How are unmarried parents best represented in FamilyTree?
Answers
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I am not talking about the parents showing up on the child's profile, I'm talking about the parents showing up on each others profiles. If the parents aren't added as a couple, they do not appear on each other's profiles.
Also, out of wedlock births do not necessarily involve step or adoptive parents, so this is not really my concern, it doesn't really have anything to do with what I was talking about. For example, in one case in my tree, an out of wedlock birth resulted in the death of the infant. The single mother went on to marry, but that man was never the step or adoptive father of the infant because the infant died before she married him.
Here's some screenshots of what I'm talking about. As you can see, yes, both parents show up (separately) on the child's profile. But when you view either of the parents profiles, the other parent does not show up and it looks like you don't know who the other parent is. Sure, if you click on the child's profile, you can see that's not the case, but viewing the either parent is misleading, and furthermore, it's just incorrect. They did have a physical relationship, they did have a physical coupling, and that coupling should be represented. You're free to disagree, of course, but my opinions on this are very much based on a valid understanding of how the system works, contrary to your incorrect presumption on my experience level. Hopefully I've clarified what I meant.
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@Robin BMc said:
I am not talking about the parents showing up on the child's profile, I'm talking about the parents showing up on each others profiles. If the parents aren't added as a couple, they do not appear on each other's profiles.
I recommend that you add both biological parents in one parent-child relationship with the child. That has multiple benefits: most important, it accurately shows that it was those two people who produced the offspring. It allows trees to be drawn with a full pedigree. And it will cause each parent to appear on the other's profile page.
For this situation, where the two parents never lived together as a couple, it's important to delete the couple relationship (Family Tree will tend to automatically create a couple relationship when you add the set of parents). They are more accurately described as co-parents (not a couple), so there should be no couple relationship.
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I think what we need is a way to show that the absence of a couple relationship is deliberate, not an omission. It should be a conclusion just like a name or residence, with a reason box, last change indication, and a source count. In other words, "no couple relationship" should result in exactly the opposite of the current display: instead of telling us to add the relationship, it should show us why it isn't there.
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"... I think what we need is a way to show that the absence of a couple relationship is deliberate, not an omission ... "
Exactly, @Julia Szent-Györgyi . I make no apologies for continually making the point that we need to be able to show that an omission of any sort is deliberate. That should be a general principle of the User Interface. Doesn't mean anyone has to use that facility.
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I might have this wrong so I would be happy to be corrected. If the parents are not made a couple then on the child’s page a preferred parent has to be selected. If the parents are made a couple and they have other relationships then a preferred spouse has to be selected on each parent’s page.
What are the consequences of these selections?
Who determines these preferences? I would imagine that different descendants might have different views as to preferred parent in the first scenario and preferred spouse in the second scenario.
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More options would definitely be nice. But in the meantime, this is how to handle this situation: How do I indicate that a person in Family Tree had no children or was never in a relationship
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@RobertWaddell1, "preferred" choices are a per-user setting, so different relatives can make their own selections, without affecting anyone else's view.
@Rhonda Budvarson, thanks for trying to find "official" guidance, but unfortunately, that article about couples who had no children is mostly irrelevant to the question of unmarried parents: the whole point is that they did have a child. Setting the "no couple relationship" fact on one or both of those parents doesn't help to answer how to represent their parental relationship, and besides, it quite often isn't even true: most people did have a couple relationship -- just not necessarily with the other parent of their out-of-wedlock child.
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Two discussions were merged here. There is also a related Idea at Add "Unmarried" to Relationship Event.
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I don't understand the concept of "Unmarried" as an event. On what date were they Un-married?
Everyone is unmarried, until they're not.
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No, you're right. It would need to be an attribute - entered as a Fact under the Relationship. Because the automatic assumption is that parents were "married", many people (myself included) believe that there needs to be a positive statement saying "Never married, never lived together" - and / or variations on that phrasing. Otherwise, the danger is that it looks like someone's accidentally forgotten.
