There isn’t anything even faintly odd about a parent having a list of incoming freshmen and looking through it! Ye Gods.
When I was a freshman, I received a picture book in advance that showed everyone in the class and where they were from. I recall my father looking through it and remarking to me that one of them was apparently the daughter of the dictator of Nicaragua. (I was unaware of his existence back then.)
When my S was a freshman, HE received something very similar from his school, and I looked through it.
In what world is this some kind of weird and creepy behavior?
My name is sufficiently rare that only 2 people in the US have it: my mother and myself. there are a few more in Canada. We’re all cousins. There are also some in Finland. We’re all cousins also. If I were contacted by someone with that name on FB–and in fact I have been–I would happily friend them.
About 25 years ago I received a phone call at work from someone who had seen my name on an industry publication I co-authored. He was a HS classmate of my father’s and wanted to know if I was related to him. I gave him my parents’ contact info and they went on to be reunited and enjoy a nice relationship.
For perspective, on 23andMe, I have lots of “3rd to 6th cousins”. The most DNA I share with any of these people is 0.25% (not 25% but a quarter of 1%). One of these people shares my grandfather’s last name.
It isn’t really about DNA, it is about a sense of community. The same way that if I run into someone from my hometown or elementary school I might exchange a few pleasantries-small world, isn’t it funny we had that in common but both ended up here at this point in time. The same with cousins, in my book-isn’t it interesting how family branches broke off in different directions. I guess some are more open to this than others. I like being open to it-I’ve made some absolutely fascinating aquaintances as a result, and find it easy to close it down if not.
You say "I don’t mean ‘self-absorbed’ in a negative way.
I just mean they don’t look at extended family relationships in the same way some of us older folks do. "
But here’s the point-- in all your adult life, you never took the time or the opportunity or the whatever to get to know this young woman and her family. This extended family relationship is only important to you now because it’s convenient… because the girls happened to choose the same college.
What’s important to her right now is her life and the people in it. And you and your family simply don’t fit into either category.
My 19 year old son was adopted an infant. He has absolutely no interest at this point in finding any of his blood relatives.To him, we’re family. They’re strangers, even though they share blood and we don’t.
^^I actually agree with your point @bjkmom, just to clarify.
My point to OP and perhaps I didn’t express it clearly - is that it’s NOT a big deal to everyone and it’s probably not personal.
From age 18 - 35 I wouldn’t have cared at all.
For some reason I love family connections now, go figure.
ETA: I do think it’s wonderful, and uniquely human, when people behave cordially with one another - open to the possibilities but with healthy boundaries.
There are a lot of interesting comments. I will say that I have a number of cousins that I did not know I was related to until I was an adult. I kinda-sorta knew a girl when I was in college who I found out later was my second cousin. There were a few people in the community where I attended school who shared my last name, but I had no idea how I was related to them (I know now). So I do guess it is of less interest to young folks.
I do find the overall desire not to meet unknown relatives a bit surprising. At age 18 my father encouraged me to do some research and interview various older cousins. One older cousin told me about how he remembered as a little boy asking his grandfather (my great-grandfather) about the scar on his head caused by a Yankee musket ball. You don’t get this type of information unless you are willing to meet with and talk to people. How many of you have talked to someone about a conversation that they had with a Confederate veteran? A couple of years ago my mother’s first cousin sent out word that she wanted to organize a family reunion. I went, even though I did not grow up with any of these people and knew few of them (I had met my mother’s cousin and her family when I was 12). At the reunion there were lots of photos of the little country school that everyone attended, including photos of my grandfather as a very young assistant principal who had just finished high school, plus some other interesting stuff. I took lots of photos so I could have copies of various things; glad I went.
“I do find the overall desire not to meet unknown relatives a bit surprising.”
Different people find different things fascinating and well, not. Frankly, none of the events you describe in your post sound remotely enjoyable or interesting to me and I’m sure there are plenty of things I find interesting that you’d gnaw your arm off to escape. If you were a relative I were sitting next to at Thanksgiving dinner while you told these stories, I’d listen politely and be genuinely glad for you finding these things you enjoy. But I’d personally have zero interest in those activities and even less interest in talking to a previously unknown double fourth cousin. And, sorry to say, if that’s all you wanted to talk about I’d smile, nod, eat my turkey as quickly as politely possible and excuse myself ASAP. Similar to how you would probably react if I spent the entire dinner discussing the hydrodynamic properties of the new foiling catamarans and the potential durability of new tech sail fabrics like Aramid…
It seems a bit intolerant to assume everybody would be interested in the exact things we are.
