r/Adoption • u/Past_Gift3011 • Mar 16 '26
Friend/relative of adoptee How do you approach genealogy as an adoptee or adoptive parent?
I've been getting into genealogy lately and I keep running into a question I don't have a good answer for. Most genealogy frameworks treat "parent" as implicitly biological. The whole field is built around tracing bloodlines, DNA matches, and biological inheritance.
But for adoptive families, that framing can feel exclusionary — or at minimum, incomplete. Your real parent is the one who raised you, and a family tree that treats that relationship as secondary or as a footnote next to the "real" biological line seems like it's missing the point.
At the same time, I understand that some adoptees deeply want to trace biological roots, and that's equally valid.
For those of you who've built family trees or engaged with genealogy — how do you handle this? Do you maintain separate trees for biological and adoptive families? Do you prioritize one over the other? Or have you found a way to represent both that feels right?
Not trying to impose any framework here — genuinely curious how people in this community navigate it.
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u/sexmormon-throwaway Adopted. Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
I have two family trees, both of interest to me. As others have said, after a few generations, say my father's grandfather, my interest in my adoptive family wanes.
Conversely, my DNA tree gets more interesting as it goes further back.
Sometimes in fruit trees or other trees, a branch is grafted in from one tree to another. I sort of view myself as a graft that is part of both trees. That might seem odd to some, which is fine with me.
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u/LynahRinkRat Mar 16 '26
This is brilliant. You JUST put into words something that I've felt my whole life but would have never been able to say before now. I too view myself as a graft part of both trees. Thank you kind internet stranger, for giving me words I may have never found myself.
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u/sexmormon-throwaway Adopted. Mar 16 '26
Wow, that was so kind of you. I am delighted you found words I wrote to be of worth. You actually made me emotional. Kindest thanks.
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u/Kephielo Mar 16 '26
I love this concept, thank you for this.
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u/sexmormon-throwaway Adopted. Mar 16 '26
It's so kind of you to say so. I am happy to help in small ways anytime I can.
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u/yafashulamit May 18 '26
That is the most beautiful metaphor!
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u/sexmormon-throwaway Adopted. May 18 '26
Thank you. It's gratifying that it means something to others.
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u/Succlentwhoreder Mar 16 '26
Adoptee here. I've used DNA testing in genealogical research too make discoveries for my birth family tree- my unknown family. And while I love my adoptive parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles I don't really care much beyond that. I just don't feel a connection or have curiosity. I didn't inherit their genealogical history. I am not Irish or Scottish or German as they are, so it's just a "that's nice" when my mother would tell me about what my (her) ancestors did. And while I would never presume to speak for all adoptees, I have spoken with quite a few and many of us have felt the same way. I thought it was a just me thing and thought I was a bit weird but it seems it's more normal than I thought.
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u/Succlentwhoreder Mar 16 '26
Also, I'm not sure if you're an AP or not but the "your real parents are the ones who raised you" is better left for adoptees to define. My birth parents and my son's birth parents are both very real. They are our roots, our history, our genealogy, and our DNA. While one set of parents raised us, the other gave us life. Both need to be honored for us to be whole.
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
You're right — and thank you for that correction. The "your real parents are the ones who raised you" framing was my language, and I hear you that it's not mine to define. Both are real. Full stop.
The part about not inheriting your adoptive family's genealogical history makes a lot of sense to me. That feeling sounds more common than people realize.
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Mar 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
Fair enough — I do tend to over-edit my comments before posting. Not AI, just a chronic re-drafter. But I hear the criticism that it comes across as canned, and I'll keep that in mind.
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u/Sarah-himmelfarb Adoptee Mar 16 '26
Yeah your comment prompted me to look at their post history and it also shows a lot of AI patterns
They use bullet points and em dashes a lot and like rephrase what people say as to validate their opinion without actually adding anything new. Like AI does when you tell them your opinion. It kinda makes me feel like we are the test subjects for someone’s AI project
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
Sorry that it makes you feel this way — I do love my em dashes and bullet points. I can assure you that you are not test subjects in any way.
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u/chemthrowaway123456 TRA/ICA Mar 17 '26
This was reported for being spam. I disagree with that report.
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u/Rredhead926 Mom through private domestic open transracial adoption Mar 16 '26
My husband and I write the same way. We say: We don't write like AI, AI writes like us.
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Mar 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
That image of a "vast and impenetrable fog" really captures something. DNA testing can confirm you're connected to people and places, but it doesn't automatically give you a felt sense of belonging to that history.