(Incidentally, if we enter "Common Law Marriage" it goes in as an event with a date. But that also makes no real sense because the whole point of a Common Law Marriage is that there is no formal marriage, so how can there be a date?)
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kob3203 and Adrian Bruce1 Unmarried isn't even always applicable. My adopted relative has parents that were never married *to each other*. They were both married to other people. As stated above, I list my relative's birth parents with their spouses as the "married" event.
So when I am working on one of my adopted relative's birth lines, I have to choose a couple to make "preferred" so that when I go into pedigree view, I can see birth dad's lineage, if that is who I am working on. I also see the paternal half siblings, or at least the ones I've put on the tree. I haven't put too many as I don't generally put anyone live on the tree.
An "unmarried" event should not be used as it will almost never be true when you are talking about a child born outside of marriage.
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@Gail Swihart Watson said
Unmarried isn't even always applicable. My adopted relative has parents that were never married *to each other*. They were both married to other people.
Oh yes - good point. My "Never married, never lived together" should at the very least be altered to "Never married to each other, never lived together". (Hmm. Text is getting quite long, isn't it?)
All I'm after is the ability to make it totally clear that one particular set of parents were never married to each other, never lived together common-law style, never ... All those things... Rather than the current set-up where one possible explanation for the lack of a relationship is that someone forgot to enter one. No I didn't forget, nor did I accidentally lean on the delete key. I deliberately omitted it (assuming it was me).
How exactly that "nothing" event / marker / attribute gets put in the system, I don't mind so long as I can enter something.
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"My "Never married, never lived together" should at the very least be altered to "Never married to each other, never lived together". (Hmm. Text is getting quite long, isn't it?)" And gets even longer when you add "as far as I know".
As we all know, not finding evidence of something happening is not the same as finding evidence that it didn't happen. We also know that there are users who will say, there is no evidence that this couple married or lived together (if they even bother to look) and create the Fact (your word) that they were, "Never married to each other, never lived together". Not only will there be no sources for this "fact", but there can be no sources. If they were in fact married or lived together but any sources for that did not survive then the entered "fact" cannot be disproved.
Further, even when the statement is true it can be misleading. I have one set of parents in my tree who (as far as I know 🙂) were never married to each other and never lived together yet were very clearly a couple, over many decades. They had and jointly raised four children. Census, school records, etc. show the children moving between the two parents apparently quite freely (not as a group). Yet the implication of "Never married, never lived together", is that there was no relationship.
"All I'm after is the ability to make it totally clear that one particular set of parents were never married to each other, never lived together common-law style, never ... All those things..." If such a thing is warranted, (and I agree, sometimes it is) then is a Relationship Note saying "based on X Y and Z, these two people were never married to each other, never lived together, etc." the solution? I don't think I've seen a Relationship Note. How visible would it be?
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ColinCameron I have heard of such free wielding relationships - I have a friend whose mother (or grandmother, I can't remember) essentially maintained a marriage and an affair over the course of a lifetime and had at least one child from the affair. It was not quite certain that was the case until DNA came along and then all was confirmed. Apparently it was not a secret.
So I think the key thing to remember is the purpose of the world tree. Every life, one person record. What this means is I don't think we should be customizing the view of relationships of the parent generation to suit one individual or one set of children. If there were multiple relationships, some through marriage, some not, then all should be present unless there is a delicate reason for privacy.
In the case of my adopted relative, she has paternal and maternal siblings. I have spoken with the husband of a paternal sibling about their family history. While some might say I should keep the birth mom and birth dad together, displayed as a couple, that is not what the reality was. They had separate lives and separate marriages. If I don't show the separate marriages of her birth mom and birth dad then I can't show the separate half siblings.
As shown through ColinCameron 's story as well as that of my friend, there are many unusual situations. Humans are quite creative with defining "normal".
A spin on a popular saying: "Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we practice to conceive."
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@ColinCameron asked:
" ... If such a thing is warranted, (and I agree, sometimes it is) then is a Relationship Note saying "based on X Y and Z, these two people were never married to each other, never lived together, etc." the solution? ..."
