetic mutation does not always compensate for the X chromosome with the genetic mutation that causes hemophilia. Lyonization (a normal process during development where each cell shuts down or inactivates genes on one of the two X chromosomes) is random and does not guarantee that the X chromosome without the hemophilia mutation is the one that will remain active. Therefore, women who carry hemophilia can have no bleeding problems or be at the extreme other end, with severe hemophilia." https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/hemophilia/stories/shellye.html

[conuly]

We truly learn something new each and every day.

[ethelmay]

And of course there are also other bleeding disorders, which can have varying degrees of severity. Von Willebrand disease for one.