Re: Children given up for adoption

There are lots of ways you could handle it, depending on what works best for your living family. But what *I* would do is to give each of the children two sets of parents. FTM allows that no problem (well sometimes it balks a bit but it is part of the software). So attach the first set of parents (either one) and then go under person and hit the relationships tab. You can change the type of parent to adopted (or step) or birth or whatever. Then repeat.

I would use the name the child knows her or himself as as the preferred name. But if the child was given a birth name before the birth parents chose to have the child adopted, then you can also put it in as a name, just not the preferred name. Yes it is necessary to put the adoptive family's names because you want future generations or other branches of the family using your family tree information to know who these children are. You have to give their current names for that.

And yes, I would add a note saying the child was adopted and raised with such and such family. I'm not sure if "adoption" is one of the events programed in but you can easily add it. Then you can put the adoption date and place plus a note.

If you prefer to keep your documentation low level you can put the birth name, date, and parentage into the events and put and everything else into a note. It's up to you.

Cyndi