Is there anything special I have to do to add a step-child?

Question

I've noticed some designations like 1/2 brother in listings of children before. I have a cousin of my wife who recently died who I previously listed only with his birth parents (Cozzaglio-8). He was raised, and adopted by, my wife's parents at an early age. Previously, I just tried connecting him to my wife's parents, too. That just didn't look right; it removed his biological parents, replacing them with his adoptive ones. It looks to me like there's no way to list both his biological parents and  his adoptive ones (except in the bio.) Am I correct?

Bob

Comments

You'll notice I updated the wording above. "Step child" in this case was totally the wrong word for Steve. The worst thing was that when I tried adding the adoptive parents, the program deleted the biological ones--and that would incorrectly display his genealogy. So, I went back to listing the biological ones.

But Steve's own thought that his adoptive parents were his "real" parents is probably typical of a lot of adoptive people. (It always struck me as "wrong" how he was on a nearby branch in the family tree, but not "with" my wife and her brother. Do you know what I mean?)

Answer 1

Here is a help page dealing with this issue.

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Adoptions_and_Multiple_Parents

In the end, exactly how you choose to include him is up to you. As he is deceased, I might keep him with his birth parents and make note of the adoption.

My grandfather was adopted by his step father and took his name. I have attached him to his birth father. In the name fields, I gave his lnab as Borquez and current last name as Lewis.

Charles Francis (Borquez) Lewis

Comments

I'd agree - this would be my approach as well. I try to maintain biological parents for connections - adoptive parents named in the biography, with links if you can do them. That makes it easy to click over to the adoptive parents but it makes it clear who the biological lines run through.

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I also agree.  On any profile where a list of siblings is shown, the software will now append that parenthetical [half] to any name in the list who shares one parent, but not both, with the subject of the profile.  So your choice of parents could affect how that is displayed for a number of people.

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I really liked your idea for using links in the bio for adoptive parents--thanks.

Bob