Stirpiculture

The Oneida Community was a communal living experiment (one of many such experiments around the country) begun in Putney, VT and later moved to Oneida NY (where the mansion still stands). The group was founded by John Humphrey Noyes in 1841. Like the Shakers with whom they share some similarities, there were religious teachings behind many of the practices adopted by members.

One of the practices that caused a great stir at the time was "complex marriage" (aaah, Vermont, so many marriage controversies!). Although begun as early as 1846, only leaders of the community initially practiced it. Essentially, complex marriage was group marriage, where men and women did not have to practice monogamy with one another and were, in fact, discouraged from forming monogamous, exclusive relationships. Prior to cohabitation, both parties also had to agree through a third party. This practice was ended in 1879, and monogamous unions were again the norm.

Several of John Noyes religious teachings were related to child-bearing. John Noyes is quoted as saying in 1849:

"We are not opposed to procreation. But we are opposed to involuntary procreation. We are opposed to excessive, and, of course, oppressive procreation, which is almost universal."

By 1868, Noyes had already begun the practice of "male continence" in which men refrained from ejaculation during sex in order to prevent unintended pregnancies. Male teenagers were paired for sex with women in menopause until they learned to do this. As a form of birth control, it laid the foundation for other religious tenets.

In 1868, Noyes pioneered some of the earliest experiments in eugenics through a practice he called "stirpiculture". Essentially, this was a way to precisely control how many children were born and which individuals would become parents. The "central members" of the community initially controlled who was allowed to have children and with what partners. In 1875, a 12 member committee made up of equal numbers of men and women took over the responsibility of pairing child-bearing couples.

In 1869, 38 men and 53 women in the Oneida Community made the following resolutions to John Noyes in support of stirpiculture:

By the men:
The undersigned desire you may feel that we most heartily sympathize with your purposes in regard to scientific propagation, and offer ourselves in forming any combinations that may seem to you desirable. We claim no rights. We ask no privileges. We desire to be servants of the truth. With a prayer that the grace of God will help us in this resolution, we are your true soldiers.

By the women:
1. That we do not belong to ourselves in any respect, but that we do belong first to God and second to Mr. Noyes as God's true representative.
2. That we have no rights or personal feelings in regard to child-bearing which shall in the least degree oppose or embarrass him in his choice of scientific combinations.
3. That we will put aside all envy, childishness, and self-seeking, and rejoice with those who are chosen candidates; that we will, if necessary, become martyrs to science, and cheerfully resign all desire to become mothers, if for any reason Mr. Noyes deems us unfit material for propogation. Above all, we offer ourselves "living sacrifices" to God and true Communion.

The practice of stirpiculture lasted for 11 years (1868-1879) with about 100 participants. 81 of these became parents to 58 children. There were 4 still births. Promoters of stirpiculture proclaimed that the benefits included longer life spans, lower rates of disability, and general health and hardiness for the children as well as the cohesion of the Oneida Community. 18 of the adult children intermarried with other children of the Oneida Community.

Children in the Oneida Community, both those born under stirpiculture and those conceived through traditional practices, were cared for by their mothers until they learned to walk. At this time, they would be placed in the "Children's House" for the day. They were allowed to return to their mothers at night until they entered the "play stage" at which point they would live in the Children's House full-time until adolescence. Parents were allowed to visit, but if community leaders felt that an unhealthy attachment was developing, these visits could be disallowed. 193 children lived in this arrangement during the 40 years of the community's existence.

If the materials of the proponents can be believed, the quality of care received in the Children's House was actually quite good: "Much attention was given to diet, clothing, sanitation, and profitable activity" [Noyes, 379]. Of course, the community's isolation helped prevent many deaths from disease through effective quarantine. Still, only 5 deaths occurred in the Children's House over its 40 year history.

But my goodness, the ethical questions this raises! As a short list:

• Who has the right to decide which people are "fit" to reproduce and what "qualities" make them fit?
• Women and men were ostensibly equal in the Oneida Community, receiving equal shares in the incomes, etc. Do the practices of complex marriage and stirpiculture seem equal for both men and women?
• How much should we control a child's genetics through scientific processes? How much of a child's environment should be controlled?
• How is this different from Hitler's campaign to reignite the Aryan race? How is it different from modern genetic testing of fetuses, sperm banking, etc?
• Is complex marriage really marriage?
  
• How much personal liberty and freedom should be accorded members of society?
• When experiments such as this one are not ethically reproducible, how can/should we interpret results?
  

And the list goes on and on. It is a fascinating concept, if only because I can't imagine why people went along with the idea. Now this would probably be called a cult, and certainly the society did fall apart after John Noyes' death, so it owes something to his charisma. There must be descendants of these children out there somewhere. It would be interesting to know how they feel about their ancestors having engaged in "scientific" mating.

