In marriage and child rearing, like so many other things, there is an element of prevention. If you have serious doubts about getting married, if you're not ready, the other person is not ready, you don't really like each other, you're just going along to please your family etc, it's easier to stop now than stop later. And then if you're married and things go wrong, it's easier to stop before you have children than after.

That's not to say that it's always possible to tell what will go sour, or when--but there are cases that are the equivalent of "low hanging" fruit--really obvious situations--sort of like saying not smoking will decrease your risk of lung cancer.

But then, in some cases, anticipated or not, things go wrong and it's too late for "prevention". So what's next? Well, as the comments will show, there will be much anecdotal evidence of people who got divorced and devastated their kids, people who stayed together and devastated their kids, people who toughed it out and saw things getting better, and people who divorced and had things get better. All these examples are instructive, but only to a point. Your particular situation will have things in common with the anecdotes, but many particulars will be different. That's why a close look at your particular situation is important. Have you or your spouse reached the point of irrational prejudice toward each other? (i.e. everything they do strikes you as horrible, but if someone else did it, it would not) That's a hard place to be in. At that point you either have to leave or find a way to clear your mind of the irrational prejudice. Are you unhappy without "true love"? Well, that's tough too, because there's no guarantee you could find "true love" with someone else even if you left your spouse. How invested are your children in the family structure? (And I do mean structure. Most people like having a certain type of routine, but most children really need some sort of routine) Are they aware of the issues between the parents? Would they be relieved to see one parent go, or devastated? And what's your relationship with the kids like? Do you feel like they are a drain on your time? Would you want to have custody? All things to consider in YOUR situation, whatever it is.

for both Rahm and Howard. All are needed. No need for anyone to go around cutting off their nose to spite their face. It shouldn't exactly surprise anyone that Rahm is running around hogging all the glory--it's a style thing. And we need a shot of that--a party that's nothing but peace marches, platitudes, and nice guys is going to be a party confined to the margins. But a shot of Dean's...I'd call it visionary pragmatism...is also needed, to show the ruthless realists that sometimes the "impossible" is really possible.

Several years ago, my father's mother made a quasi "deathbed confession" that her grandmother was not Japanese (like the rest of her family), but Russian. Now I would think that Grandma did not mean slavic Russian, but rather Asian Russian, as would be the case with any Russians living close enough to Japan to have wandered into each other's spheres. (There was some tale of a fishing boat accident and her grandmother being a lot taller than the rest of the family and it's a bit convoluted and I don't remember all of it). Nonetheless, for a while it caused a certain amount of soul searching and speculation among my dad and his five brothers (is that why some of them are taller than average? is that why one of them had skin cancer on his nose?)

As it turns out, none of this is of more than a side interest to me, since I'm adopted (and I've known it as long as I have known anything). So this "Russian ancestor" is my dad's biological ancestor, not mine, and it's about at the level of being an interesting cocktail party story. Search anybody's family tree and/or DNA and one is likely to find something unexpected. If you're into that sort of thing, it's part of the fun.

Also in this vein, one of my dad's brothers married a woman with two children, whom he subsequently adopted (I never knew what happened with my cousins' biological father). It would have been a little difficult to hide their parentage, though, since they are blue eyed blondes.

Oh, the story at hand...well, it does sound like the LW and the rest of the family all have issues and preconceived notions outside of this DNA test. It's a pity that the son-in-law and his wife do not believe in openness. In my family, at least, there really haven't been any negative consequences to it. If the daughter (who is an adult now, after all) should find out about it some other way, it would be much more earth shattering than if she had known all along. But some people still believe that secrets can be kept forever, I guess, and I suppose that the couple wanted to hush up any irregularity about the daughter's birth (esp. if it reflects morally poorly on the parents).

Still, it isn't the LW's place to tell somebody else's secrets. They all have to live with each other, after all. But I have a feeling that Delores will find out someday.