Yes, I have a thought. I think that all of these "problems" come from trying to combine biology with sociology. The structure of a "family" for genealogical purposes is extremely well defined -- there is always a male parent, a female parent, and a child. Sometimes the same parents have more than one child, sometimes the male parent has children with more than one female parent, sometimes the female parent has children with more than one male parent. These biological relationships are quite easily represented in Legacy since they are purely factual. The fact that one of the parents may not be known to us does not mean that they do not exist or that there should not be a placeholder for them.
It is when we try to use more sociological words like "marriage", "spouse", "partner", "illegitimate", "adopted", etc., to describe something other than the biological relationships between people that the wording gets tricky. Especially when one considers all parts of the world over a very long period of time, since the social norms are quite different for various groups of people, even though the basic biology (genealogy) remains the same. We like to think that a "family" is whatever we would like it to be for any given group of people. That is well and good for a narrative that describes how people came to live in the various combinations that they did, but it has nothing to do with the biological facts of how those people came into existence in the first place, which is their genealogy. I am amazed that programs can take biological facts (Male, Female, Copulation, Child) and weave them into the-way-we-would-like-them-to-be stories as well as they do. It seems to me that "family history", or whatever you want to call it, is more in the realm of writers and word processors than in the purely factual realm of genealogy (biology). It is quite evident that the Legacy programming staff have limited resources at their disposal. I for one am quite happy to see them spend that time on the purely factual things (data entry, data sheets, charts) that are genealogy, and leave the My-Great-Novel-Generator features for later when they have nothing else to do. ;-) Or, since they seem to have left most of the charting types to add-on programs, perhaps they should just leave story-telling to other add-on programs. Bob -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jane Hakes Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 09:47 To: [email protected] Subject: [LegacyUG] Customizing "Never Married" feature and more Hello Cathy and Karen and anyone else interested, I created a dummy new family and tried adding some strange characters (as in persons, not letters of the alphabet) just to try some of the problems reported here. I added a new unlinked person (no spouse, sibling, or child) and he does NOT show up as married. Nor does he show up on any marriage list/report. So that appears to be working correctly. Could it be the manner in which he was added that makes a difference? I did create a woman with 11 children, however, to test out the 10+ children problem reported earlier, and to make matters complicated, gave them all different fathers. Now this WAS a problem, as Legacy assigned marriage numbers for all the fathers with this one woman, even though I did select 'unmarried'. I would suggest to Millenia/Legacy that future versions somehow acommodate unmarried parents without forcing them into a marriage structure. Maybe there could be a 'relationship' designation ('unmarried partner' for example) instead of marriage to which children could be connected. As another experiment in this database, I also made a single man, then gave him an adopted child by clicking 'Add..son'. For this, Legacy created a 'marriage' (MRIN) with an 'unknown' woman for this man. I can kind of understand why it may be doing this (to just keep order), but it doesn't seem right. And yes, I do know about changing labels, leaving notes of explanation, etc. but these don't solve the underlying problem of failure to acommodate structure for a fairly common scenario. Any thoughts? Jane Hakes > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Karen Sipe > Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 3:02 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] can you customize the "Never Married" feature? > > Hi Cathy; > No I am not getting a ghost spouse. Tom Montgomery suggested > that perhaps the person who first made this inquirey was > causing their data base to think the person had a spouse. So > I added a new person did not click anything about children or > spouse, nothing is color highlighted. But the person comes > up married... If you change the status to unmarried that is > not enough. Try it. You need to change the "married" next to > the Person 1 box. > I will run a file repair after work today but I don't think > that is where the problem lyies. I think it could still be a > glitch even though the current build has been out for several > months. If people like me don't spot it or don't print > reports very often it might take awhile. I noticed the > problem but didn't even think about it until someone else > questioned it on the LUG. > As I said >>If you select "unmarried" as Paula suggested your > report says John had a child.<< Further investigation shows > that not all people come up married. To me this is weird! > Karen > > > >From: Cathy <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Subject: RE: [LegacyUG] can you customize the "Never > Married" feature? > >Hi Karen, > > >Are you really getting a ghost spouse when just adding an > individual? I > >haven't noticed this. > > >Or only when you add a child to that individual? > >Children have two parents whether you know the second one or > not and so > >the > > >program adds a "Marriage" and you need to change the status > to "Unmarried". > > >Take a look at the spouse icon on the Family View. For > someone without > >a spouse, it will be grey. For someone with a "ghost" > spouse, it will > >be coloured and have a number for the number of spouses. > > >I only use the Never Married on the Individual Information > Screen when > >I'm certain that someone didn't marry or have children - no known > >sexual relationship. > > >For research purposes I'd like to be able to tick this for > people who > >died young but for reporting I only want it for those who lived to > >marriageable age. It's obvious in our culture that a child > of 4 never married. > > >I don't think there's a bug here - I haven't noticed it and > I'm sure we > >would have heard more about it by now as the current build has been > >around for over 2 months. > >It may be time you use the File > File Maintenance > Check/Repair as > >sometimes indexes get a bit scrambled. > > Hope that helps. > Cheers, > Cathy > > At 06:23 3/01/2005, you wrote: > > >>Still experimenting I have found that there isn't any > consistency with > >>people who are left with defaulted married in the person 1 field of > >>the marriage screen. In reports some of them are coming > thru as "John > married" > >>but others have nothing what so ever written about their > marriage status. > >>In one case I have a birth year in others I have birth and > death with > >>ages at death between 50-60, but nothing shows for marriage status. > > > >>This definitely seems to need work. > > > >>Karen V. 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