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Adoption Help please

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  • Adoption Help please

    Working on my family tree to share with the extended family at a reunion and am running into a dilemma with adoptions that I don't know how to deal with.
    Trying to be sensitive to others while being honest with tree. Cases all in the present time.
    One scenerio...... George marries Anne who has a child Tom by a previous relationship. George adopts the child so everyone is using the same family name.
    Second ......... Alfred and Barbara cannot have children so they adopt a baby.... this one I can get my head around.... the wording I'm using is "they have a chosen daughter:
    Three.... just landed in my lap...... Cathy and Peter have two children... Peter's brother's daughter, Susie, is stranded by poor (in the moral sense) parents and aged grandparents so they are adopting her.

    For the sake of discussion all names are made up. George, Alfred and Cathy are my relations.... Anne, Barbara and Peter married in.
    Personally I would ignore Tom and Susie and their descendents in my tree. The hobby is genealogy,,, blood lines etc but these are current people with feelings.
    I'm not adopted... and don't have any experience with the emotions that go with the adoption choice
    So asking for feedback from those that do.
    I supposed the best solution is to just be honest in the printed tree. Then in a couple of generations when someone finds a copy the correct relationship is reported.
    Donelda

    searching for the Berkshire Hobbises, Rowles, Staniford, Rogers, Parkers, Thackhams, Gouts, LeBouviers, Heaphys and Wilsons

  • #2
    My feeling would be that a tree meant for family sharing is different to your own tree. As you say you need to be sensitive so its hard. However they are all adopted and therefore are actually legally as well as emotionally part of the family. That being so, I don't see how you can leave any of them off the tree. I don't know much at all about adoption but we do have step grandchilren who are very much part of our family ... in fact we are having them to stay with us at Easter to help out with holiday child minding.
    Anne

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    • #3
      As your tree is in a way for family entertainment, as it were, I would make no reference to adoption and just present the tree as things appear at face value. Anyone who is interested enough to research the tree themselves will soon discover the adoptions. Anyone who isn't interested enough doesn't need to know, lol.

      OC

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      • #4
        I'm with O.C. on this. We are a wide ranging family with partners accepting partners children, and I think, blending is the word I would use. On my tree all are equal. When my nephew married his cousin, who had two children from a previous relationship, the children asked "Can we call Fred Daddy now?" I think that says it all.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Olde Crone Holden View Post
          As your tree is in a way for family entertainment, as it were, I would make no reference to adoption and just present the tree as things appear at face value. Anyone who is interested enough to research the tree themselves will soon discover the adoptions. Anyone who isn't interested enough doesn't need to know, lol.

          OC
          I agree wholeheartedly! It's no-one's business but the people concerned how they came to join the family but they are part of it and should be shown where they fit in.

          My eldest cousin was illegitimate and we all knew that but when I came to present the tree at a family reunion of many cousins I showed him as a son of his mother's husband who came on the scene many years later. I had asked him what he would like shown on the chart I produced and that's what he said. I still put his name as the one we knew and no one questioned it.

          Margaret

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          • #6
            thank you all for your insight. My family has not experienced divorce, blended families etc. so not aware of the ins and outs OC thanks for that statement "anyone who isn't interested enough doesn't need to know."..... that said.... on the occasions when I've asked for family updates from distant branches they come back with the correct information of blended families. Of course i would not know if they reported back without stating adoption,,,, blended family etc.....
            Donelda

            searching for the Berkshire Hobbises, Rowles, Staniford, Rogers, Parkers, Thackhams, Gouts, LeBouviers, Heaphys and Wilsons

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