We asked the members of the BuzzFeed Community to share a secret about their parents they didn't learn until they were older. Here are some of their most surprising responses:
1. "Growing up I knew my mom was engaged to her high school sweetheart right after graduating. She had told my sister and I from a very young age that he existed and that he was killed by a drunk driver. She would bring up the story when we were teenagers and starting to experiment with partying in order to really emphasize the dangers of driving under the influence. I found out a few years ago from my father that she and her deceased fiancé were actually heroin dealers back in the day. He was shot and killed right in front of her in a drug deal gone haywire."
—Anonymous
2. "I found out from my father in a CASUAL conversation that my mother may have given up my older sister for adoption before they were together! I was like, 'You’re telling me NOW?!' Knowing how my mother is, I decided to call my aunt to find out the truth. YUP! Not only did she give her up several years before I was born, but the family was prepared to raise her until my mother was done with college. She literally gave her up the DAY they flew out to pick her up and she told NO ONE until they came to the house and found the crib empty!"
"I’m still torn on whether to find my sister or not. My mother may reject her and I was raised by my single dad. Interestingly enough, my father received an email several years ago (he JUST found) from ancestry from another father looking for information on his adopted daughter and I am related. She is younger so it may be related to my sister. I'm waiting back to hear from my response so things may get interesting here real soon."
3. "My dad died in a house fire when I was three years old. I always knew that but what I didn't know was that he was intoxicated and high when he died. I found his death certificate in my twenties after my mom had passed. Apparently, he had passed out while cooking and the stove caught fire. Then I realized it was probably better for me that he wasn't in my life."
4. "I borrowed my parent's laptop for school work. They hadn't closed out their signed-in email tab and oh boy...I wish I hadn't been as curious, but I liked getting to know them better. I found out that they are full-blown swingers. They had multiple conversation threads with different couples about what they liked, — both in and outside of the bedroom — discussions about boundaries, and where they would meet. I was shocked! I enjoyed knowing this secret about them, but now as a 28-year-old, I have made it clear that I know and they just laugh without responding. My siblings thought this info was gross and that I shouldn't have told them, but at the moment I had to tell someone. My parents have been married for over 33 years and happy. They have a great life together."
—Anonymous
5. "I found out when I was 19 or 20 that one of the many reasons my parents fought all the time was because my dad would wear drag around the house when he was alone. My mom hated it. She's very traditional and never understood why he did it (he later explained to me that he feels comfortable in women's clothing and it helps him de-stress). I don't think they ever would have told me, but I overheard them screaming at each other about clothes and got really upset. Finding out about this has led me to notice a bunch of other things about my dad, and I'm now 95% sure he's bisexual. I'm not sure if my mom knows that tidbit...but I won't be the one to tell her."
—Anonymous
6. "My parents were never married. They were both married (but separated) to different people when I was born. My mother changed her surname by deed poll so it would match my father’s. My dad is still married to the same woman and my mom didn’t divorce her husband until I was about four years old."
—Anonymous
7. "I’m an only child. When my mother passed away, I found paperwork that requested her name and address continue to be hidden from the child she gave up for adoption over a decade before I was born. My father had no clue and there was never any indication there was a child before me in her past. I have a half-sister out there somewhere!"
—Anonymous
8. "I learned my parents didn’t get married till after they’d had seven kids. I was 14 years old when they went out of town to a courthouse in a small town so nobody would find out. Also, my dad had a whole entire family before my mom and he hooked up and no one thought that was important to tell us."
—Anonymous
9. "My dad was in prison before I was born. I never would’ve known about it, but he violated his parole when I was a baby and the FBI came for him five years later, when my parents and I were living across the country under fake names. (It was much easier to stay under the radar in the analog age.) The feds took him away and he served eight months before he was released. I’d ask my mom over the years what he did, and she’d lie and say it was racketeering. (My dad was Italian). Finally, when I was in college the Internet was developing past AOL and you could find criminal records online. I looked up my dad and finally saw what his underlying crime was all those years earlier: murder."