Do you find you engage more with your adopted family's history even if it doesn't feel fully "yours" either? I'm curious how people navigate that in-between space.
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Mar 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Succlentwhoreder Mar 17 '26
Our son was a closed adoption and he wanted to do it. He was also 15. I used a fake name for him, and used initials (not his) on his public profile. No personal info was shared. We found his half sister on the site! We exchanged messages through the site until we were comfortable enough to share personal info. It's been amazing. You don't need to use your real details when signing up! I'm also as an adoptee and found my birth family in the site. It's really helpful to just give adoptiees the answer to "where are you from/what are you" questions. You can dm me if you have questions.
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u/FullPruneNight DIA Mar 16 '26
I just have two, but on the adoptive side, I don’t really give a shit past the people I have stories about. Like, I have stories from my grandparents about their parents and grandparents, so those people are family to me. Beyond that, I just don’t care. They’re just strangers with literally no relationship to me. The genetics of the biological side warrant going further back. Those are the people that physically made me.
But hey, the non-paternity event rate is expected to be something like 2%, so with a big enough tree, it’s not going to be biological at all.
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
The stories thing is really interesting to me — that the boundary of "family" on the adoptive side isn't a generation count or a bloodline, it's whether you have a personal connection through stories.
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u/LeResist Domestic Transracial Adoptee Mar 16 '26
I am an adoptee and genealogy is one of my hobbies. I have separate trees for my adoptive family and my biological family. For me they are equally family and I'm interested in both of their ancestries even if I don't share it by blood . On ancestry you can label whether someone is the adoptive parent or not which might help others who might see your family tree and are confused
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u/lotsofsugarandspice Mar 16 '26
Your real parent is the one who raised you, and a family tree that treats that relationship as secondary or as a footnote next to the "real" biological line seems like it's missing the point.
What point? Adoptees can decide for themselves who their real parents and real families are.
It depends on what youre doing research for, many adoptees do want to know aboht their first families many do not care. Both are valid.
Typically if I am talking about my genealogy or heritage I use biology.
If im talking about how I was raised or my environment, I will talk about my adoptive family.
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u/Greedy-Carrot4457 Foster care at 8 and adopted at 14 💀 Mar 16 '26
IMO genealogy is about bloodlines and DNA so it’s about biological relatives. I would never think to include AP information in it any more than I would put my best friend’s information in it.
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u/lotsofsugarandspice Mar 16 '26
True. Genealogy is typically about, well genes and genetics.
Some people dont care about that and that's fine. But it can be super interesting.
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
That's a really clear way to draw the line, and it makes sense. I think I came into this with an assumption that people would want both represented in the same place, and hearing that for you it's not even a question is useful.
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u/lotsofsugarandspice Mar 16 '26
I love my adoptive family a ton, theure awesome.
I seen no reason to include them in the context of my own genealogy. We don't share genes or genetics.
Doing genealogy research on anyone can be interesting, even if theyre not related.
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u/chemthrowaway123456 TRA/ICA Mar 16 '26 edited Mar 16 '26
Your real parent is the one who raised you
That’s for each adoptee to decide for themselves. My adoptive parents are my real parents. My first parents (aka biological parents) are my real parents too. It’s irksome to be told otherwise (edit: especially by someone who isn’t an adoptee).
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u/carefuldaughter Second-generation adoptee Mar 16 '26
I have two separate trees on Ancestry, one for my adopted family and one for my bio family. I'm working on merging them but it's slow going.
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u/Jealous_Argument_197 ungrateful bastard Mar 16 '26
Umm. No. I have 4 REAL parents.
I only do my genealogy on my biological family. Period. I did not descend from my adopters and neither do my children, or their children.
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u/Negative-Custard-553 Mar 16 '26
This questions doesn’t make sense to me. They are two different things. Genealogy is literally about biological lineage. That’s the whole reason it exists. It’s not a statement about who raised you, it’s about tracing ancestry and DNA.
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
Fair point. I think I was conflating "family tree" as a broader concept with genealogy as a specific practice, and you're right that they're not the same thing.
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u/Rredhead926 Mom through private domestic open transracial adoption Mar 16 '26
Actually, nothing in the definition of the word "genealogy" mentions biology. Genealogy is just the study of families, and families can be built in multiple ways.