(I used as my primary source: The Oneida Community Experiment in Stirpiculture by Hilda Herrick Noyes and George Wallingford Noyes pp 374-86 in Eugenics, Genetics, & the Family: Second International Congress of Eugenics, 1921. Volume I. Garland Publishing, New York: 1985.

More information can be found at Syracuse University which holds the Oneida Community archives and in various online sources:
this one
that one
another one
and this Google book)

French Immigrants & Adultery

This from Slate.com:

The French government is facing a backlash for trying to DNA-test aspiring immigrants.Objections: 1) It's a double standard, since legal family relationships among French natives don't require a genetic bond. 2) Ditto for privacy: No native has to submit to such testing. 3) It's reminiscent of collaboration with the Nazis. 4) It's cheap anti-immigrant politics. 5) Genetics has no place in human rights. Rebuttals: 1) It's voluntary. 2) It's free. 3) It's needed only when you can't produce other good evidence of a family relationship. 4) Eleven other European countries do it, so what's the big deal? 5) We'll try it for 18 months and drop it if it's a problem. 6) We'll just test maternity, to spare you the pain of discovering that your dad isn't really your dad. (Related: previous update on the French proposal.) If you claim to be related to a French resident, the legislation would offer "voluntary" testing to prove it.

I really like the part where they aren't going to test paternity. Wouldn't that be a shocker for a bunch of folks? (See previous posts on rates of infidelity) There doesn't appear to be a genealogical loophole if you can prove you are related to some long-dead Frenchman, however. A shame, since that would likely mean that all of us could move to France!

The other issue that this bill has raised is the definition of "family" for many of the immigrants. In Africa, "family" may consist of uncles, cousins, and others that are related through marriage or more distant/non-existent DNA relationships.

But what about the inheritance?

Slate.com ran an interesting blurb today in their Human Nature column about a British woman who is receiving donated sperm from her father-in-law. It would mean that the baby would be a biological half-sibling to its "father", raising a number of questions. The health risks with older sperm are increased, but many people are also seriously concerned about the ethics of the case (it was reviewed by an ethics committee).

The father has no brother, which would be the usual family route. The article about this in the Guardian states:

It is not uncommon for families to use a sperm donor from within their family - often a brother - so that the child will have genetic ties with his or her "father", but this is thought to be the first case of a grandfather acting as a sperm donor. The family have not yet decided whether they will tell the child who his or her genetic father is, although the clinic is encouraging them to be open about that. "That's their personal decision," said Dr Ahuja.

Still, the questions about anonymous and known sperm donors that I've raised in other posts still apply. Also, I can't help wondering about the inheritance patterns from granddad to pop to kid... but presumably some lawyers are working on this problem!

What's interesting about this is that the DNA for genealogists will still match up in the future and so really no one will ever have to know (or accuse this woman of adultery!). I wonder how often this kind of thing happened in the past without the sterile medical procedures?

Birth Certificate Murkiness, Same-Sex Marriage, and Other Genealogy Controversies

A prelude for the beginning of this post. Please note that this is not actually an invitation for invective regarding homosexuality. It is an opportunity to explore the murky situation of birth certificates, same sex marriage, and genealogy. How we as genealogists and family historians explore the related worlds of biology and family, the ethical dilemmas that result, and how we make changes based on the new definitions of family are some of my favorite topics.

Whether you share my opinions or not, you are welcome to comment. However, inflammatory or derogatory comments will be deleted.

One of my frustrations with my current genealogy program is that same-sex marriages are impossible to create. I use Personal Ancestral File from the LDS Church which doesn't recognize same-sex marriages, so I really shouldn't be surprised. Still, it is aggravating.

Before our son was born, I simply had two different files. One was for my partner's genealogy, and one was for mine and never the twain shall meet. However, after our son was born, I felt like we needed to merge the databases so that both of his parents were recognized. There were two possible work-arounds. One was to label my partner's sex as "male" (or change mine). The other was to add my partner as an "alternate parent".

Unfortunately, this second option would result in two issues. The first was that a marriage would automatically be created for each of us (since children get added to marriages). I could probably have deleted these marriages, but it was still awkward. The other problem was that only one of our trees would be seen at any given point, instead of the nice fan shaped pedigrees that typically result in a two-parent family. Aside from the aesthetics, ease of navigability was a factor in the decision I made to change her sex. I now have lovely report possibilities and so forth, and since I don't print the names of living people on my website anyway, it doesn't really make any difference to other researchers.

Still, I have been wondering how others have solved this solution. With Massachusetts legally recognizing same-sex marriages, there must be genealogy programs that have this capability now... so I went looking online, but instead came up with all kinds of other interesting stuff.

A 2005 blog from Eastman in which he questions the right of the non-biological parent to be on the birth certificate in Massachusetts, likening it to adoptive parents. The problem is one that I've discussed before, but not quite in this way.