I think you missed the point, which is that an unknown relative may very well be the world expert on catamarans and you will never know it because you didn’t even give him a chance. Again, your loss, which is fine. There are plenty of other people out there.
No, I got your point. I just find it highly improbable I’d randomly stumble on a world expert on catamarans and am not patient enough and don’t have enough common interests with most people to make it sound like an enjoyable experience to have to sift through the 99% of really boring things to have the 1% possibility of finding something in common that’s not boring. There’s a much greater chance that an unknown relative is going to want to talk at length about talking to a person who talked to a Confederate soldier and be shocked that this is not fascinating to others than stumbling on someone who even knows how a catamaran foils so this is a risk (missing out on that one person who also wants to talk about foiling) I’m happy to take.
Again, I support and respect people who find it interesting to talk to random people and who enjoy those discussions. There’s nothing wrong with this outlook and it’s very nice. But there’s also nothing wrong with finding this boring and not wanting to do it myself. Your approach works for you and makes you happy; my approach works for me and makes me happy.
It’s not at all a loss to avoid things one finds unpleasant.
Why would the unknown relative be any more likely to be a world expert in catamarans than any other random person in the world? If you like to talk to random strangers on the off chance they might be interesting, fine, many people are gregarious and enjoy that sort of thing. But it has nothing to do with whether they are extremely distant relatives.
Some people are not gregarious. To me, talking to a stranger is generally onerous if not unpleasant, not something I look forward to, unless I already know we have something to talk about.
@milee30 I don’t spend my time talking about my family history to strangers. I shared a couple of stories to illustrate that I’ve learned interesting things talking to relatives that I didn’t know.
@“Cardinal Fang” I agree with you that a relative is not more likely to share an esoteric interest than the public at large. For those with zero interest in family history or connections, I suppose I don’t see the point.
“Kin” and kinship is a bigger thing to some, than others. And in some parts of the country, it’s not uncommon to speculate or get excited about ties… Earl, you’re in the deep south, right? While I think its unusual to get your nose out of joint over an 18 year old who ignored a blind FB request, others can try to understand this cultural thing.
Just try to see the kid’s perspective. She’s got other fish to fry. And when you were encouraged, it was personal contact, not social media. The issue isn’t who’s got what expertise or battle scars. It’s more how to go about this contact and respecting any boundaries.
Btw, in our family, there’s the expression, “family gibberish,” lol. Those stories from DH’s maternal line included a big hunk of wishful thinking. Even what was supposedly learned at that great aunt’s grandfather’s knee. In mine, I remember the time my gm rattled off some details and her own sister disputed it. So be it.
And you were interested, and that’s great. But if he encouraged you, and you didn’t care? Suppose this young cousin is an introvert, for whom interviewing strangers or going to reunions at which she knows no one is like the seventh ring of Hell?
So if I recall how I thought during my teenage years, “I wouldn’t care” for a number of reasons. If my family kept track of fourth-cousins, then I’d feel that I have too many cousins and the whole family thing would lose meaning. Secondly, if I were an insecure teen/college kid, I wouldn’t want anyone with the same last name as me especially if it were unique. I wouldn’t want to be associated with anyone with my name as it would be weird. For all these reasons, in today’s age, if I were a college kid now, I’d probably ignore any social media/in-real-life contact too. Double these feelings if it was my dad making me meet someone (I know this isn’t the case but kids can feel family stuff a mile away).
I’m thirty, and love family history, an interest that started when I was in college. Unfortunately, I’ve now gone about as far as I can go without spending more money than I’m willing to (which might or might not yield more information), but I’ve met a number of distant cousins over the years. I’ve also reached out to plenty of family members who haven’t responded. Most of the time, I’ve encountered them through a genealogy website, but there are some people I’ve found through other means (namely finding the names of living descendants of known relatives via ancestry sites and newspaper archives, and then using social media to make contact). I don’t think there’s anything particularly creepy about reaching out, but I’ve never blamed someone for not responding.
I don’t meet distant relatives out of a desire to establish a lifelong relationship, but to piece together a little slice of our shared family story. It is interesting to me to find out the various places members of my family wound up - I’ve found relatives in the UK, France, Israel, and Brazil. For me, the most powerful part was finding out what happened to my extended family during and after the Holocaust. My great-grandparents came to America in the 1910s and 1920s, and my parents were raised knowing in a vague way that many of their European relatives had died during the Holocaust, but I was able to find out considerably more during my research. It turned out that some of it was information my oldest relatives already knew, but had never been willing or able to talk about. The last time I went to Yad Vashem, the main Holocaust memorial in Israel, I took a list of all the relatives I knew of who had been killed and put their names down when I signed the guestbook.