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My family had their Ancestry.com dna done. We can trace the family tree back multiple generations on my side, but only a few on my husbands side. Anyway, the ethnicity estimates for Germanic Europe for my husband (the father of all my children) are 6% and my Germanic Europe ethnicity is 10%. We have three children. One of them shows 25% Germanic Europe, and the other two show estimates over 50%. How is this possible? Thanks.
It is very possible. It has to do with the DNA, some kids get certain things and some don't get others. Just as a child can inherit certain things and their siblings do not inherit those same things.
Did you all test with the same DNA company? Because they don't all show the same percentages, even for the same person.
You also have to look at what other ethnicities the parents got... if in addition to the Germanic Europe you also got ethnicities that were from areas close to the "germanic" region, that ethnicity could be counting as germanic for the children.
Also, when a parent and child test, they get "phased" and the children's results are generally more accurate.
It is a bit odd, but NW Europeans groups tend to be pretty close genetically and it is hard for these testing companies to tell them apart. I would suggest uploading to GEDmatch (free)and MyHeritage (small fee) to check out their ethnicity estimates. It is more art than science, and looking at several different interpretations can be helpful.
1. Click each category and you'll note that there's actually an estimated percentage range. Often, there is some overlap in the percentage ranges between parent and child.
2. Children inherit 50% of their parent's DNA, but they do not necessarily always inherit exactly 25% from each grandparent, or 12.5% from each great grandparent, etc. This means unless their parent is 100% of something, they will not necessarily inherit exactly half of each of the parent's ethnicities - they could inherit all of your "Germanic DNA", or none of it, or anywhere in between.
3. Neighboring regions usually share a lot of DNA, sometimes making it difficult or even impossible to tell them apart. It's normal for ancestry from one location to show up in a neighboring region - so some of your children's Germanic results could actually just be from ancestry in a neighboring region, or your and your husband's Germanic ancestry could be showing up in a neighboring region instead. As westsideboy says, Northwest Europe seems to be particularly difficult to break down further with any consistent accuracy.
4. For all these reasons (especially the last), ethnicity reports are only an estimate or interpretation of your DNA and really shouldn't be taken too literally. If you download your raw DNA data and upload it to another company, you'll likely get different interpretations, illustrating how much of an estimate it really is. You can upload to MyHeritage and FamilyTreeDNA with a small fee to unlock your full results, and you can upload to Gedmatch and DNA.land for free.
My family had their Ancestry.com dna done. We can trace the family tree back multiple generations on my side, but only a few on my husbands side. Anyway, the ethnicity estimates for Germanic Europe for my husband (the father of all my children) are 6% and my Germanic Europe ethnicity is 10%. We have three children. One of them shows 25% Germanic Europe, and the other two show estimates over 50%. How is this possible? Thanks.
To upload to My Heritage, FTDNA and GEDmatch see my thread //www.city-data.com/forum/genea...l#post52497844 scroll to where it says now to the DNA. GEDmatch is free for ethnicity and family matching. They're a public site that law enforcement (LE) upload to but LE matching is off by default; you have to click the cop icon to turn it on.
My heritage and FTDNA give free family matching. My Heritage gives matches by country free but is $30 for ethnicity, surnames and family trees of matches when matches provide it, chromosome browser. FTDNA is $19 for ethnicity, ancient ethnicity and chromosome browser.
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