OK - let me work through my 3G-GPs. They come from an era in England & Wales where (errors & omissions excepted) all marriages are indexed (and they're not in those indexes) and I've found them in censuses (separately). As far as I'm concerned, they weren't married and I have evidence of this - or at least, the evidence is as good as anything ever is! So to use the usual phrase, I firmly believe that I have evidence of absence of marriage, not just absence of evidence of marriage.
This is what the situation looks like in the FamilyTree Beta Site, where I (just) have followed the frequent recommendation of deleting the relationship between the two of them:
Notice that although I have deliberately deleted that relationship, I am being urged to "Add Couple Relationship". In other words, reverse what I just did. That's problem number one (though coming up with a more appropriate form of words is non-trivial).
Problem number two is that because there is no relationship between those two, I cannot follow your (otherwise sensible) suggestion of entering a Relationship Note.
In the production FamilyTree site, the relationship is there between my 3G GPs (indeed, these days that's the default):
It says "No Marriage Events" (which is true) and because there is a relationship between William & Martha, I have added a Relationship Note. You can't see it from the above screen, but if you hit the pencil icon by "No Marriage Events", then you can see it thus:
The note is slightly truncated in the screenshot. The full version reads:
Martha Beech and William Harding did not marry. The text for the baptisms of daughter Emily makes it clear that her parents were unmarried at the time of her baptisms. Any marriage would appear in the England & Wales Marriage Index - it doesn't.
There is no evidence that they lived together - she was a servant girl at his father's farm in one census but that's all. They are apart in later censuses.
Now, as far as I am concerned, I personally am happy with this Note - OK, I'd prefer there to be an indication on the previous screen that the note existed, but apart from that, I don't have any problems.
So why (even I wonder) am I still going on about this?
Firstly, many people advise that I should delete that relationship - but if I do, I can't add the explanatory note.
Secondly, if I do delete the relationship then (as I said above) I and anyone else looking at William & Martha are exhorted to Add Couple Relationship - i.e. we are exhorted to undo that which we (or someone else) have done.
Thirdly, FamilySearch have, as far as I know, not made it clear whether deleting the Couple Relationship or keeping it and adding a Note (etc.) is the way to go.
Fourth, if I keep the Couple Relationship but don't remember to add the Note, then it's all a bit vague - some new sort of drop-down status might act as a reminder to me to explain. (And yes, I'm not wholly convinced that simple status values will work).
I would point out, as a non-Church member, that I have no interest in whether Martha & William are in a Couple Relationship (whatever that actually is). My interest is solely whether I can add the explanatory note / status / whatever. My impression is that the Church is much more interested in their mutual status than I am and I'm perfectly happy to add a status / note / flag / whatever to explain to Church members.
Apologies to anyone who's waded through the above for the umpteenth time but Colin asked about a Relationship note and that question deserves a good answer.
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Unfortunately the last part of my post got lost, but basically I speculated on whether it was even possible to add a Relationship Note if the relationship had been deleted but both parents were still shown together (as a couple), and you've shown it's not. And also what to do, if anything even needed to be done, where the parents are shown separately, as father (with no wife) and mother (with no husband).
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@ColinCameron asked
"... what to do, if anything even needed to be done, where the parents are shown separately, as father (with no wife) and mother (with no husband). ..."
I'm no fan of that arrangement - which is often proposed as an alternative to two parents with a deleted relationship. My personal view is that it loses information because, as it stands, the arrangement says that someone thinks X is the father and someone else thinks Y is the mother, but there is no evidence that X knew anything of Y. Unless you put something in the notes and then those notes need to be duplicated because there's no possibility of a single note against the couple because there is no couple.
There are times that configuration is needed - a biological mother and an adoptive father, for instance. But generally - I think it loses information unless you add notes, which by their nature are unstructured and therefore easily capable of misinterpretation.
By the way - I might be going out on a limb here, but I can't imagine anyone outside Family Tree users using the two separate legs relation because I think that the rest of the world considers a physical relationship to be a couple relationship. Not saying that the rest of the world automatically thinks that it's an ongoing relationship, just that ongoing or not is not the most important factor.
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