Saturday 7 February 2009

My crazy-as family

Look down... can you see it? At the bottom of the page? A small snapshot of (a very small part of) my family tree...
As requested in Week 2 of our play & learn - I've been exploring genealogy sites... My thoughts, gathered through the hour or so spent on each:
Both let you have four (possibly more) marriages for a person - the family tree programme I bought doesn't. That's a plus for my family tree...
My heritage is a bit of an arse when you stuffed up some vital info at the beginning - tip! start from the top, really! I started from me - all well & good - but then that meant I couldn't change my mother's biological father...
Geni - navigating was a bit easier than My Heritage - and you could change the info, which was a bonus. What I didn't like was the limited options, in comparison to My heritage, for relationships - Married or Divorced...
My heritage let you choose things like 'single parent'...
But in my family-land I ask: what about separated? What about divorced, but got back together & didn't remarry? What about hushed up family 'secret'? My heritage, at least, gives you the option for 'single parent'...
What about adoption? Any space for that?
Our family & social dynamics are so fluid and variable that programmes like these need to take these things into account. We don't fit in 'Mum, Dad, 4.2 children...' any more.
I have 2 relatives with 4 marriages; 2 with 3. I have relatives with adopted children - in and out (as it were); and pretty-much-permanent-foster kids. I have relatives of 'different' genders (yes, My heritage adds that option - so I could try that...)
Oh, and they do let someone be married to more than one at a time...
Anyway - will keep me amused for a while - and my family too, I'm sure...
Now... does this explain why I'm poor - look how many people I buy presents for! And my memory - keeping them all straight is interesting, to say the least.
PS Family - feedback & details for tree welcome, especially all those names I forgot!!!

4 comments:

  1. Hi The Madness of Hamsters

    Love your blog excellent!! Please can you embed your family tree into your blog to finish this exercise. You don't have to have real names if you don't want to can just have hamsters but we need this to finish the exercise either from Geni or My Heritage.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hiya - my embedded tree is right down the bottom of the page because there's no room on the sidebare

    ReplyDelete
  3. That is so cool that you can see your family tree - I love the colours and it looks so good at the bottom of the page too.

    You have a good point about programmes having to be more flexible these days - it is not just mum, dad, and the kids in the biological sense anymore.

    Thanks for sharing your family tree - maybe I should try doing one too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Also the way Cassandra keeps expanding her family you may run out of room :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting and sharing... please share your name, too...
I'm going to check the comments first - and it might take me a while to remember to look - sorry!