40 replies to this topic

[JHP]

Why are adopted children shown in the descendants list?

[Don Newcomb]

Why wouldn't they be?

[JHP]

Why wouldn't they be?

Unless they are biologically children of one parent or the other they are not true descendants of either parent. If biologically connected to one parent, then they would only be descendants of that parent but not both.

[Laura]

The choice of who will be printed as a descendant is the user's made by the user's entries into the database.

If you don't want an adopted child printed in reports, unlink them from the parents.

If you want to track that person, give the adopted child a user defined fact, Adoptive parents, with the Parents names in the description. You might want to enable the date and place so that adoption date & place can be filled in if you have it.

And there is always the choice of deleting adopted children from the database completely if only blood lines are important to you.

Laura

[JHP]

The choice of who will be printed as a descendant is the user's made by the user's entries into the database.

If you don't want an adopted child printed in reports, unlink them from the parents.

If you want to track that person, give the adopted child a user defined fact, Adoptive parents, with the Parents names in the description. You might want to enable the date and place so that adoption date & place can be filled in if you have it.

And there is always the choice of deleting adopted children from the database completely if only blood lines are important to you.

Laura

My daughter & son-in-law both have children from previous marriages and the son-in-law has adopted her son so deleting him is not an option. I do however want the program to report him as a descendants of hers but not his (and vise versa for his children). If RM can't do that, then what is the purpose of identifying birth & adoption parents?

I also do not understand why there is the option to see the pedigree of both the birth & adoption parents when the only true one is that of the birth parents. On ancestry.com they only show the pedigree for the birth parents and no option for the adoption parents.

Jesse

[Alfred]

If your daughter and son-in-law had other spouses which resulted in children, and you do not want them to show as children of the combined family, do not link them there. Only link them to their natural parents.
Leave your grandson linked to your daughter and his father. Do not link him to his adoptive father if you don't want him to show up as HIS descendant. He will still show up as a descendant of your daughter, but not as a descendant of her second husband, his adoptive father.

[JHP]

If your daughter and son-in-law had other spouses which resulted in children, and you do not want them to show as children of the combined family, do not link them there. Only link them to their natural parents.
Leave your grandson linked to your daughter and his father. Do not link him to his adoptive father if you don't want him to show up as HIS descendant. He will still show up as a descendant of your daughter, but not as a descendant of her second husband, his adoptive father.

Alfred,

Thanks to everyone for the comments,

While I understand fully what you are saying, it seems to make identifying birth & adoption parents meaningless (disappointing I might add). I would like the program to be able to list the children in the family group as adopted and still be smart enough to not list them as descendants. In the case of an adoption of a non related child, the "adopted" flag should be sufficient enough to eliminate them from a descendants list for that family while allowing them to be listed in the family group. It would seem this would be the purpose for identifying them as adopted. I admit that I'm quite narrow minded in that I see this as "genealogy/bloodline" and not "Family History" when it comes to the descendants & pedigree aspect.

Jesse

[Alfred]

Adopted children are legally the descendants of the adopting parents.
If you don't want your reports to show them as descendants of the adopting parents, do not link them as their children in your database.

[JHP]

Adopted children are legally the descendants of the adopting parents.
If you don't want your reports to show them as descendants of the adopting parents, do not link them as their children in your database.

Alfred,

Legally yes, genealogy/bloodline "NO"!!!!

[Laura]

I would be quite upset if I marked a child as adopted and RM abitrarily eliminated that child from the Descendant report or any other report.

RM is programmed to accomodate both the "Bloodline only" users and the "Family tradition" users.

The beauty of RM is you can be as narrow minded as you please and yet that does not impact on how I want to set up my database to be printed.

Laura

[JHP]

I would be quite upset if I marked a child as adopted and RM abitrarily eliminated that child from the Descendant report or any other report.

RM is programmed to accomodate both the "Bloodline only" users and the "Family tradition" users.

The beauty of RM is you can be as narrow minded as you please and yet that does not impact on how I want to set up my database to be printed.

Laura

Then give me the option to show bloodline or legal descendants (and note the legal/adopted members) instead of dictating legal descendants.

I would find it upsetting to have been told I was a blood descendant of a certain family only to find later that it was only a legal descendant.

