'Am I wrong for wanting to reveal the 'family secret' that my baby brother isn't really our brother?'
"Am I wrong for wanting to reveal the 'family secret' that my baby brother isn't really our brother?"
I (32M) am the 2nd eldest of 4 brothers. My baby brother (21M) is from my father's 2nd marriage while the eldest 3 are from my father's 1st marriage. My parents divorced because my dad fell in love with a younger woman and ended up leaving my mom for her. Him and his new wife ended up getting married within months of separating my mom.
The story we were told was that because my dad was self-employed at the time, and he couldn't afford health insurance for himself or his kids, he legally wasn't allowed to have visitation rights (not sure if that's accurate, but it's what we were told). So his 2nd wife suggested that they get married quickly. That way, she could put my dad and us kids on the health insurance through her job.
Well within about a month or so of getting married, they announced they were pregnant. Despite my mom being shattered by the divorce and feeling tossed to the side, my parents kept things amicable and we spent a lot of time with both my dad and his new wife. Eventually our new baby brother was born and we all grew up together and loved each other as siblings should.
After some time, my dad moved back to his home state on the other side of the country, and my brothers and I stayed with my mother, so we didn't get see our Baby Brother super often.
But, we would always stay with my dad for the entire summer break and alternate Thanksgiving/Christmas every year. Whenever we got back together it was like picking up where we left off with our baby brother and we always were excited to see him.
Fast forward about 8 or 9 years and my dad's 2nd marriage is starting to fall apart. They're relationship became decidedly toxic and they both were terrible for each other, constantly fighting and screaming at each other.
My dad suspected she was being unfaithful (oh the irony) and wanted to try and prove it so he could get out scott-free. He couldn't get any significant evidence for infidelity, but a friend of his put a bug in his ear about how his son looked nothing like him, and he should get a paternity test.
Honestly, my baby brother doesn't really look like anyone on my dad's side, but he was also a spitting image of his mother so it never really registered with anyone in the family that there was a chance he wasn't my dad's child.
My dad ended up getting a paternity test done without his wife knowing, and sure enough, the test revealed that our baby brother was 100% not of our blood. My dad was shattered, but for my brother's and I it didn't change anything. We've already accepted him as our own and grew up together, DNA wasn't going to change that. But it still hurt being lied to, nonetheless.
Turns out, my step mom had gone on a camping trip with friends a month before her impromptu wedding with my dad. You can guess what happened, and it appears that the real reason for the shotgun wedding was because she knew she was pregnant with another man's child, and didn't want to get caught.
My dad brings up the findings in divorce court to try and get out of paying alimony giving up half his wealth, and he was faced with two options: get out with no financial liability but lose visitation rights to his son, or pay his soon-to-be ex wife and retain parental rights. He chose the latter.
At the time, it was pretty well understood that we could not let our baby brother know that he really wasn't our brother. He was still so young and we didn't want to ruin his relationship with his mother. Plus my dad's parents loved this boy so much, he wanted to wait until after they passed because the thought of them finding out, he believed, would literally kill them.
So fast forward again and both of my dad's parents had passed, baby brother is probably 16 year old about now. I bring it up again that we need to tell him the truth, and I'm told that it's still not a good time.
Not only from my dad, but my other brothers agreed. He still lives with his mom, his mom remarried and had a baby girl as well, but her new husband tragically passed away.
So she's a single mom with two kids, and they didn't want to have our brother freak out and abandon his mother (which I dont think woulda happened. He's such a mamas boy and he really does have a heart of gold). Understandable, but I still think withholding the truth is wrong.
One final time skip, and baby bro is now 21yo and living on his own. To me, there's no reason not to tell him at this point. I ask my brothers what they think and they say he should know, but it needs to be at a time where we are all together again so we can console him, but we're all spread out across the country now, so it's very rare all of us together at once.
It'll probably be years until we're all in the same room together. I tell them we need to do a conference call or something and get this out on the table, but they say I need to be patient. It's been over 10 years of keeping this secret from our brother, I think I've been patient enough... But I understand they want to protect him as much as possible.
I speak to my dad and he still doesn't want to tell him. Baby brother has a lot of pride in our family heritage and he doesn't want to ruin that. I push back that it's a dumb reason to live a lie, and he calls me selfish for thinking that I know what's best for my baby brother.
I think he's just in denial at this point. My concern is mainly medical reasons. Family history is important, and our family is riddled with diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's and Dementia. Who even knows what his biological fathers history looks like. I fear a time could come that he gets incorrect treatment or a bad diagnosis based on a false family medical history.
Otherwise, morally, I think he just has the right to know. I mean, I'd wanna know if I was in his shoes, but that's easier said than done since I can't speak from experience. So am I wrong? And I trying to push this out too quickly? Am I being selfish? Has anyone else been told news like this and tell me how their experience was?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
Your brother has the right to know, but not by you. His mother and your father, effectively his adoptive father should tell him. Perhaps giving him a one month timeframe will be enough to push the envelope?
pizzythunda (OP)
His mother still maintains her innocence, despite a black and white report saying otherwise so I don't expect her to step up and say anything. I'd really expect my father to do something about it but he still seems scared to reveal the truth. At what point does it become irresponsible to NOT say something? Especially if both parents don't want the truth to be let out?
You could gift him a dna test for his birthday.
You should warn your dad that if your little brother is into your family heritage, it's likely he'll get interested in one of those Ancestry DNA tests at some point. It's just so common for people to test their DNA now. Keeping this secret is not just your father's choice. Ask him if he wants his son to find out from a black and white report the same way that he did.
My "parents" put off telling me until I had a DNA test for fun and demanded to know why my results didn't match family history. My real dad had been dead for 10 years. I would have been so grateful if someone had told me and my mother isolated me from her family to keep it from happening. Secrets are poison.