Adoption is a complex and sensitive subject. Different adoptees have different views about how they want to trace and document their ancestry, and will often want to explore both their biological and adoptive family history. That said—particularly with the increasing use of DNA in genealogy—there is a need to distinguish genetic from adoptive relationships.
How best to document and cater for adoptees is on going work in Pedigree Forge, and so if you have personal experience, please make contact, as it would be great to hear your thoughts.
The way adoption is handled in Pedigree Forge will depend on how central it is to the family being researched.
At the most simplistic level, someone can be flagged as being adopted by setting the “Parental linkage” to adopted—see the section on Parental linkage. This will then show adopted on family charts and in narrative reports.
If more information is known about the adoption, then an adoption fact/event can also be added, using the “Fact” menu, then selecting “Add Person Fact” and “Adoption”. Adoption facts allow storing information about the adoption, such as dates, and links to sources.
Adoption facts also allow the family adopting the child to be specified and which (or both) of the couple adopting the child. (This is based on the mechanism in GEDCOM).
Note: A child with an adoption fact still needs to be linked to parents in the usual way. Setting the family in the adoption fact doesn’t create linkage to the parents.
The above only cover the case where only one family: either the adoptive or the biological family is being followed. Pedigree Forge does allow a person to be linked to two families where they are a child, and so both can be explored.
To add another parent or set of parents to a person, use the “Other Parents” item on the “Edit” menu, whilst editing the adoptee.
The definition of which are the “primary” and which are the “other” parents can be changed—the “primary” parents are those currently being worked on, and this allows easier navigation. The “other” parents are those not currently being worked on. Use the “Swap primary and other parents” option on the menu to switch between them.
Assuming that one set are birth parent(s), and the other are adoptive parent(s), then the relevant linkage should be set for each set, i.e. “birth” or “adopted”, as described at the start of the adoption section.
When drawing descendant type charts, and lists of children in narratives, the adoptee will be shown on those for both sets of parent(s).
When building charts that follow ancestry back (for example birth briefs), there is an option available on the chart editing dialog that show which (adopted, birth or foster) should be followed on that particular chart. This is on the “Person” tab:
When building reports, configuration can be set to follow the birth then adopted/adopted then birth, only adopted, or only birth families—see section on reports.
Technical note: At present, Pedigree Forge only supports two sets of parents. This keeps the user interface as simple as possible, for something that is already complex. Future extensions may allow more families to be supported.