stepchildren in descendants chart

[James Hughey]

How can I include both my children and stepchildren in my grandfather’s descendants chart

[ttl]

I'll make some assumptions about how your family is arranged in order to answer your question. If I get it wrong, please accept my apology; any corrections you can provide can help refine the answer.

I'll assume your children and stepchildren are part of your family from two different relationships. If you have linked both relationships to you as spouses, you should show up in two separate boxes below your parents in a descendant chart. I'm going to guess your kids show up under one box, but your step kids don't show up under the other because they are linked as children under a different couple. In the family file, you can simply add them as children to your other relationship. The children will then have two sets of parents in the database and will show up as yours when a descendant chart is created with one of your ancestors as the source person.

[James Hughey]

Thanks for your reply. The stepchildren are my wife’s children from a previous relationship. I understand that there is no biological connection to me. Although I couldn’t adopt the kids, I raised them as my own from toddlers. I was hoping that there was a way to list them on family descendant charts, identifying them as stepchildren rather than biological children. Thanks in advance for your help.

[ttl]

Ok, I'd go ahead and add your wife's children to your marriage in your family file (drag them from the person list on the right side of the window so you don't duplicate them). You can then flag them as stepchildren by clicking on the marriage button above you and your wife, clicking on the Children button and changing their status to Step. You can also access this option by selecting Batch Entry from the Children button below you and your wife.

I personally think it's also important to color tag them as having multiple parents. You can do this by selecting one of them to put them in the center of the family view, selecting Change from the Navbar on the left, and choosing the Color Tag option. You can then select or add Multiple Parents in the list (I don't remember if it's a default option or if it needs to be created). Repeat as necessary.

When you create the descendant chart, this information won't show up, but since there's not very many people involved, you can simply double click on the appropriate boxes and add a text notation of your choice. You could also color code the box in some way (fill, outline, shadow), but that might be hard to interpret without a guide somewhere.

[sgtbob]

I've had this issue for many years but seem to have a 'work around' that worked for me. My daughter (A Smith) listed as a biological daughter of her father and my wife at the time of her birth. They divorced and when I married my wife, I applied to courts and legally adopted her. I then added her as 'Adopted Step-daughter' as her status. She shows on the descendant chart for my Grandfather as 'A. Smith' with birthdate, marriage and all of her children and grandchildren noted.

[Bob White]

??? OK, I am exactly the same situation as SgtBob's daughter A Smith. (My mother divorced my bio father when I was a toddler; when she remarried, I was five and got adopted by the new husband.) And, after I was an adult, she divorced and did a third marriage. I show the bio father as my father and the Reunion software automatically shows both the second and third husbands as StepFather. This is OK with me because, when I run into this type of question, I opt for biological accuracy over legal accuracy.