Introduction

Most kinship systems around the world use combinations of genealogical factors (e.g. father, daughter, wife) to define their terms. But some include non-genealogical factors such as 'clan', 'phratry', or 'adoption' in their definitions. The genealogical factors are built-in to SILKin, plus a feature called 'User-Defined Properties' (or UDPs) to handle everything else. Although UDPs are designed to handle factors such as adoption or clans, they may be used to document any relationship or property of interest to the User. You could define a UDP like '*profession' or '*location' or '*income.' Note that all UDP names start with an asterisk ('*') and contain all lowercase letters; this is required.

Adoption is a Special User-Defined Property

SILKin has special features to handle adoption because -- when it is a factor in kinship terminology -- it should appear on charts. Adoption works differently in different societies; hopefully these features can accomodate almost all variations:

Deleting A Special Relationship

You remove a Special Relationship (e.g. an adoption) similar to the way you remove a natural child from a family; you 'Draw Special Relationship' again between the same parent/initiator and child/recipient. Doing it once creates the special relationship; doing it again removes it.