Allow Recording of Birth Order
I am writing to request a feature that I think will be useful for all Family Search users, but is absolutely critical for those who are doing work on Chinese family lines. It would be extremely helpful if there was a way to mark the birth order of children so you can see who is oldest, second oldest, etc. It could be as simple as a dropdown field of numbers entitled birth order. Currently Family Search orders children based on birth dates, but many Chinese genealogies do not include birth dates or death dates for the older generations, but the birth order is always very clearly indicated and is an important piece of data that isn't currently recordable in Family Search. Additionally, it would be a useful cross check for birth dates when they are finally found. If one record marks a child as the eldest but a later entry of a birth date contradicts this, an error could be generated that would help keep the information consistent across records.
This feature would also be useful for recording birth order of multiples (twins or triplets), as the birth date is the same and the current system simply puts them in alphabetical order.
Comments
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Here's an ancient discussion on the topic: https://community.familysearch.org/en/discussion/comment/475436
I don't think any of us participating there knew about the Chinese genealogy angle; it's certainly a convincing argument for me.
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