In fact, there are a few problems with this whole debate. The first is the assumption that there is a known biological father for same-sex parents. The second problem is the assumption that there was no other way for same-sex couples to be listed on the child's birth certificate. And the last is that birth certificates are reliable indicators of biological parentage for anyone.

Many children who are born to same-sex couples were conceived using an anonymous donor (and for those of you new to this debate, it is always "the donor" and never "the father" in these situations). For many children born to same-sex couples, sperm banks were used (in fact this is the fastest growing segment of the sperm bank industry). The legal reasons for couples to use anonymous donors from banks is clear, since it alleviates possible paternity custody battles after the birth of the child.

The legal reasons to have both parents on the birth certificate are similar. Imagine (or just look in the news for) the custody battles if one partner were to die, be incapacitated, etc. Think about children's need for health insurance, Social Security, child support, etc. This issue was important enough that there have been (for years) ways for both members of a same-sex couple to be listed on the birth certificate. In some states, same-sex couples can put their names on the child's birth certificate after the child's birth by doing a "second parent adoption". Legally, this makes the situation much more clear for everyone, and paves the way for non-biological parents to interact easily with the child care program, school, doctors, and others. In situations where the biological father is known, he has to sign away his paternity rights for these to go through. Also, a federal court ruled that all states have to recognize these birth certificates.

Massachusetts was already one of the states allowing second parent adoption, so many same sex parents had their names on their children's birth certificates before the marriage law was passed. The change to the birth certificate only means that same sex partners don't have to jump through additional legal hoops to have their names listed, but instead do so at the time of the child's birth. It doesn't actually change anything for genealogists looking at these birth certificates.

Incidentally, this second parent adoption law was originally used for stepparent adoptions, but now also covers many same-sex parents and some parents who have used a surrogate to carry the child. Interesting biological and adoptive convolutions can result if a surrogate carries the biological child of another couple. Addressing that through a birth certificate would be pretty challenging!

As seen from the above example, same-sex couples aren't the only ones who create havoc with birth certificates. In all anonymous donor situations (like virtually all done by banks), you wouldn't have any name to enter on the birth certificate anyway. For heterosexual couples who used sperm banks (typically because of male infertility), the father listed on the birth certificate was usually the man who was married to the mother. Many of these children were actually not told how they were conceived.

This is no different (in practical terms) from the Massachusetts debates over the non-biological mother. The only difference is that future genealogists will come across the same-sex birth certificates and immediately know that two women or two men are unlikely to have been the biological parents of the child -- not something that can be said of the opposite-sex couples.

Further, birth certificates in the case of adoption have long been altered to reflect the adoptive parents' names. Birth certificates for children whose mothers are having children born of adultery nearly always reflect their husband's name. Birth certificates for single mothers often don't list a father at all. The many convolutions of the birth certificate make this argument regarding biology a moot point.

So here is the way birth certificates for same-sex couples seem to stand. It appears that Massachusetts still has the mother and father categories and that same-sex parents just cross out the category titles and write in "Parent A" and "Parent B". In Vermont (where there are civil unions), couples are listed on the birth certificate as parents at the time of the baby's birth. A New Jersey couple also recently won this right. In Texas, adoptive couples who are of the same sex must choose one of them to be listed as "mother" and another to be listed as "father". In Virginia, there was a court battle because adoptive homosexual couples had to choose only one of them to be listed on the birth certificate. The adoptive families won and now both parents are listed as Parent 1 and Parent 2. In Canada, Quebec and Ontario list same-sex partners automatically on the birth certificates.

As a complete side note, there was an interesting controversy with a newspaper birth notice as well.

Anyway after getting a little sidetracked, I did find that many other genealogy programs would allow me to add my partner and child. According to the other bloggers, I could switch to the Master Genealogist, Legacy, Reunion, or Family Tree Maker. So I can switch.

DNA Follow-up

I've had a number of queries regarding my math. If you re-read my blog, I believe you will find that I stated that there is a 59.6% that you are related to ALL of your ggg-grandparents... as in the whole generation, not an individual. This does not tell you the likelihood of being related to a single individual in that generation.

Also, in follow-up, geneticists are now taught that there is a 5-10% infidelity rate; this is much higher than the historical figure and will likely alter recent generations more substantially than further back in history. Probably this figure has changed throughout history depending on cultural characteristics. Given this issue, all of the math is hypothetical anyway... an average over 700 years can't be completely accurate to the generation.

Follow-up on DNA testing

In reading my most recent book, I came across a statistic related to the "milkman" problem I referenced in my last post. In this post, I noted that DNA testing for genealogists could potentially raise problems, especially in the future, with the increased use of sperm banks.

