What’s behind the Netflix series “The Father”?

Netflix is known for bringing really amazing documentaries to the screen. In the year 2022, they released a documentary called “The Father”. It all started when Jacoba Ballard took a home paternity test after noticing that there were no similarities between her and her father, with whom she had lived her whole life. Further motivating this decision was that Ballard suffered from an autoimmune health condition that did not run in her family. Unexpectedly, she discovered that she had more than half-siblings in different parts of the world. Each time she contacted a person, she performed a sibling DNA test to check if there was a biological connection. This type of test helps determine if two people have the same parents or if they are children of the same mother or father. Ballard came across 94 half-siblings by the time the series was published.

Donald Cline’s plan

In the 1970s, Donald Cline’s name was well known in the city of Indiana in the United States of America. He was a medical doctor and a pioneer in fertility treatment. Many women came to his office hoping to become pregnant. Over the years, Cline helped many women become mothers, but using a method they didn’t know about, he inseminated them with his own sperm. Although there was a recent trial against him thanks to the hard work of Jacoba Ballard, this trial did not reach a verdict that truly matched the magnitude of the damage this man caused. Some say this is because Cline is part of a very powerful church that has helped him face the accusations of his over 90 children. Ballard’s plan is to continue pushing for a ruling.

All of this was discovered thanks to a home paternity test

Thanks to developments in the study of DNA, Ballard could confirm that the man with whom he had shared his entire life was not, in fact, her biological father. All it took was a home paternity test to find that out. Thanks to these kinds of tools, people can access the truth about their origins. Like Ballard, it is even possible to take a sibling DNA test to find out if you are biologically related to someone else. But what motivated Jacoba Ballard to doubt her origins? After taking a DNA test, Ballard discovered that she suffers from an inherited autoimmune health condition that was not present in her parents. All of Ballard’s half-siblings inherited this same condition from their father, Dr. Donald Cline.