Child with Unknown Parents link deleted from new interface

LegacyUser

Kent Jaffa said: The interface no longer has a link on the details page to be able to add a child with an unknown parent. I recommend that you add this. Of course, I think I can still do this by gaming the system, but it was far better to do it with the previous link since you could check the database better to see if the person is already in the database.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: It's back when someone has two marriages:



So it looks like they are working on getting it back in the new version.

LegacyUser

Juli said: I'm not certain that they consider this task unfinished: having that option only available for multiple marriages is what would happen if they only intended it to be used for cases where you know the other parent is one of the spouses, but don't know which one. That is, the current setup allows for unknown parents as long as the pool of possible identities is small and known. It doesn't allow for illegitimate children, whose fathers could be anyone present in the mother's life approximately nine months before the birth. The pool of possible identities in such cases is generally large and unknown.

I haven't a clue whether FS has any such intentions about the use of this option; it's possible that it was put back only on multiply-married people because the engineer who was doing it wasn't a genealogist, and couldn't think of any other place you could possibly need it.

What has me worried is something that I've only just noticed in the past day: extraction-program-derived profiles based on illegitimate births have a father entered, marked as deceased, with a question mark in the "first name" field. Are they entered this way because that's how FS prefers illegitimate births to be entered? Or are other unknown fathers entered differently in other extraction- or IGI-based profiles?

An example that has had the child merged and edited (and the mother's surname corrected): https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...
An unmerged example (it needs to be merged with my great-grandmother LTBG-SQ7, but I haven't figured out what to do with Mr. Question Mark): https://www.familysearch.org/tree/per...

LegacyUser

Paul said: I believe the issue of illegitimate children (especially ones with unknown fathers) is a problematic one when it comes to ordinances. However, I do not see this should affect their entry to Family Tree. It has been straightforward enough to do so in the past, but now it isn't.

I wondered if Gordon's illustration also applied to women who married more than once and have just found it does - having the option to "Add child with an unknown father".

So, as Gordon suggests, it is to be hoped that this will now be extended to individuals who only married once. For example, I have found in the past that a one or two of the mothers I have entered on Family Tree already had illegitimate children when they married. It should be made easy to enter these if the events are only discovered after the entry of the later marriage. The only option, at present, is Gordon's workaround (shown in another thread) of entering another spouse for the woman (or man*) then quickly deleting that individual. Call them something like "Temporary Spouse" and obviously provide a reason statement when you delete this fictional person!

In summary, a very unsatisfactory situation that should be put right asap.

(* Note - I say "or man" because I have come across one case - surprisingly in a 17th century parish register - where the father of an illegitimate child is named but the identity of the mother is not clear. The baptism entry just reads, "Thomas Dow, reputed father Francis Halls". The mother is not directly named, though I have assumed her surname was Dow!)

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: As Juli implies, that sounds like "Add Child with unknown which mother" is there - that's not the same concept as "Add Child with unknown mother", so I wouldn't bank on it (re-)appearing later on.

Considerably annoying because the typical baptismal registers in my part of England don't regularly have mothers' names until late in the 1700s.

LegacyUser

Paul said: Of course the other option is to add children with one unknown parent by using "?" in creating an ID. All the instances I have found of this being the practice are accredited to "FamilySearch". Okay, "?" and the known person were probably never married, but we have previously been advised to add children to unmarried (known) couples in this manner. The exception being (as I understand was recently confirmed by Ron Tanner) if the child was known to be the result of a "brief encounter" / "one night stand" - in which case the child should be recorded separately under the two (known) parents.

LegacyUser

Kent Jaffa said: This case is not an entry where the unknown parent is not mentioned. It is a Scottish Civil Record which states the birth was illegitimate and only one parent is listed.

LegacyUser

Adrian Bruce said: While the motive for not mentioning the other parent is different, in both cases there is a deliberate non mention so I'm not convinced that those 2 cases are that different. It doesn't really matter so far as I can see. But I may be missing something.

The illegitimacy does may be a factor because I've long since lost track of what FamilySearch wants us to record for unmarried parents. This is partly because of the use of the term spousal relationship rather than marriage but a total refusal (unless anyone knows different) to define what a spousal relationship is and how it differs from a marriage and how either differ from a family in the old fashioned GEDCOM sense.

