“RootsMagic purports to be an international product. It is however produced in the USA” you wrote.
Unfortunately, RM is not more international than the fact that the program has UNICODE and is only available in American language form. They have been saying for an infinite amount of time that they were going to go international, but that is not happening.
Translation to other languages was shelved more than a decade ago… but that’s off-topic.
Understanding your desire for such a capability as entirely reasonable, this could mistakenly be construed as them having made a declaration or promise and not delivered …neither of those was ever asserted. There were merely inquiries and speculation by users and responses acknowledging the ideal nature of adding such support.
Sometimes it is not the fault of either parents, but the grandparents that the couple which created an offspring did not get married. I know of one such situation where the couple were madly in love and wanted to marry however, the parents of the mother refused to allow them to marry, and forced her to marry someone else because she was pregnant.
You cannot call this natural father DEADBEAT because they wanted to marry. What should we call this? DEADBEAT GRANDPARENTS?"
I tried that and it did just like an associate does. Exactly like I wanted but it will work.
Thank you for staying on the subject inquiry.
The term “deadbeat” is a judgement; that person is still a parent to a child.
In the same vein, is it possible to mark some one as “never married” and show it where the spouse information would be on the main screen ?
Yes. Choose Fact “Add spouse”; then “Add New Person”; then put “Never” in the Given Name and “Married” in the surname and click “OK”. On the next screen at the bottom right, click the red x box No Marriage Known. On the person’s page it will show “never married” in the spouse box.
@mikedabell – FYI—the add marriage info box does NOT show up in RM 8 or RM 9 UNLESS you right click and select ADD PARENTS–all other ways, you have to add the marriage fact afterwards…
@martisiq --interesting idea BUT what do you do as far as never married IF you know who the other parent was? Not only do I have the names of some of the partners in recent times BUT have seen birth records back to abt 1870 and Baptismal records going back to before 1800 where the partner was name and the record says illegitimate etc…
@nkess I was just answering the question of how to show that someone was never married. Even if a man fathered a child out of wedlock, he could still be “never married.” BTW - I’m using RM7. RM9 skips the part about checking the red x box.
There are a few other things you can do-- you could use any symbol in front of the given name ( # Sarah ) to easily see they were NOT married BUT you would be the only one who knows what that means…
You could also change the mother/father designation on the parents page to PARTNER— doesn’t show up in reports or anything but it is a subtle reminder if you know to look for it…
And you could take somebody’s suggestion in another thread of groups and expand it to include color coding— use say the red color for NEVER MARRIED-- but think I would use a 2nd color such as yellow for a person who had at least 1 partner BUT also then married someone else after the child was born…
Understand completely BUT just wanted to know what you would do if you did know the person name to show they were never married
Create a Fact “Not Married” or whatever and add to person. Then make a Group for that Fact.
This is the approach I have done for “Not Married” but I didn’t create a fact since I have no sources to provide evidence of being unmarried; more a lack of evidence of marriage.
I have added Groups for most of the Ancestry MyTreeTags relating to relationships covering adoption, died young, direct ancestor, multiple spouses, never married, no children and orphan and a few life experience tags for military service and immigrant.
So I am one of those affected by this. I didn’t find out until I was 60 years old that my dad was not my biological father. I never met him and he’s dead now. I do think something like “biological father” or “biological mother” could help some of us who have this to deal with. While there are all the options above – it just makes it easier to understand, esp. if we want to pass down this info to our children.
Just a thought.
I have both scenarios - know the father’s name - don’t know the father’s name. The father’s name I know was married but not to child’s mother, so “never married” doesn’t work. The other’s name is not known, so his marital status cannot be determined, and again, “never married” doesn’t work. My uncle was blind and I know that he was “never married.” Another ancestor died age 23 WWII in Japanese prison camp, He was “never married.” I don’t think the “never married” would work for the father of a child born out of wedlock, unless you know for a fact he wasn’t married ever. Maybe a “Not Married” (given name) “to child’s mother” (surname) type of thing would work.
@nkess I am in the process of reviewing my sources and so have encountered the not, never, married status in several ancestors. I have used the “Suffix” and the term (Unmarried) in parenthesis for both men and women. I think if you want to point out that a father and mother were not married, you will need to use something other than “never married,” because there are so many different ways to interpret that phrase. I am sure you have already figured that out.
deadbeat dad
disapproving
: a father who owes money to his former wife to help raise their children but does not pay it.
Quote, merriam-webster. United States favorite dictionary.
I’m not sure if this is allowed to post. I think mine deserves that definition. When my “father” found out that my mom was pregnant, he abandoned her and me and said he didn’t want another child. That same week, my mother found out that she had ovarian cancer. I am thankful and blessed every day that she decided not to abort her pregnancy with me, as I was told that she said she wanted to give me a chance at life. She passed on August 19, 1978, 1 day shy of my turning 16 months old. She would have turned 84 this year.
I must admit I had never heard the term prior to this discussion. I am not a Merriam-Webster user either!