"Identical Strangers"

Earlier last week, as my dad and I were cruising down Sheridan Rd, we began to listen to an interview on NPR with Nancy Segal, a psychologist at California State University, Fullerton. She told the story of three babies: one set of identical twin girls, and an unrelated baby girl born to a different mother around the same time in the same hospital. The nurse accidentally switched one of the twin babies for the other unrelated baby. For the next 28 years, two unrelated girls would grow up believing they are fraternal twins, and one girl - one of the identical twins - would grow up living with a family that really wasn't hers. Eventually, at the age of 28, the biological twins ran into each other at the supermarket, and stupefied at their uncanny resemblance, decided to get DNA tests, and ultimately found out the truth: they were twins switched at birth. 

Everyone involved was intensely affected and devastated. Lives of what could have been haunted the girls and their families in unexpected ways. I was dumbfounded after hearing this story. The thought of finding out that my entire childhood and adolescence was not how it was meant to be was terrifying.  But this got me thinking: if these girls loved their early lives, and their experiences and love were true and real, then why should it matter who raised them? Would the truth negatively impact their feelings towards the past? Why does this one thing  - family - play such a huge role in defining ourselves and our lives?

A discussion in my American Studies class helped shed some light on finding the answers to these questions. In class, we discussed what constitutes the "American Dream." A classmate pointed out how Americans value family; how the original American dream ultimately was to be wealthy and to be able to provide for a large, happy family. Suddenly, I began to better understand the situation. Finding out that the family you've known and loved for so many years isn't really yours biologically, you would immediately lose that sense of belonging. Like the girls in the story, learning this truth could disconnect you from your family, thus disconnecting you from feeling what many Americans crave. I'm sure that other cultures and societies have their own version of the American Dream that centers around this sense of family. And once you feel less and less connected to family, you could feel like you belong to nothing important. Family is what holds us together-- inside and outside of America-- and is an underlying aspect of what helps us form our own identities.