Talk: Spouse

Not concubine

"Spouse" means husband or wife.

"Partner", please.

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:36, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, we call the field partner, the children fields become children-p1, children-p2, etc. and the description, like that for "state" has the more elaborate "Spouse/partner". How does that sound?

BTW- this is an example of an ontological discussion that people have endless debates on. I will go along with whatever the community concensus is on these sorts of things, but believe me, you are going to have a lot of folks come at you with "my ancestor X or Y was proud of their identity as a husband/wife. They never considered themselves "partners", and it maligns and denigates the character of their relationship. I am not going to be a member of this website and I will come here and delete anything that mentions them as partner. I hate you, etc etc. " For these cases, you could continue support of the field "Spouse" and Spouse becomes a subproperty of Partner, so that all searches for the broader term partner will pick up those encoded with spouse. But then, if wikipedia is any guide, there will inevitably grow up a "correctness police" that will go around assuring that everone encoded as spouse actually were legitimately married, and the inevitable unfortunate battles over whether someone's ancestor was actually a bastard or not. Well, that is a party I personally would rather not attend. But we have to plan for genealogies success, and if it does take off, this sort of thing could get out of hand. I would recommend pre-empting the whole bastard debates by banning "spouse" or any synonym equated with "married" status.

This is similar to the naming of "state". To make it accurate for 99% of the cases, you should name it "national subdivision", though pedants would assert that "nation" is not correct for empires- where each country is still a separate nation though having a relation to the larger empire. And perhaps "empire" is not correct for supernational entities like the EU. We could call the field "subdivision"- something that is ambiguous because county is also a subdivision, but we will be sending tons of folks to the Help files just to encode a simple place, even though 99% of the people can read "state/province/oblast" and know perfectly well that "department" corresponds to this field. It doesn't get heated until you start talking about whether England/ Scotland in present day is a "state/province", or should continue to be referred to as a separate nation as they once were.

Perhaps we will be lucky enough to have such problems because it also would mean that we would have a large population of regular contributors (tens of thousands). At these volumes, we run into the statistically inevitable individuals with moderately sociopathic tendencies. At this point maybe the hippies and pioneers that started familypedia head for the hills. I have a thick skin and really don't mind much. I think it is startling though how much time folks spend on this sort of thing at WP (eg take a look at the current arbcom proceedings on date delinking) when there are much bigger fish to fry. -~ Phlox 16:52, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Excellent essay, my friend. Must have broken the tedium of all that impressive serious work you are recording on the 05 notes page, which I follow at my peril.

Humanity doesn't fit into neat boxes. (Take the various meanings of "state". No, don't take them, just be aware of them: most countries regard themselves as states.) I think the term "marriage partner" is common enough for folks proud of their rings to accept that we need one word irrespective of legalities. The alternative is "my ancestor X was proud of her identity as a wife. She would be, and I am, aghast to see a King's mistress called "spouse": it maligns and denigrates the character of our upright relationships. I am not going to be a member of this website except that I will come here and delete any page that mentions any illegitimate relationship. I hate you, etc etc."

— Robin Patterson (Talk) 13:57, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Yep, yep. Then there is the one about adoptive children of same sex couples. Two parents that the child thinks of as their family. Two mothers? Okeydokey. Father/mother can just be thought of as gender neutral in that case- parent1 and parent2 Is familypedia about genetics or family cultures? Nurture or nature? Well, I think it is all very important, and I hope folks would just not try and force others into their povs. Somewhat related subject to file away somewhere- in the adoption case I have made a property "Genetic father" and Genetic Mother. If the field does not exist, then father/mother is assumed to be genetic. If people start to care about this sort of thing, then the software will have to be modified somewhat to make the distinction. I am willing to wait to see if it is a big deal before doing anything. -~ Phlox 16:47, 22 May 2009 (UTC)

Spouse

The spouse label in the infobox was changed to spouse/partner a few years later at the request of a Baronet who assured us that he did not espouse the mother of his first child. -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:19, November 20, 2015 (UTC)

Adoption

Discussion at Property talk:Joined with; possibly not the best page but it was the first relevant property I found in a search for "adoptive". -- Robin Patterson (Talk) 11:19, November 20, 2015 (UTC)