Why does RM make it so frustrating to add parents. You can’t add a father without creating multiple unknown spouses that are impossible to merge. The only workaround seems to go to the parents and add an existing child.
Adding just a Father (or Mother) to child(ren) creates one record of that one Parent and then displays a family tree placeholder for the other parental “spot” as Unknown Spouse. That is the totality of what RM does. One, not multiple. Period.
And when you identify the unknown parent it’s very easy to update the record. Or so I found
On the Family View, Right click on a person and select from the menu “Add Parents”. This will create 1 father and 1 mother.
If on the Family View you click on the empty box to “Add Father” (or Add Mother) you end up with the “Unknown Spouse”. So don’t do it this way.
Given how often we see this complaint, I wonder if a change to the menu items labels might mitigate its occurence, say, “Add Father only” and 'Add Mother only". Or maybe “Add Father & Unknown Spouse” and “Add Mother & Unknown Spouse”.
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I wish we had the exact sequence (like a video) of how this is happening. I just now did the following without ever creating this problem.
- Created a new and empty database.
- Created a three person family - father, mother, child.
- In Family View, deleted the father.
- In Family View, clicked on the Add Husband box to add the father. All was well.
- In Family View, deleted the father.
- In Family View, right clicked the child and selected the Add Parents option.
- I was asked Add To This Family? showing the missing father, the mother, and the child. I said yes. It added the father to the correct family.
So where is it going wrong for users when it goes wrong?
Also, I repeated the same sequence in Pedigree View. I got the same results where nothing went wrong. So again I ask, where is it going wrong for users when it goes wrong? There must be some other sequence that users are using that goes wrong.
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Jerry–it does NOT happen when you 1st add A child and his parents BUT when you add additional kids ( especially if using Pedigree View) to an existing family–usually will happen when you started a family a while back and then find another child you didn’t know abt or your working on what you think is a completely unrelated line and later find out your 3rd g grandparents were cousins etc.
After you have your 3 person family created in family view or pedigree
1 Create a new individual—
2) Click on Father Box on Right Side if person is married or right above person
3 Select Existing Person then hit OK
4 Click on Mother Box
5 Select Existing Person then hit OK
You have now created 2 families with the same parents
The reason this happens is BECAUSE any other way you do it and Select Existing Person, you are given the OPTION to ADD them to an existing family BUT not this way…
Sorry would have done a video BUT don’t know how to SAVE it
I misspoke, thinking it was a right-click menu item, not the box label. It seems that you get the single parent with unknown spouse as a consequence of cancelling the addition of the second parent when the system prompts for it. But it does not always do so and I don’t seem to be able to replicate the condition that initially asks for the second parent and then stops doing so on subsequent Add Father’s. Right now, I cannot get it back to asking for the second parent! The procedure just adds the first parent without prompting for the second.
Maybe this dialog window needs disambiguation:
I clicked on Add Father but the name of the dialog window is Add Spouse and the explanatory text says “Do you want to add the spouse to this existing family?” And the Father field is a puzzling colour. Remember the confusion people have over what is a “family” in RM - it’s just the couple (Father-Mother, Husband-Wife, Partner-Partner) to which the child is lineage linked but, even here, the RM dialog conflates it with the children.
So, maybe this dialog window could be context sensitive in its name and content. If I click on “+ Add Father” when the Mother already exists, the window name should be Add Father and the text should read “Do you want to add the Father to this existing family?” and the Father field should be omitted or filled in with unknown. I cannot think of a way of a way to disambiguate “family”.
If “+ Add Mother” is clicked then the inverse would apply for the dialog.
I tend to attach both a mother and father to any child I enter, even when I do not know the name of one of the parents. I think it makes for better printouts for FGS, pedigree, etc.
If the father is Scott JONES and I don’t know the wife, I add something like Mrs. Scott JONES or “wife of Scott” JONES for the mother. I there is more than one unknown spouse/mother, she could be designated “2nd wife” JONES.
If the opposite and I have no idea the surname of the father/husband, I might put ? UNKNOWN. That way the program knows there are two parents, and should avoid some of the problems created with the “unknown spouse” convention. If the other parent becomes known, one can simply change the name for that parent.
That being said, I use RM7 for my primary data entry, and I have never encountered the issue of multiple unknown spouses even when I have not entered a spouse.
I can replicate your results. I would be happy to make a video, but I think your directions are excellent and they don’t really need a video…
I think the underlying problem is that you can’t actually add one parent at a time, not really. When you are adding parents, including when you are just adding one parent, you are really adding a couple. It’s possible for one member of the couple to be null, but a couple must there be.
In the interest of being user friendly, RM sometimes tries to brush aside the coupleness of parents by making it look like you are adding one parent at a time. It’s in these kinds of situations where there is at least the possibility of two people who are one couple becoming two.people who are two couples.
If you try to link to people together as a couple twice via Add Spouse, RM prevents the second Add Spouse from taking place. In your scenaria, there effectively is a second Add Spouse for the same couple and it is not prevented, I want to think about about possible remedies before suggesting a solution that I think would be the best way to prevent this problem.
Good idea but probably won’t happen (been that way since Family Origins I think).
Of course one would think by selecting either Add Father/Mother, since they are there, it would function by linking the 3 without an unknown spouse.
I rewatched the Getting Started With RM9 and Bruce doesn’t do it this way!
At 26:30, he selected the + at the top to Add Parents. He does say “that this will add a Marriage to the people while the other way won’t”.
I will still use the right mouse on child to add parents.
in theory it should be only one spouse - -and as others have explained it is because there must be a family-- in order to have a “Family” (record ID) they need to be a couple --either complete or with Just Father or Just Mother-- in that cause there would be unknown spouse. I use find it better to go to “couple” and add child (and use existing) this way the child is added to correct family group (even if one of parents is unknown) this should minimize risk of add duplicate unknown spouses.
that said I can see how a user could be confused and mis understand what is happening when added parents or children to families. Not sure if any of the “errors” might be occuring when using TreeShare.