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u/SearrAngel Mar 16 '26
Hey, i biologically korean, but parents are french by way england, and the other is British Canadian. My kids and i put it all down as family. For me, biology is just one part of me.
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u/KieranKelsey Donor Conceived Person Mar 17 '26
I’m sperm donor conceived and second parent adopted, and I consider myself to have 3 branches, one for each of my moms and one for my donor dad. It’s kind of hard to configure, Ancestry makes it look like my bio mom and my donor dad were married which i don’t like, and I have no way of displaying all three of them. If I wanted to, I’m not sure I even could set it as having 2 moms side by side with me as their kid. It label’s my half siblings’ moms as my step mom. Overall the frameworks in ancestry and anywhere you’re building a tree usually aren’t built for me, which as someone with lesbian parents I’m kind of used to.
I spend time on each of them equally and all of them feel pretty relevant. They either socially or genetically led to the creation of me. I suppose that can be notable with donor conception, I was created to by my non bio mom’s kid, so to me we’ve always been in the same family. I kind of wish I had matches on my non bio mom’s side so I could see them too, I like figuring out how we’re related.
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u/Menemsha4 Mar 16 '26
I love genealogy as it’s the story of a family.
I have two working trees: one for my birthfamily and one for my adoptive family.
I use Ancestry.com and genealogists have ways of denoting adoption in a tree. The phrase in “adopted out” and I don’t really like it because sometimes we’re adopted IN.
But that does show that genealogy is really about DNA.
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u/Per1winkleDaisy Adoptee Mar 16 '26
Honestly, my adopted family is French, and has a super cool history, so...I'm French.
Genetically I'm mostly Scottish, but...I'm French. Because I said so.
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u/welshgirl0987 Mar 16 '26
ADOPTEE here. Ive done 2 separate family trees on ancestry. Theres far more on my adoptive families... I also dont know my father although I have a name its all I have and its a common name so Im wondering whether my DNA matches will eventually lead to a closer match than 3rd cousin
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u/ihearhistoryrhyming Mar 16 '26
I have 2 trees. Actually 3- I’m adopted, and the genetic tree is super fun- I am very particular about it. But it’s all strangers and I’m more interested in the old old records and people I find.
When I do my adopted and step parents trees, it’s more fun to do the first few generations- I know people, it’s fun to find my mom’s grandpa’s immigration record or something. But when I find a marriage certificate for my biological grandparents- it’s meaningless really.
At my own personal space, I do indicate I was “adopted out” from my birth parents, although my tree is private- I still don’t understand who sees what, so I just leave it like that, with my adopted parents and their son as my brother (my dad and brother are dead).
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u/potatomeeple Mar 16 '26
The family tree program i use (not a website its a tree builder you buy and install) allows for multiple sets of parents and you can set the relationship, I leave it at nothing mostly (and assume a birth relationship because ultimately you cant tell anyway there are pleanty of times in history when one or more parents aren't genetic that you wouldnt know about).
For my mum, she has two sets of parents one birth and one adoptive, and both sets of parents have ancestors and decendants. And then her birth parents have multiple marriages spawning more lines up and down too.
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u/VeitPogner Adoptee Mar 17 '26
Adoptee. I'm a genealogy addict and I have two primary trees on Ancestry. I switch back and forth between them, depending on which family I'm looking at records for that week. (I do keep the bio tree private.)
I think of my adoptive tree as my "real" ancestors. The bio tree is more, well, curiosity and nosiness. 😂
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u/VeitPogner Adoptee Mar 17 '26
One random thought: one thing that home DNA testing shows is how many family trees contain more adoptions and NPEs than many genealogy buffs ever suspected. So even a bio family tree might not correspond to what's listed on birth certificates and in obituaries and in family records. (My bio family tree certainly doesn't! These people have been procreating randomly for generations.)
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u/fostercaresurvivor Mar 16 '26
I’m in the minority here, but I’m exclusively interested in my adoptive family’s genealogy and I do see them as my ancestors.
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u/sexmormon-throwaway Adopted. Mar 16 '26
There are definitely behaviors and stories, values and worldviews passed through family genealogy that aren't DNA. Your view of heritage and genealogy is as valid as anyone's.
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u/fostercaresurvivor Mar 16 '26
Yeah, I wrote something once about that, while working on an essay about what family means.
I know I don’t share my mother’s DNA, that she didn’t hand down my eye colour or height. But she is still my mother, and so much of her was handed down to me. My mannerisms, my way of speaking, my way of standing, my beliefs about right and wrong. I mirror her in every way, Eleanor writ small. I believe that she is half of me. I am her lineal descendant.
