fire-eggs / FamilyLines

A free, open-source genealogy application to track, organize, and share your family history.
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Rework parent entry #72

Open fire-eggs opened 7 years ago

fire-eggs commented 7 years ago

notonyournelly[CodePlex]
This issue was originally reported by hemashiv as: quotMultiple natural fathers can be added.quot

I think this is merely an instance of a bigger problem which is entering parents / connecting people.

When entering parent data it'd be helpful to be working with quotallquot parents simultaneously. The current system only lets you enter one at a time and there is no association between them. As the user changes the quotstatequot of one parent, there is no validation/warning about another parent.

Here's a scenario. Dad1 is the natural parent. Dad2 is the adopted parent. If the user adds Dad2 first, the program assumes he is natural. If the user then adds Dad1, the program assumes he is adopted. The user has to edit the relationships which means for a window of time both Dad1 and Dad2 must be marked as quotnaturalquot.

A variant on the above scenario is uncertainty. Two natural dads is valid if there is some uncertainty in the data sources. The program doesn't have a mechanism to track/show this.

Here is another scenario. Dad1 and Dad2 are married. Dad1 is the biological father for a child. The user can add Dad1 and Dad2 as the father for a child, but has to use quotConnect Family Memberquot to marry Dad1 and Dad2. When that happens, one of the two has their sex automatically switched. The user has to edit one of the two dads to return the correct sex. If the user adds the biological mother for the child, the program assumes the mother is married to one of the two dads; the user must edit relationships to disconnect the marriage. Dad2 may be a partner for Dad1 but is not the biological parent for the child but the program doesn't flag/show this.

The quotFamily Viewquot doesn't handle these problems any better.

Need to consider alternative approaches. Need to investigate genealogical practices for how to handle biological/adoptive parentage and uncertainty. When adding a parent, providing the natural/adoptive choice might be helpful. When connecting people, changing sex should not happen automatically. Add flexibility but don't make it more complicated.