How Would You Handle Foster Children In Your Tree?

Question

I've just (today) found out that my parents fostered a child years ago. She lived with them for a couple of years but was not adopted. There's paperwork about her in my father's military file, so I feel like she should be added, but I don't know the proper protocol for adding foster children. It should also be noted that I myself was a foster child and would love to add my foster families but am not sure how best to handle their connections.

Answer 1

I would draw heavily on the advice given to adoptees. Foster children can add their foster parents as their mother and father and mark relationships as non-biological, or add their biological parents (which is handy if they're working on DNA and genetic genealogy). Either way, the other important people in any person's life can be wikilinked right from the biography. Here's our great guide:

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Space:Adoptees:_How_to_Set_Up_Your_Profile

Answer 2

Since you can only have one of each parent and there isn't a way to mark the type of parent, I would create a profile for the person and then document them in the Biography sections. I would make a subsection to call it out and highlight it since this is an important part of the lives of the people involved. The complication is if this is a living person.