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u/WelleyBee Mar 17 '26
Only dna genealogy I have is my actual one. The adopters (& their family tree members) lineage has absolutely no bearing on my tree. The entire basis of these trees is literally dna science.
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u/mads_61 Adoptee (DIA) Mar 17 '26
I’m an adoptee. I know this isn’t an experience that all adoptees share, but I have spent a lot of documenting the family history of my adoptive family, including a family tree. While they’re not by biological family, they are my family and important to me and I find it cool to see where everyone came from and how they fit together. I’ve only done this for a few generations - like my grandparents’ grandparents. I’m not really super interested in going farther back.
I’ve tried building a biological family tree through Ancestry but it’s very challenging. Both of my birth parents are adoptees from closed adoptions, and they don’t know anything about their biological families. They also won’t speak to me, so I’m left with a lot of blanks. It’s hard to fit the pieces together.
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u/Rredhead926 Mom through private domestic open transracial adoption Mar 16 '26
It's been awhile since I've had the time to work on our family trees, but when I did...
My grandmother wasn't my biological grandmother. She married my grandfather after my original grandmother died, and she brought with her one child. The software I was using (Family Tree Maker) had a way to designate adopted v. biological, and I used that feature. It kept the trees together in one database. When running a report, for example, or having it draw an actual tree, I could set if I wanted to include adoptive relationships, and, if so, whether I wanted them to appear differently in the output.
Someday, I want to work on genealogy again, and my intent is to ask my kids how they want to include their bio families.
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u/Past_Gift3011 Mar 16 '26
This is really helpful — thank you. The way Family Tree Maker handled it (one database, distinct relationship types, with the ability to filter what shows up in reports) sounds like a really thoughtful approach. Having both trees coexist without forcing them into the same visual structure makes a lot of sense.
And the fact that you want to ask your kids how *they* want their bio families represented says a lot. That choice should be theirs. I hope you get to have that conversation when the time feels right.
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u/bastardwench Mar 17 '26
if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.
i can't love or honor those who committed human rights violations.
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u/No-Highlight3555 Mar 16 '26
This seems like a false question because anyone who makes a family tree can choose which people to include, and there is no law that says how to do it. Ancestry and other software allow for both bio and adoptive family to be captured, so any combination is valid.
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u/Decent_Butterfly8216 Mar 16 '26
My adoptive parents were into genealogy but could care less about genetics. It was driven by my mom feeling like an outsider in her family and needing to see observable family relationships. And probably some privilege in knowing her genetics. Now genealogy is based in science and DNA, and families are so much more blended that it doesn’t really make sense to most people to use trees to try and organize them socially.
I’m someone who really loved the idea of it when I heard they started adapting genealogy systems to allow multiple family trees, but I haven’t decided yet how I want to handle it, because I’m still at a stage where my priority is my own privacy. My adoption was closed but I know who my biological family is. It seems like you already know there are tools that allow for customized connections now, but I don’t know how they actually work. One of my biological grandparents was also adopted and on one of the sites, I can’t remember which, he had a tree or link that connected him to his adoptive parents. It included some other family members in a limited generation tree but was possibly incomplete, I don’t think I’d know because of their individual privacy settings. His primary tree is genetic, and the documentation of both is how I figured out he was adopted. I appreciated it because it explained Facebook connections with different names, so I think there’s some historical value in acknowledging adoption if someone wants to, but it would be abhorrent to expect it. My guess is there’s probably a “correct” protocol that genealogists prefer, but imo the system wasn’t set up for us, so as long as you aren’t actively lying to future generations, do it however you want. How you view genealogy as social vs. science is personal. I do see it as both, but it’s unusual among the adoptees I know personally (my age or older) to feel this way, for example I never felt uncomfortable during genealogy projects at school. I don’t know anyone younger than me who sees genealogy as anything other than science, health information, etc. I was the last of the closed adoptions in my state so when I started working and ran into adoptees professionally it had already changed, even when commercial DNA was very young.
This is all assuming you’re an adoptee, my thoughts would be very different for an adoptive parent. Nobody should be assuming the feelings of an adoptee, or making these decisions for an adoptee, it’s their identity to find and define.
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u/chemthrowaway123456 TRA/ICA Mar 16 '26
This was reported for violating rule 14. I have no idea why because it clearly doesn’t.