Dating an Adoption

[rlgleason51 0]

I have a child born 5 Oct, 1870. Her bio-mother died 17 Oct 1870. The child was adopted by her husband's sister upon the bio-mother's death, sometime aft 17 Oct, 1870.

 

When I add the child-adopt tag to the Aunt and her husband, it assigns a date of 5 Oct 1870 when it should be aft 17 Oct 1870.

 

How can I change the date?

 

Thanks.

[Jim Byram 0]

The Child-Adop tag is a relationship tag and will always use the birth date.

 

The extension on relationship tags means nothing to the program and will always be treated as simply a relationship tag that will use the birth date.

 

To document an adoption, you should be using a non-relationship tag such as Adoption (and don't use the Child-Adopt relationship tag).

[rlgleason51 0]

Jim

 

I must be dense. I tried using the Adoption tag, but no matter how I enter the principles, either the child is shown as adopted with no adoptive parents indicated, or the adoptive parents are shown adoption each other. I cannot get the child to show as being adopted by each adoptive parent.

 

What am I doing wrong?

[Jim Byram 0]

I would use the child as the Principal (both Principal and Adoptee use the same default sentence) and the two parents as witnesses (Adopting Father and Adopting Mother). You can use the default sentences or modify them as you wish. You might want to modify the Principal sentence to identify the adopting parents. The Adoption tag documents the event (adoption), not any relationship.

[rlgleason51 0]

If I understand correctly, I entered the child with her bio-parents. I use the adoption tag to show she's been adopted with her adopt- parents as witnesses.

 

Since modifying the sentences wil indicate relationship only when printing reports, How do I show the relationship when viewing the adoptive parents per individual view? Or do I want to?

[Michael Hannah 0]

I must be dense.

No, you are not dense. The entire issue of Adoption is a complex one to enter into TMG. Remember that TMG is primarily designed for tracking genetic relationships, so Adoptions have to be kind of "squeezed" into TMG. From TMG's point of view Adoptions are an event not a relationship, although most people consider an adoptive parent & child as having a relationship.

 

My on-line book about customizing TMG has a very lengthy and detailed discussion about Adoption which begins here. As that section describes, I find it useful to create several customized tags to deal with this issue. I use custom event tags which have the adopting adults as Principals and the adopted children as Witnesses. Such event tags show in both the Principals' and Witnesses' individual views, so that this situation/event becomes clear in the narrative of all participants. (You do have the "Preferences / Program Options / Tag Box / Show witnessed events" option checked so events show in Witnesses individual views, right?) Since my primary output is Second Site (which will list all relationships, both Primary and others) I also add custom relationship tags when that seems to make sense as described in that discussion.

 

You may not wish to get as thorough and complex as I do, but reading my thoughts about customizing TMG to record Adoptions in TMG hopefully will give you some useful ideas,

 

Michael

 

[Jim Byram 0]

Since modifying the sentences wil indicate relationship only when printing reports, How do I show the relationship when viewing the adoptive parents per individual view? Or do I want to?

You can always enter relationship tags for the adopted parents. You can have two sets of relationship tags... those for the birth parents and those for the adopted parents. Whichever set is primary will be the parents shown in reports. You can't have both sets of parents shown as parents in reports. However, having two sets of relationship tags lets you toggle between the two sets for reports. You might want the adopted parents as the primary parents always. That's one approach keeping in mind that it will hide the actual biological history of the person and make tracking the person's line impossible for others.

 

Just keep in mind that the relationship tags tell nothing about the nature of the relationship in reports. That's why you need one or more additional event tags to document the adoption. Read Michael's article for his ideas.

[rlgleason51 0]

Michael and Jim

 

Thanks. Guess I have some studying to do.