Adoptive relationships on a family tree
Short answerAn adoptive parent is a legal parent in every sense, and an adopted child is a full member of the family. On a family tree, adoptive links count like birth links when naming relatives, so your adoptive mother’s sister is your aunt. You can also record birth parents alongside, if you choose.
How Family Trees counts adoption
In the kinship engine, parent links of the birth and adoptive kinds both carry the family line. Your adoptive father’s parents are your grandparents and their grandchildren are your first cousins, with no qualifier. Next to a name, the app notes “adoptive” where the link isn’t by birth, so the record stays precise.
Showing birth family too
A child can have birth parents and adoptive parents on the same tree. Link each with the right kind. If you would rather not show a birth family, leave them out; nothing in the tree depends on them.
Talking about it kindly
Say “adoptive” only where it helps. Day to day, a parent is a parent, and Family Trees uses the plain words for every relative found through an adoptive link.
Let Family Trees name it for you
Every parent link in Family Trees is birth, adoptive, step or foster, and every couple is married, partners, separated or divorced. From that, the app names each relative in plain words on their page and under How are they related?, including half, step, foster and in-law relations. It’s free for up to 100 people.
Questions
Do adopted children go on the family tree?
Yes. An adopted child is a full member of the family. Family Trees treats adoptive links like birth links when naming relatives, so cousins, aunts and grandparents read as usual.
Is an adopted cousin a real cousin?
Yes. Your parent’s sibling’s adopted child is your first cousin. You won’t share DNA through that link, but the relationship is the same.