Legitimate question

My father believed – wrongly – that I wasn’t his child. If only there had been DNA tests to reassure him

In this magazine two weeks ago, Melanie McDonagh suggested that DNA testing is tough on children whose apparent fathers turn out not to be anything of the kind. In particular, she had sympathy for the child whose TV presenter ‘father’ discovered that for years he had been paying child support for somebody else’s offspring. No doubt she has a point, but what of the children whose true fathers doubt their paternity?

For me, DNA testing would have been a blessing. My father doubted I was his child, though I didn’t know it. I just knew that he didn’t seem to care for me very much. ‘The cuckoo in the nest’ is what he called me. When I was about six, he would ask me if I knew what the phrase meant. Pleased to show off, I would tell him proudly that I did know about cuckoos and how they laid their eggs in other birds’ nests. What I didn’t know or understand was the implication that I was not his child. In the 1950s, young children in the middle classes were not enlightened about sex and reproduction.

Of course, I knew there was something wrong with me. At the time I thought it was because I was a mere girl and he had wanted a boy. Or perhaps he didn’t like me because I had too many childish illnesses. His other description of me was ‘runt of the litter’.

He and my mother, a professor’s daughter, were an ill-matched pair. There didn’t seem to be any moment when they did not argue. So the taunt was aimed, I now realise, at her, not at me.