Dear Prudence,
I am a child born of rape. I didn’t find out until I was 21 and pregnant, wondering why I had a blood type that could not have come from the parents who raised me. All my mother told me at the time was that she was raped when she was 16 and became pregnant. She elected to keep me and later met my dad, who adopted me. She was hysterical while telling me, so I didn’t feel I could ask anything else. I submitted my DNA to a database hoping to receive medical information from potential relatives, without success.
My parents are homophobic, racist, passive-aggressively mean people. I don’t know if they were always like this, but it’s only gotten worse with time. I have distanced myself from them, and my son refuses to acknowledge them. I am concerned that someday they will reveal the circumstances of my birth in the form of a nasty comment directed toward me in front of my kids. I feel like I need to tell my kids before they find out from my parents, but I don’t want to burden them either. I don’t want them to wonder, as I do, what parts of me came from a rapist or whether I look like him. Do you have any advice on how to make it easier? My kids are young adults in their early 20s but still kind of naïve.
—To Tell or Not