Parents not married
What is the correct way (or best practice) to connect both parents to a child, but not getting them listed as spouses.
I find it annoying to see them as spouses, but not having a marriage date. Is there a way to list them as partners, or as nothing (if child was born out of wedlock e.g.).
Best Answers
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I tried this on a similar situation in my tree. You finish up with the child still shown as biological child of each but "No Marriage event" gets replaced with an invitation to "Add Couple Relationship". I think personally that is, at least, a bit better.
After you delete the couple relationship, Family Tree still shows that the child is biologically related to each parent.
Steps (website)
While signed in to FamilySearch.org, navigate to the person page of the individual or spouse.
If you do not see Vitals near the top of the page, click Details.
Scroll to the Family Members section.
Click the pencil icon to the right of No Marriage Event.
Click Delete Relationship. (at the bottom)
Steps (mobile app)
In the Family Tree mobile app, navigate to the Person page of the individual or spouse.
Tap Spouses or Parents.
Tap the couple's Edit icon next to the marriage date. It looks like a pencil inside of a circle.
Tap Delete Marriage Event.
Explain why you are deleting the event.
Tap Delete.
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@JoanDubbelboerHollander as you might be noticing, you are never going to get an answer because there is no "the correct way (or best practice) to connect both parents to a child." That is because how to connect children to parents will depend on the situation. The best practice depends on what seems best for the situation the three people involved are in. Family Tree does give us the flexibility to enter as many parent child relationships in as many ways we see fit.
Just for clarity, I'll repeat the two basic options:
Which one you use is completely up to you and what you think is best for the specific situation.
Family lived in Norway prior to 1725? Probably option 1 because it was only in 1725 that churches in Norway were required to keep any type of birth or marriage records. The couple almost certainly would have been married but you are never going to find any date for it because it was never recorded.
There is court case and the father ends up in jail because of this? Probably option 2 because of the violation of laws.
Two enslaved people who were forbidden by their slave holder from being married? Probably option 1 because they would have gotten married if they could have.
The parents are slave holder and enslaved woman? Probably option 2 due to the horrible conditions likely involved.
The couple had more than one child together or are listed in a census record as living together? Probably option 1 because you have evidence of a long term relationship.
Most likely the best thing to do is to interview the mother and find out how she would like these relationships recorded. You do this by examining her entire life then making a decision based on everything you can learn. That's why we call this family history.
There are a few options for marriage events that might help your concern. People have been requesting more options for years, such as "Never Lived Together" and maybe more will show up one day:
Picking one of these and not putting in date or place results in this:
What ever you decide for any one situation, just be sure to document why you did what you did:
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Answers
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I believe the generally accepted practice is to add the child to the parents separately if there is no evidence they had any meaningful relationship - e.g., "one night stand" / casual affair. However, if there had (at least at some stage) been a close(r) relationship between the parents, the child would be added as if the couple were spouses.
Having said that, there has been inconsistency even from FamilySearch managers about any "best practice" regarding this issue and I'm sure users will continue to retain their own firm ideas on this (or even remain unsure!) as there appears to be no hard and fast rule.
Personally, I have added a child both without showing it in under a relationship (with both parents) and done the opposite. I'm sure someone once stated here that they had added the child three times (under father and mother individually and under the pair.
Hopefully there will be a number of contributions on this issue - from which you can make up your own mind how to treat this.
Incidentally, I wouldn't worry about the lack of a marriage date as in many cases there either won't be any record of a ceremony - either through it being lost, or it being an informal event where no record was ever kept. (As an example, earlier marriages in Scotland are very often not to be found, as they often took place informally - say in a house - yet remained legal.)
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You edit relationship. I have an adopted relative who has 3 sets of parents. Birth dad, biological and his wife, step; birth mom, biological. and her husband, step; finally adoptive mom and adoptive dad who were married to each other. I don’t like step, but it seems the best of the options for those 2 persons.
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I ignore the annoyance that biological parents not married to each other are labeled spouses, and put them together as a couple. The alternative is too high a risk (for me) of other contributors creating duplicate profiles or making random guesses or in some other way making a mess.
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For those of you who don’t like the annoyance of non married parents showing up as married, then do what I do. PUT the actual spouses of each biological parent on as well. Then all the relationships show up accurately. You will have to select a preferred couple, and I switch that based on who I am researching.
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Sorry, but I don't understand. Are you talking about where there has been a second relationship, as you were earlier? I don't think the original question was really about that, more about the discomfort of the user in merely adding a biological child to a couple who never married - i.e., were never spouses.
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@JoanDubbelboerHollander Just throwing my hat into the ring....
While I would not consider this to be 'Best Practice', you can add parents separately to a person and not relate them to each other.
This method would be best suited to situations where the two people don't appear as a couple.
It will probably create significant extra work when linking to records in which both parents appear such as a census record showing both parents as a couple (but unmarried) with their mutual offspring, but in principle they could both be parents of all the same children. The downside is that they will always be shown as unconnected individuals, when they might actually be a couple, just not married.
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Hello @JoanDubbelboerHollander ,
I like the information that @Gordon Collett posted.
In addition, I sometimes put comments in the relationship area by clicking on the little pencil in the couple box.
Also you can make comments about the relationship in :
Good researching. :)
Anitra
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Paul W Yes, you are correct. I missed that the 2 biological parents stayed together but did not marry. It's a pity that doesn't look as clean and informative as when you add multiple sets of couples. I really like how informative the multiple couple display is.
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Thank you all for your feedback and suggestions. In this particulair situation I know for sure the parents were in a long time relationship. They lived together at the same address and had 5 children together, which were all acknowledge by both parents. When a father declared the birth of a child, in the record would be mentioned that A. his house wive full name gave birth to.... B. Full name gave birth to... In this situation it was always situation B. There is also no trace of a marriage and on their death records both are listed as unmarried.
I removed the marriage event between the parents, while doing so I noticed that there was an option to select marriage event "Lived Together". This might the option I'm going for, as I think that in this situation it is the most appropriate.
P.s. In the Netherlands we are lucky with really good record keeping for BMD so I'm pretty sure that there was really no marriage, not in court, in church or in townhall.
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