LegacyUser

Ron Tanner said: We are aware of the issue and have it on the list to fix. Thanks

LegacyUser

Paul said: Thank you for confirming you are aware of this very important issue, Ron. Hopefully, the engineers will be able to come up with a fix asap.

LegacyUser

Paul said: And, again, many thanks now the problem has been fixed!

LegacyUser

rotkapchen said: The problem is not fixed for a similar situation. There are many cases where the 3- way connections between parents and child exist. But if there are unique situation where one of the parents is missing, due to the fact that the parents are already connected to each other elsewhere, the system will not allow the child to be connected to the missing parent.

This is not a case of a duplicate relationship (an extra single relationship to one parent that needs to be deleted). These are legitimate missing 3-way relationships, which worked fine before the change.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: If you provide the PIDs for the profiles involved, it will help the engineers track down where the bug exists.

LegacyUser

Tom Huber said: This discussion is at least a year old. Each separate issue should be entered in its own discussion thread.

"parents who were not common law, nor were never married cannot have their child sealed to them" -- That is somewhat inaccurate. The policy is "A deceased couple, on an exception basis, may be sealed by proxy if there is an indication that they lived together but were not legally married to each other during their lifetimes." See https://www.familysearch.org/help/sal... and https://www.familysearch.org/help/sal... The statement appears in both articles.

Generally speaking, if the parent took part in raising the child, supporting the child financially, or is otherwise involved with the Child (such as appearing on a census record in the household), then the sealing should be completed. Likewise, "Deceased couples who were divorced may also be sealed." See the second article listed above.

It should be noted that the only time that First Presidency approval must be obtained is if the couple was previously sealed and that sealing subsequently cancelled. This is also explained in the second article.

FS has been every hesitant about providing any option for "Not Married" for a number of reasons, but one of the most important is that not all records are readily available and somewhere, there may be a record that shows that a person was married.

As far as recording something in the relationship of the couple. and while nature abhors a vacuum, leave the marriage field blank. This relationship area is being revised and we are told that options will be available in the future to indicate the relationship. You may want to place a note in the couple relationship area or add notes to the individuals involved.

Regardless, if there is any indication that a couple for whom no marriage record has been found have had children (other than for a one-night stand), we really need to move ahead and have the couple sealed and their children sealed to them.

In the second situation, just leave the fields blank. Like any relationship with unknown parents, no one can provide the information without some kind of evidence, names, places, and dates.

LegacyUser

Gordon Collett said: Regarding your second point. No matter what unrealistic goal has been set, you should not make up data just to fill up a fan chart. If that stake presidency member can never know who one of his direct ancestors is, that fan chart will have an empty space. There is just no getting around it. Life is messy.

Whoever came up with the idea of of posting everyone's fan chart should have been told that was a horrible idea. Family history is not a contest or competition. Family history often includes personal, private, or sensitive issues that do not need to posted on a wall for all to see. My recommendation is that you cancel that part of the activity! You could very easily end up with far more hurt feelings and offended individuals than you will end up encouraging anyone to do more family history.

LegacyUser

joe martel said: Melinda,  I'm trying to understand how your post here differs from the other post you made here:  https://getsatisfaction.com/familysearch/topics/options_for_marriage_data

Gordon and Tom make good points and in the other thread I suggesed this. Am I missing something?

"Melinda, this is a pretty old thread so you may not get many opinions. Here is my opinion.

If a parent is unknown then I do not enter a person. I know there is a father but I just don't know enough about him to enter him. So I have a bunch of single-parent families. And that is ok by me. There may never be records, but it may someday be found, say in some long lost journal... To me the big white space is ok. I, and many people have big white spaces and I hope someday I or a relative will know something. To me having Mr. X gives a false sense of completeness when it is simply not there, yet.

I was wondering about "everyone will be posting their 4 generation chart". If that is for others to see that makes me personally uneasy and whether I have something to hide or not, I see it as more of a personal experience. But maybe that's just me. "

LegacyUser

iLoveMyLife02 said: The title "Child with Unknown Parents" is misleading; that option still exists as "Add Unconnected Person".