Jesse

[Laura]

You could submit a Ticket asking for the option to include or not include any children marked other than Birth in a Descendant or Marrative report or Family Group sheets and to include or not include any adopting parents in Pedigree or Ancestor's reports.

http://support.roots...n/Default.aspx?

Laura

[Alfred]

I must be dense.
If you don't want them there, why link them there?

[Don Newcomb]

Unless they are biologically children of one parent or the other they are not true descendants of either parent. If biologically connected to one parent, then they would only be descendants of that parent but not both.

That's culturally dependent. When a Roman adopted a son all connection with the birth family was broken. The adopted child stopped being related to his birth family and was considered a descendant of his adopted family's ancestors.

[JHP]

I must be dense.
If you don't want them there, why link them there?

It's one thing to see them together as a family group but quite another to see them as descendants.

[JHP]

That's culturally dependent. When a Roman adopted a son all connection with the birth family was broken. The adopted child stopped being related to his birth family and was considered a descendant of his adopted family's ancestors.

I was not aware DNA could be broken! Can it?

[Don Newcomb]

I was not aware DNA could be broken! Can it?

The point is that the Romans were saying the DNA didn't really matter. When you were adopted into a family you became of that family. My point was that the view of adoption is highly dependent on the culture. My understanding is that Islam does not recognize adoption at all. In America we have adoptees going to great lengths to find their "real" parents. TV shows about it, etc. Perhaps we should not be criticizing the fact that RM4 lists adoptees as descendants, since there is a sound cultural and legal basis for this, but rather looking for ways RM4 can be improved so that this can be customized. Perhaps a "genetic" pedigree vs a "family" pedigree.

[bienia]

If I want to isolate adopted children from biological, I enter a sort date for the non-biological child (children) so they sort at the end of the child list in narrative reports (or other reports for that matter.) In a word processor, I can then insert a few blank lines and enter a new Child List introductory sentence to read the way I want to for the child/children.

I would like RM to have an option to automatically separate the children in the child list by parental relationships and use the relationships selected in the Edit Persons, Parents panel as the basis for the introductory sentence, i.e. both natural; one birth parent, 1 step; both adopted parents; borth foster parents; both guardians; etc. Better still, I would like to be able to define the child list sentence for each type of parent to child relationship. This way I could "sugar-coat" the sentence to be very diplomatic when there are still living relatives around.

[JHP]

Perhaps we should not be criticizing the fact that RM4 lists adoptees as descendants, since there is a sound cultural and legal basis for this, but rather looking for ways RM4 can be improved so that this can be customized. Perhaps a "genetic" pedigree vs a "family" pedigree.

Don,

I personally could care less about either cultural or legal adoption matters, DNA is really the only thing I personally recognize. Interestingly enough is the genealogy DNA testing offered by Ancestry.com. What does that do to the cultural or legal view on adoption and pedigree/descendancy?

I can agree with the above but while there is a sound cultural and legal basis, there is no DNA basis, which is the one I want to see. I like the idea of being able to choose which route to go rather than assuming/dictating only one way, personally it should be a global choice so as not to have to deal with each adoption separately.

Since a lot of adoptions are the result of premature deaths of the birth parents, the idea of a spiritual "sealing" of the adopted child to the adopting parents seem too much like "cruel & unusual punishment" being levied on the birth parents by literally throwing them out.

Currently this is a situation that I have. My son-in-law has been married three (3) times, a daughter by the first marriage, a son by the second and two (2) sons by the third. With each marriage I have included all the children that would have been his and his then wife "blended family if you will". So with the first wife there is one(1) child, with the second wife there are two (2) and finally with the third there are a total of five (5) (4 his and 1 hers). His descendants chart now shows his first daughter as the descendant of each of his 3 wives. His second son as a descendant of his 2nd & 3rd wife. The family grouping that I have is the way I want it but the descendants chart is a mangled mess. Specifying the birth parents as the sealing parents has no effect.

The pedigree chart has similar problems in that depending on which parent group you have chosen the pedigree changes to match the parents selected.

To me this whole matter is the same idea as no matter how many times a woman marries, her maiden/birth name never changes. Likewise, no matter how many times you are adopted, your DNA pedigree or DNA descendancy never changes.

Jesse

[Don Newcomb]

I can only say that one should be very careful with the idea that only the DNA counts. If you assume only a small chance of error, the cumulative probability of being related to any given ancestor 10 generations out pretty quickly approaches zero.