Main parents family in Gramps

Main Parents Family

The concept of main parents family is a useful organizational structure in Genealogy. It identifies which lines are the primary targets of research and reporting.

In traditional consanguinity families, there will only be one set of parents with kinship bonds of a biologically male father and mother. So that will be the main parents family. In affinity blended families, the bond is by marriage or other relationship. This makes the main parents designation more ambiguous. It might be the adoptive or foster parents. Or research might focus on a family that has a step-parent.

In Gramps, you can designate one of the families with which a person is affiliated to be the main parents family for that person. Whenever Gramps has to decide which parents family is the most important for a person, for reports, etc, it will select based on this.

The designation is implicit rather than explicit. (As opposed to the multiple names feature where the user explicitly selects radio button to mark a 'primary' surname.) The main parents family is the first (topmost) family in the Relationship view in the parents family section.

The order can be changed by using the Change order of parents families button to display the Reorder Relationships dialog in the Relationships view. That dialog will allow you to reorder the families.

See file: master/gramps/gen/lib/person.py, get_main_parents_family_handle().