Sort relationships by eldest child
Currently, relationships in the Family Members section of Family Tree are sorted by the date of the earliest relationship event. If it's a single parent, there's no relationship, and therefore no event, and thus no date. No date sorts last. This means that illegitimate children -- who are almost always a girl's first -- are always out of order, at the bottom:
Similarly, if a person had multiple spouses, but only the date of the last marriage is known, the earlier marriages are out of order, at the bottom.
My suggestion is to use the birthdate of the eldest child to sort otherwise-undated relationships. So for example, Mária as mother to Zsuzsanna born in 1883 would sort before Mária's marriage to János in 1893.
We already use this as a workaround for correctly sorting multiple marriages, entering an approximate marriage date based on the birth of the eldest-known child for each couple, but this doesn't work for single-parent situations, like the illegitimate birth shown above, and even in the cases where there is a relationship, the workaround forces the entry of a conclusion that is, essentially, a guess. It would be better genealogical practice to use the eldest child as a dating proxy for purposes of sorting family members for display, without making any further claims or conclusions.
Comments
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I've thought about that quite a bit over the years, and had mostly decided that on the whole we may be better off just leaving it as is. But then . . .
Sometimes I want to be able to sort the relationships by hand, but I see too much potential there for conflicts between contributors.
Alternatively, there are suggested ideas to add a "not married" or "not a couple" relationship event that allows input of a date.
I've been thinking about this some more recently in the context of huge clusters of half siblings, all by different women. Sperm donors, for example. Perhaps the simplest and most sensible solution would be to sort by the other party's birth date?
How do the couple relationships sort now when there are no marriage dates?
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And reading another discussion I see I overlooked the father unknown case: Illegitimate children.
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Julia
It's 'Brett'.
Just in passing ...
Although, I understand your suggested enhancement ...
Personally, I prefer the Family dynamic; where, there is ONLY One Parent (ie. usually, the Mother); and, Child (sometimes, Children), to remain; as, is - ie. 'Below', regardless, of the 'Date' of "Birth", of the (Oldest) Child.
I would NOT want, that aforementioned Family dynamic, appearing above, a Family with, Mother; Father; Children, regardless if there, was; or, was not, an "Event", for the "Couple".
I am glad, the "System", sorts, the way that it does ...
Hey; but, that is just me ...
Plus, I can just imagine, the, "Confusion"; "Concern"; and, "Angst", for SOME Users/Patrons ...
If things were "Changed", to how you suggest.
Just my thoughts.
Brett
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@Brett ., why do you want to have illegitimate children at the bottom? Are they somehow lower-class or undesirable to you?
I think it would make perfect sense to everyone if family members were always sorted chronologically, or the closest approximation thereof that the available data allows.
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Sometimes a child with father unknown is not even illegitimate. We just don't have historical records.
For many families there are only census records, and many households are headed by women. We have no reason to believe all those women's children were born out of wedlock.
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The issue seems to be connected to the date of relationship events. So, where there is a date for a marriage this always goes at the top of the list. Put another way, any relationship without a date will always appear further down the page. Even if the children were older than that in a second relationship they will naturally appear further down the page, by virtue of their parents not having a Relationship Event / Marriage date. Not an illegitimacy issue then, but a "date related" one.
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Speaking for myself, I care much more about the children's birth dates than the parents' whatever dates. I often want to see all the children listed in birth order. The web interface Timeline does that somewhat, if enough other events are turned off.
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Julia
It's 'Brett'.
Just in passing ...
WHY would you even suggest, that "Illegitimate" Children, are somehow, a lower-class; or, undesirable ...
Many of us, have "Illegitimate" Children, in non-couple "Relationships", in our "Ancestral" Lines ...
Such is life ...
To me, the "Family" Unit of a, Couple, bound in a "Relationship"; with, Children; and, some form of "Event", takes precedence/prominence, over, a non-couple relationship (even, with an Older Child/Children).
And, as I previously suggested ...
I can just imagine, the, "Confusion"; "Concern"; and, "Angst", for SOME (probably, MANY) Users/Patrons ...
If things were "Changed", to how you suggest ...
I could 'handle', such; but, I certainly would NOT like to 'see' such ...
Just my thoughts.
Brett
ps: And, just so that it is NOT brought up, it has NOTHING to do with being a Member of the Church ...
..... [ Just, what I would PREFER, to 'see' ... ]
.
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An example of how children do not necessarily appear in birth order is found at https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/LDMZ-VPT.
As no marriage can be found between Abraham and his second wife (she is shown as his wife in her burial entry), his children do not appear in chronological order on his person page - those from a relationship without an event date automatically being placed at the bottom.
Thinking about the issue, how could they be shown in order in a situation whereby an individual might be in two relationships (which produced children) during the same time period?
When it comes to addressing Julia's issue I think it would be extremely difficult to devise coding that would in work dealing with certain circumstances.
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@Paul W are you against giving Abraham and his second wife a marriage date of "about 1699"? Her burial record is a bit of evidence that there was a marriage.
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I know this is common practice, but I really hate using approximate dates. The true situation appears clearly enough on the person page, but I have had some surprises when switching to this from a pedigree view!
For example, a person for whom I believed there was evidence of a 1790-1861 lifespan turned out to have an 1790 birth based on a 1811 marriage (when assumed to be 21) and an "after 1861" death because that was the last time (in a census record) a record had been found for him!
In this specific case, I suppose I should find no harm in inputting an appropriate marriage date (for Abraham and Elizabeth), but it would be breaking the way I have dealt with unknown dates up till now!
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Family Search works oddly with non-exact dates. The search filters them out as though they are exact. Warnings are given with a merge. And the descriptive word is sometimes lost during a merge, turning it into an incorrect exact date.
This is a problem with automatic sorting by date. You can force the correct order by inserting approximate dates, but the approximate dates sometimes introduce new problems.
I do like the original suggestion of using the age of children, if no marriage date is available. It would also be nice to easily indicate not married, if that is a documented fact.
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