"He killed a criminal informant and did 12 years. That’s actually how he met my mom. Right before he got paroled, she was visiting prisons as part of the nascent prison reform movement in the '70s and she fell in love with him almost immediately. He got out, they had me, and he thought he was gonna be a mobster again but he got caught with a gun and coke thanks to a criminal informant. Instead of facing the music, he took my mother and me and went on the lam. Finally away from the streets, he focused on building his family. He taught himself how to clean and repair carpets and built a business from scratch. By the time the FBI came for him, he was reformed. When he was released he went back to his 9 to 5 life. He died of cancer when I was 23, and my mom followed four years later. They’ve been gone a long time now, but they were my best friends, and I’ll never forget how hard they worked to keep our family intact."
10. "My parents divorced when I was five and my mom passed away when I was 12. What I didn’t know was that my dad cheated on my mom with one of his employees at work, later married her, and she became my stepmom. What’s worse, is that he started cheating on my stepmom when my mom died and brought the other woman to my mom's funeral. I just had a daughter and can’t imagine how I’m going to explain one day why she has so many grandmas."
11. "My mother came to this country to become a nun. She joined a convent in Texas. She decided it wasn’t for her and left and moved to the east coast. She didn’t tell us 'til we were adults and it somehow just came up. I thought she had never been further west than Ohio."
12. "My mom went into the psychology field to hide her big secret that she has NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) and munchausen syndrome by proxy and is fully aware. She hid it from EVERYONE but her two sisters. She ruined both her younger sisters' lives, stopped talking to her, and completely cut her off only to talk to her one last time to say goodbye as she was dying. I found out the monster she truly was when I met my biological family and husband and they pointed out how she was abusing me. From ages 8 to 32 I was on strong psych meds because my psychology-educated mom convinced doctors that I had a mental illness that I didn’t in order to control me."
"I got in contact with my aunt and she apologized and explained everything. My doctor apologized, took me off all my medications when he realized what happened, and now is working with me to fight against my mother in court. My mom went so far as putting me under conservatorship to control me and I'm fighting my ass off to get out of it."
13. "My parents got pregnant and had my older sister when they were 18. It was obviously not planned, as they were still in high school, and I knew that abortion was suggested by multiple family members. When I was an adult, I found out that my mom lost the baby because her parents abused her (they are alcoholics and generally terrible people). Everyone expected her to lose the weight and go back to 'normal,' but she didn't. Come to find out, my sister was a twin and no one knew. She was lodged in a top part of the uterus and apparently not even the doctors knew she was up there. My mom moved in with my dad and his parents, and they were together until she passed away from COVID 16 months ago. My older sister and I are the only ones that know, although I'm not sure why they chose to hide this from us."
14. "My father not only had my mother followed and photographed during their years-long divorce (he even sent a photo to her then-boyfriend to intimidate him and her), but he also later had a tracking device put in my sister's car because he would rather have to pay to have her stalked than be an actual parent and tell her he didn't feel comfortable with her going to the beach with her friends."
—Anonymous
15. "My parents left their country in their early '20s, traveled around the world, and had me in some random island off the coast of Africa. I thought it was because they were adventurous, but later I found out they escaped a military coup that resulted in a murderous dictator that took over their country for 20 years."
—Anonymous
16. "I pieced it together on my own. My father was always touting the second amendment, but he never owned a gun himself. I finally asked him why as an adult and he said, 'I'm not allowed to have one.' Having dated many drug dealers, I figured he was a felon, probably sold drugs in the 1980s. Fast forward months later. I go on an up north trip and my father did not tag along. After an entire bottle of wine, my mom confesses that the reason she and my father took a 'break' while dating was due to the fact he was serving time in jail for selling cocaine. I never said anything to my father, but it confirmed my suspicions."
—Anonymous
17. "My mom is my dad’s fifth wife. I wonder if I have any half-siblings out there, but I’ve yet to come across anything that suggests so."
—Anonymous
18. And lastly, "My dad witnessed his boss commit a violent crime and turned him into the police. That guy’s family found out and had my dad fired from his job. My dad filed a wrongful termination and got a lawyer, ended up with a settlement that paid for our family to move California."
—Anonymous
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.