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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/eralezara on 2023-08-10 18:26:22.

Lately, my whole family, including my 12 yo son Mark (fake name) has taken an interest in ancestry. Everyone wanted to go get tested. We were hesitant because Mark is adopted, but after we read up about it and how there was an option to make sure nobody else could see his data but us, we agreed.

We found nothing on the maternal side closer than 3rd cousin, but we did find a match for biological father. We looked him up on social media. Here’s the thing: he’s 24 years old. As in, he’s turning 25 this year. Our son was an anonymous hospital surrender, so we understood that we would need to tread carefully and the story might not be great, but this crosses a line for us. Given basic math, there’s almost no chance that this story is anything appropriate for our son to hear, and talking to this guy feels grossly inappropriate for us to do. We’re not comfortable talking to this guy or that its the right move for our family. We decided to tell our son that we didn’t find anything about his biological parents. He was disappointed but accepted it.

My family thinks we should have told him the truth. We don’t agree. As our son’s parents, we have a responsibility to protect him, and we feel this is best. We never promised him that this would come up with anything or that we would decide to reach out if it did. It was only ever a possibility that we were open to if it was safe and reasonable to. We’ve been arguing back and forth all day with nobody else on our side. Is there something I’m not seeing here?