How do you connect biological and non-biological parent to one children

+7 votes
473 views

Found this in another post along these lines! 

{{Adopted Child

|Adopted Father=

|Adopted Mother=

|Agency=

|Date=

|Location=

|Biological Father=

|Biological Mother=

My question is this...   Charity is the biological child of Thomas and Elizabeth...  Thomas dies and Elizabeth remarries, how do I link Jerry (Elizabeth's new husband) to Charity as a father and create a profile for Thomas Walton (biological) as Charity's father as well?

in the 1880 U.S. Census Jerry is listed as her Grandfather... In Charity's marriage to Mr. Barns, Jerry is listed as her Father... 

Thanks for any guidance! 

WikiTree profile: Charity Barnes
in WikiTree Help by Gene Ellison G2G6 Mach 2 (29.8k points)
recategorized by Jillaine Smith

Here is the Template page for reference:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Template:Adopted_Child


Gene, you need to add the closing braces - }} - to the template text in your post.

On Charity's profile, replace the word Step (or is there a separate template for step relatives?) with Adopted (3 places) and move the closing braces to the end of the template text.


Post again if you need additional help!

2 Answers

+5 votes
 
Best answer

To add on to what Lindy has posted, I believe in this situation you should only mention the non-biological parents in the profile - without the use of a sticker or template (there is no Step_Child template to my knowledge anyways). When it comes to Adoptions, you can simply the use Adopted_Child template.

For all other instances, you can view Help:Adoptions_and_Multiple_Parents which states:

For public profiles without connections to living people, genetic connections should prevail. This is a choice that our community has made: our tree should be genetic.

Now, if you wanted to still list Jerry as a father-figure (maybe he had an impact on Charity's life), he can be given his own paragraph in Charity's bio, similar to:

"When Charity was x years old, her mother remarried. [[Doe-1|Jerry]] became the father-figure that Charity was missing after the passing her biological father. Jerry was her friend, mentor..."


As an example - I have two step-brothers who are not shown on my profile. In order to find them, you would have to navigate to my father and then to his wife - which makes sense if you understand that my step-brothers and I do not share the same DNA - we are only related through a marriage.

by Steven Harris G2G6 Pilot (738k points)
selected by Gene Ellison

Thank yo Steven!   :-)

+10 votes
Steven's answer is very good, and I'm sure it's what every adopted parent would want, and probably what most good parents would want.

But we have to mention the big downside here, and that is that it completely breaks the DNA support.  The fact that the father decision has been left to the profile manager means that parts of WikiTree are true to the actual family structures, including non-biologically related, and parts of WikiTree are biologically true, fully DNA supportive.  That inconsistency is really regrettable.  The tree should be one or the other, and if it wants to truly and fully support all DNA features, it is going to have to require biological parentage only.  That is naturally going to be strongly resisted, unless we make the following change.

There's only one good solution, and that is that at some point, WikiTree profiles MUST be able to include multiple fathers and multiple mothers, both biological and non-biological, appropriately marked.  That means that any person could have multiple roles in life - a male could be a biological father of one child, then a step-father to another child, then an anonymous sperm donor to a third child, then change genders and be a step-mother to a fourth child (my sympathies to whomever has to document that!).

We all appreciate the extra work for our WikiTree devs, but I don't see any other course.  It has to happen.
by Rob Jacobson G2G6 Pilot (136k points)
I so totally agree with you Rob.

Rob that was an outstanding point in these days and times...  the world is changing and the family unit is not what it once was... 

I understand that DNA are the ties that bind, however if a woman raised you like she gave birth to you, however not your biological parent you tell them there is no way to recognise her as a step-parent!!!

:-)   

Gene, I do understand, and I'm sure you'll want to put people over science.  It's just that we shouldn't have to choose, both are important.  We should be able to indicate the biological linkages, then spend all our time on giving credit where it's due, to those who have earned the right to be 'honored parent'.  I'm hopeful that WikiTree will expand their parental support, when they get around to it.
I have just a basic secondary school science studies student background and so DNA testing and results etc is all way above me but - I do wonder about the DNA results for children who were implanted as embryos into the womb of often unrelated women. That woman's mitochondria DNA  may be the building blocks that sustained and grew that human but the source DNA and genetic code did not come from there. Just makes me wonder...

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