What traditional genealogists call a birth event isn't a birth event at all.
It may be hard to believe this, but traditional genealogy does not recognise a birth event. Traditional genealogy seems to recognise a birth event, and traditional genealogy software seems to support it, but it does not.
Traditional genealogists rarely talk about birth events, they tend to focus
on connecting individuals through family records
, but when they
do talk about birth events, they are not really talking about birth events.
What traditional genealogists call a birth event isn't a birth event at all.
TheBIRTevent in the GEDCOM specification has as little relationship to an actual birth event as itsFAMrecord has to actual families.
The confused notions of traditional genealogy have been captured in
FamilySearch's GEDCOM specification.
The BIRT event in the GEDCOM specification
has as little relationship to an actual birth event as its FAM record has to actual
families.
In GEDCOM, a BIRT event is no more than a generic event - a date, and perhaps a time, combined with a place
- optionally combined with a FAMC link to a FAM record. That FAM
record typically identifies a couple, who may or may not have formed a family at
some time, but are thus identified as the parents.
INDIVIDUAL_RECORD :=
n @XREF:INDI@ INDI {1:1}
…
+1 <<INDIVIDUAL_EVENT_STRUCTURE>> {0:M}
...
+1 <<CHILD_TO_FAMILY_LINK>>
+1 <<SPOUSE_TO_FAMILY_LINK>>
…INDIVIDUAL_EVENT_STRUCTURE :=
[
n [ BIRT | CHR ] [Y| <NULL>] {1:1}
+1 <<INDIVIDUAL_EVENT_DETAIL>> {0:1}*
+1 FAMC @<XREF:FAM>@ {0:1}
…CHILD_TO_FAMILY_LINK :=
n FAMC @<XREF:FAM>@ {1:1}
The BIRT tag occurs inside the INDI record, which already includes a FAMC link
to a FAM record.
As far as I know, all traditional genealogy software uses INDI.FAMC to link
to a FAM record, and none uses INDI.BIRT.FAMC, but
that hardly matters; either way, the birth event is tied to the family
record
, which identifies a father and a mother.
The GEDCOM birth event itself does not have a father or mother attribute.
Neither the father nor the mother is explicitly identified with the event. Both the
father and mother are implied by the FAMC link of the INDI
record.
That is how the GEDCOM birth event supports three key roles: the child, its father
and its mother.
This is wrong in multiple ways.
The most obvious mistake is that the father and mother identified by the
FAMC link do not belong to the birth event, or even to any other
event, but that both relationship are part of the traditional tree.
It does not seem right to call it a conclusion tree; t
here is no
clear separation between evidence and conclusion, it is not clear what is what,
everything is force-fitted into a single tree in which individuals are connected
to family records instead of each other
.
It is a conceptually confused mess that bears little resemblance to true genealogy.
In traditional genealogy, a birth event has three key roles; the child, its father and its mother. That is obviously wrong.
The GEDCOM specification lacks explicit roles on its birth event.
Some GEDCOM alternative do have roles
on the birth event. CommSoft's Event GEDCOM
has three roles on the BIRT event; child, father, mother. Tom
Wetmore's DeadEnds data model has the same three roles.
Many GEDCOM alternatives are quite similar to GEDCOM, and treat birth as no more than an generic event that's an attribute of an individual record within a single traditional tree. That the birth event has three key roles is not stated explicitly, it is assumed to be obvious. The father and mother role are implied by the link to the parents in the tree.
The traditional genealogist thinks of a birth event as involving a child, its father and its mother. In traditional genealogy, a birth event has three key roles; the child, its father and its mother. That is obviously wrong.
A human birth involves the child and its mother. The father need not be
present. The father need not even be alive, because the birth event does
not involve the father at all. The father is involved in the conception of
children, but has no part in either gestation or childbirth.
The father may be present to witness the event, he may make photographs, he may
become an official witness on the birth certificate, but the father still isn't
part of the birth event itself.
What we call a birth certificate is really a conception certificate with a birth date on it.
What we call a birth certificate is really a conception certificate with a birth date on it.
A birth certificate includes the father because the father was involved in conception of the child, because the father is of emotional and social significance, because the identity of the father is of legal importance. The father is recorded because we wish to record the father.
The quintessential mistake of traditional genealogy is that it treats official records as proof of a biological relationships. To a traditional
genealogist, the birth record is the birth event. When traditional
genealogists talk about a birth event, they do not mean the birth event at all,
they mean the (key information recorded in a) birth record. Traditional
genealogists treat the birth record as equivalent to the birth event.
The
kindest way to describe that fundamental mistake is to call it wishful thinking.
Traditional genealogy may fit everyday behaviour, taboos and silent assumptions,
but it does not fit reality.
A birth event and a birth record are two different things.
A birth event and a birth record are two different things. A birth event is a biological
event involving a child and its mother, a birth record is an official
registration of a birth, that links a child to its official parents. The parents
identified in a birth record may be different from the biological parents. They
will often be the same, but deliberately assuming that they are the same is
wrong. That's simplistic genealogy. Teaching people to make that assumption is
dishonest.
Official records aren't biology. A birth event and a birth record are two
different things.
Copyright © Tamura Jones. All Rights reserved.