Show "biological" on a profile's Family Members chart if it has been explicitly set

Adrian Bruce1

If a child becomes a step-child, then it is possible to add a type of "step" to the (new) Parent-Child Relationship. It is also possible to add a type of "biological" to the Parent-Child Relationship. While even I would assume that "biological" is the default, it can be useful to be totally explicit in some complex cases. For instance, this screenshot shows my GG-GM as the step-child to her mother's husband of later life:

NB - this is a screenshot from Beta - I would not normally consider a 25y woman to be a step-child if her mother married someone new. I just entered "Step" for illustrative purposes.

My issue is that the Family Members diagram for Emily's Profile (correctly) shows "Step" against her relationship to Henry Stubbs but doesn't show the explicitly entered "Biological" against her relationship to her mother. See diagram:

Now, I presume that "obviously" the default is biological and that therefore someone thought that there was no point in showing "biological" in the above diagram, but if (and only if) I've entered "biological" as the relationship type, then I would expect "biological" to appear in the diagram.

So - please show the value of the Parent-Child relationship type on the Family Members diagram for a Profile, even if the type is (explicitly) set to "biological".

Advantages:

• Consistency with how "step" etc are displayed;
• If someone feels that entering "biological" adds value, then the software should not ignore that person's view when it comes to the diagram.

For clarity:

• Yes, I know that "biological" will appear in the Parent-Child Relationship window (first screenshot here) but that is an extra step away and there is no clue that there is any value in looking at that window;
• If the Parent-Child Relationship is left empty / blank (i.e. the default case), I would not expect nor want "biological" to appear on the Family Members diagram.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

There's one case where things would get complicated: if a previously-set other relationship type were restored to Biological. Would that be considered "default" or "explicit"? Would it be possible to tell it to treat it as one or the other?

Adrian Bruce1

" ... If a previously-set other relationship type were restored to Biological. Would that be considered "default" or "explicit"? ... "

Good point. Actually, @Julia Szent-Györgyi if it gets impossible to tell, then I don't think there's anything wrong with displaying "Biological". I only really put that bit in (not displaying "Biological" for the default, empty value) to avoid complaints from people who suddenly see "Biological" appearing on the charts when they've done nothing.

Alan E. Brown

@Julia Szent-Györgyi said:

There's one case where things would get complicated: if a previously-set other relationship type were restored to Biological.

That's actually not a problem at all. Either a parent-child relationship has a type (Biological, Adopted, Step, etc ) or it doesn't. It doesn't matter if it got to that state of having (or not having) a relationship type via merge or restoration via the change log. The situation is still the same.

If no relationship type is specified, it's generally assumed that it is biological, but that is simply an assumption. There is no actual "default" value of Biological; if no type has been specified, then we don't know the type.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

@Alan E. Brown, but the point is, what if one wants to restore that default "unspecified" state, rather than specifying "biological"?

Oh, I see: instead of changing from "step" (or whatever) to "biological", you can delete the relationship type, and it'll go back to the default state. It'll look identical in the Family Members view, either way, but if you click the pencil, it'll show as Biological one way, and as nothing the other way.

So you're right: reverting to the default state is not actually a complication. (It's just not done the way one would expect.)

And I agree with Adrian that the current situation, where there's no difference between how Vilma and Michael are listed, is undesirable. You can only know about the explicit "biological" designation if you go digging for it. In other words, you only know about it if you already know about it.