Is there a way to indicate a relationship (that produced children) but was not a actually marriage?

Question

When there is a relationship that produces children, but no marriage, what is the best way to indicate that?  (other than text in the bio, of course.)

Should there be a choice on the "edit marriage information" screen to choose other possible arrangements?

Comments

Bio is it for the parents, but both parents get linked from the child/ren.

If it was a long-term relationship that may be considered Common Law, then I believe you can link them as spouses, even though some disagree (and it looks wrong on profile view "husband of", "wife of").

There's a help page on non-traditional marriages, or whatever it's called.  I'll see if I can find it.

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I see now that this has been discussed previously, (couldn't find all those when I composed this!)  So, I guess this post has morphed into a plea for WikiTree to add a qualifier to the "edit marriage info" page to allow for a variety of relationships!

Answer 1

You can add a child to two parents without connecting the parents as spouses. Explaining the relationship in the bio is the usual way to do it.

I was just working on a profile today where a man had two children with someone who was not his wife, while he was also having children with his wife. I listed out the kids in the bio to show which woman was the mother of which kids.

Answer 2

Here is the formal HELP page on the subject

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Unmarried_Parents

Comments

Thanks, Robin.  The rabbits got me sidetracked-again.  

The other page is this one.

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Thank you both.  Good info on both pages.  However...

I guess as I go through this collaboration process, the purpose of my original post has changed.  I'm going to do what we do with my profiles as recommended.  But that is what I was doing anyway.  What I really wonder now, with all the discussion that has happened on this topic elsewhere on G2G, is why we still don't have additional categories for non-marital significant relationships.  I perceive that this is "how we have always done things," but I would like to know why.

WikiTree has made some nice changes and improvements during my brief time "in the tree," many of them by collaborative request.  I guess in asking my Question I was hoping to spur some discussion and perhaps change!