The book I am reading now is Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson (Metropolitan Books: New York, 2002). Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain that it is a natural history book that discusses genetics and the many ways that plants and animals have evolved to reproduce. Here is a quotation (p. 163-4) that directly relates to the milkmen:

"For example, in England, children usually get their last name from their father. Boys get something else from their father: their Y chromosome. Thus, if all living males bearing a particular last name are the direct descendants of one man, they should all have the same genetic markers on their Y chromosomes. In the absence of infidelity (or adoption), last names and Y chromosomes should match up. One study analyzed the Y chromosomes of men called Sykes, a name that first appears in written records about seven hundred years ago. It turns out that almost all the Sykeses investigated did indeed have the same markers on their Y chromosome, suggesting that most living Sykeses have the same distant ancestor. The rate at which females married to Sykeses were unfaithful (or adopted sons) over the period of seven hundred years is estimated to be 1.3 percent per generation."

Judson references: Sykes C. and B. Irven, 2000. Surnames and the Y chromosome. American Journal of Human Genetics 66: 1417-19.

That's pretty incredible if you think about it. Of course, I can think of any number of possible flaws with the study, and since I haven't read it directly, have no idea how accurate it might be. Still, a 1.3% infidelity rate seems astronomically low. Added up, though, it can create a huge possibility for biological error (never mind all the possibilities for documentary or research error).

Here's the math based on the 1.3% above: a 98.7% chance you are related to your father, 97.4% chance you are related to your paternal grandfather (but 98.7% for the maternal grandfather), etc. There is a 96.1% chance that you are biologically related to your grandparents... yes, the ones listed on your parents' birth certificates.

By the time you hit your ggg-grandparents, there is only a 59.6% chance that you are biologically related to all of them. The only person you can be sure of in this model is your mother's mother's mother's mother.

This means that there is an exponential rate at which you are likely to not be related to your ancestors. Based on the math, in under 2000 years, you are guaranteed to not be biologically related to your father's father's father...

Ironically, of course, there is also evidence that with the world's population size about 2000 years ago, we are all likely to be related somehow. Just not the way we think.

In another similar study, Y-chromosomes and the extent of patrilineal ancestry in Irish surnames, the authors note that: "Notwithstanding differences in their early origins, all surnames have been extensively affected by later male introgession." In other words, although we were all once 'pure' lines descended from one or multiple males (depending on the surname), we're mostly all bastards now! There was about a 50% likelihood of relatedness in this study between two males with the same surname. Not bad, but less than you'd expect without the 'introgession'.

The Genius Factory

I just finished reading The Genius Factory by David Plotz the other day. In brief, it is a summary of a sperm bank that tried to sell sperm from Nobel Prize winners and "geniuses". The author connected a number of the children with their anonymous donors.

I think that the book has some interesting relevancy to genealogy. Or, not so much the book itself, but the topics it covers. For example, there is a chapter devoted to eugenics, which was a huge movement in the early part of the 1900s Basically, eugenics is the belief in engineering "better" human beings through careful breeding. In its worst moments eugenics was a cover for racism and the castration of individuals with disabilities (or murder - see Hitler). "Positive" eugenics focused more on the selection of "fitter families" that could pass on their traits of intelligence or physical attributes to their children. I actually think there is some connection between members of my family and the eugenics movement, which I am exploring, so more on that in another post.

The concept of sperm banks is also an interesting dilemma for family historians. Many of the children conceived by sperm banks were never told. Especially early on, children who were conceived were usually born to couples where the husband was infertile, and then raised as though they were his biological children. Now, things tend to be a little different and banks are working more with lesbians and single women. Still, I think this is an interesting issue.

With the advent of genealogy through DNA, anyone in the future may have difficulty connecting descendants. Siblings may have had different donors. And although the dad might be on the birth certificate and in other documentary records, his DNA won't be a match to his kids' DNA. As someone once said about genealogy, "all it takes is one milkman". This, of course, has always been true. It is definitely one of the limitations of genealogy with or without DNA testing.

Jess's family has an ancestor who was adopted in the mid-1800s (Ella Shaw). She was adopted into the Mikeworth family, appearing with them in every census, beginning when she was just 5 years old. She was born in 1863 in Illinois, and from her death certificate, it seems her father's name was Samuel. Samuel Shaw is just too common a name for me to be able to identify him based on that. However, it is an interesting conundrum to think about. I'm not sure whether her birth family is necessarily all that important. After all, the people who raised her were almost certainly more important to her. Nonetheless, she maintained her birth name, staying a Shaw until she was married (to Lewis Bowman). I could probably track down her father with a little more effort, but am uncertain what to do about this adoption/birth family business. Do I research the Mikeworth family? How important is the biological connection?

This bears an interesting relationship to our nuclear family, where Jess is not Asa's biological mother. Nonetheless, she is clearly his mother, and I felt it was equally important for me to investigate her family tree (although I fully expect him to have NO interest in these topics).