Spouse, partner, children

Ludwig

I am working on our family tree. There is a woman who was married to a spouse, divorced and subsequently had two children with a partner she was not married to. In her family tree the -divorced- spouse appears as the father of her two children which he ist not. Her partner -who in fact is the father- does not appear as such, even if I delete the first marriage. What am I getting wrong?

Regards,
Ludwig

Andrey

Ludwig Is this father marked as father to those chidren?

Stig

I have not tried this feature yet, but would be very interesting to see how this looks but without names/faces.

Ludwig

Stig

Hi Stig,

There is an illustrative video on the family tree feature.

best
Ludwig

Ludwig

Yes, he is. And he does not appear at all in the family tree of his partner, the mother of the two children.

Andrey

Ludwig When you build a tree, it will look differently depending on central person. In your case, who is the central person and how it is related to that father?

Ludwig

Oops, what is the central person?

The person where I clicked “Show family tree”? That’s what I’d expect. But that does not seem to be the case. When I press “Show family tree” from the personal album of the woman we are talking about the central persons in the bow-tie tree are her parents, not she and her partner. If I press “Show family tree” from the personal album of her partner I get a tree with only one single entry, namely that partner. No children, not the woman who is his partner.
Or is it the first person to whom I add relations?

Andrey

Ludwig The person where I clicked “Show family tree”?

Yes, this one. I would prefer if we would focus in this thread on the orignial issue, the one you started this thread with. Can you please answer my previous question? I assume there is a bug in the software, but I need to get complete instruction how to reproduce it, so I can fix it.

As to your other questions, I agree with @Stig - please check videos on our Youtube channel to better understand tree structures and settings. If you will still have more questions, then please post them as separate threads.

Ludwig

You asked: “In your case, who is the central person and how it is related to that father?”

My answer is: The central person is this woman, that was first married to another man, then got divorced and then had two children with another man whom she is not married to. The relation between mother and father of the two children ist “partner”.
When I choose this non-married mother, partner of the father, as the central person, in the bow-tie table she will be shown with a family tree showing her grandparents, her parents, her siblings but not her partner and not her children. In the hourglass view everybody is shown from the grand-grandparents to the children but again not the partner who is the father of the children. When I declare a relationship “spouse” with the divorced spouse he will be shown as the father of the children - which he is not.
When I choose the non-married father, partner of the mother, as the central person, he will be shown with a family tree with just him and nobody else.

Does that make it any clearer?
Ludwig

Andrey

Ludwig Thank you very much for clarifications. This is much clearer. Now I think I see where disconnect is.

Every family tree is oversimplifcation. The truth it, there is no way to display all the complexity of family ties on 2d layout that would look nice, would not contain huge gaps and would display 100% of the infromation at the same time. You should do simplifications in order to make this tree manageable.

There are programs that are designed to show all the relationships in all their complexities, but those trees are absolutely not sutable for printing, not even close. Tonfotos takes different approach. It does not try compete with all those genealogical programs, it is about photos mostly, and family tree function is made with pritning nice tree in mind as primary goal. That is why there is no way we can display all the possible life situations with all the exes and childred from different marriages, this is a limitation, but thanks to it trees look nice.

When we display central couple, we use all direct children from the cetnral person and all the children of the current spouse of central person. Then going up and down, we only follow direct blood connections where possible. That is the main approach.

So, it your bowtie situation, as I understand, the father is not displayed, since this father is not a spouse. As simple as that. If you want him on this chart, just make him spose temprorarily, and then remove. However, you also mentioned that children of the central person are not displayed, I am not sure why is that, I will need to check the code for that. But probably it is just because there is no spouse, which makes sense, and her parents become central people for the sake of the balance of the picture.

In the hourglass what you describe is completely correct behaviour. This person is not a spouse hence is not displayed. If you want to add him to your picture, just make him spouse temporarily. However agan, he will be part of the family then, and even not his children will be displayed as children of this family he is part of. I know this is not 100% perfect, but I don’t know any better way to display actual complexity of the situation with that woman, but make nice looking chart at the same time.

Ludwig

Andrey, thanks a lot for your answer. You are certainly right that a genealogically correct family tree is not something that Tonfotos is or should be targeting at. But it would be worth the while to mention the existing limitations to your users. Maybe I overlooked the corresponding information.

To conclude here is what I might have learned from my experience and your comment, and plz correct me when I’m wrong:

Partners are never shown in any family tree of their partner. The question arises to what purpose we define partners at all?
A person that is partner to some other person will be shown alone in its own family tree as long as there are no relatives (siblings, parents etc.) defined on its own side.
Any male spouse will be shown as the father of all children of his wive in his family tree, even if he is not the father of any of the children. The information who actually is the father of a given child, is ignored.
I did not check yet the situation of a single father with children from more than the one wive. E.g. My grandfathers first wive died of childbed fever after the birth of their first son. His second wive had a son from a previous marriage. Her first husband fell in WWI.

I will explore this further and eventually report what I might find.

best,
Ludwig

Andrey

Ludwig Partners are never shown in any family tree of their partner. The question arises to what purpose we define partners at all?

1) Correct. As to the purpose, family tree is not the only possible use of family ties. You still get detailed information about person in your archive which by itself is very useful. So we are providing users with ties options, and using or not - that is their choice. Actually we are constantly under pressure by users to add more options.

2) Only marrige and child-parent relationships are currently used for the tree, so yes.

3) Correct, and not specifically a male (actually, program does not even know sexes of the people). The corner stone of all layouts we are using so far is Family. So we display a family and all its children, even if some of them are partially related to those parents (like a child is related to only one of the couple). Obvoiusly, not ideal solution, but so far it looks better than any alternative, given the limitations. I already had multiple debates on this forum, but so far no one managed to offer better approach all things considered.

4) Situation will be similar, as described above. Both spouses and all their kids, both joint or from previous marriages.

Ludwig

Andrey,
Thank you for your detailed answer. You are right, family trees are not the only possible use. That is my own individual perspective. I understand that different needs exist.
Still, I tend to think that ist is not a good idea to attribute children to parents who are not parents in a genealogical sense. The simplest solution could be to only connect the children with their mother. So no matter who ist spouse or partner, the tree would be genealogically more correct -or maybe less incorrect. A step further -if at all- could take into account, whether partner and/or spouse are also designated fathers. In this case the children could be connected to both parents.

Thanks for your attention
Ludwig

Andrey

Ludwig The simplest solution could be to only connect the children with their mother. So no matter who ist spouse or partner, the tree would be genealogically more correct -or maybe less incorrect.

You are right, but not for the layouts we use. In our current layouts it all is built around families - couples, you can see that by the design of the lines that go down.

There can exist separate design that is buit around people, not couples. There would be more flexibility in terms where line should start and how it should go. As you pointed out, there have to be two lines from both parents going to one child to be able to express what you are expect to express. As you can understand, this would be totally different design, it would look differently, it would have more lines, and what is more important here, it will inevitable have line intersections. Our current design avoids those most of the time.

Yes, that is possible too, but again, that would be different design and we don’t have that implemented yet.

Ludwig

Andrey
Andrey, thanks a lot for your detailed answer. My proposal tries to use less lines, not more. Just a single line to the mother, no line to any partner/spouse. That would always be correct. The only drawback is that if the current partner/spouse happens to be the father, this relation will not be outlined. As the romans say: pater semper incertus.

best,
Ludwig

Andrey

Ludwig Thank you for clarification. Probably, that would be better approach for complicated cases. However I can clrearly see how this approach may provoke a backlash from more traditional families.