The nuclear family—parents and their children—is the primary structural unit used throughout this site. This choice is intentional, methodological, and practical.
It is not a statement about worth, value, or legitimacy. It is a way of making lineage readable.
A Structural Choice, Not a Social Judgment
Families exist in many forms, and those forms have varied widely across time and culture. This project does not attempt to rank them.
The nuclear family matters here because it provides the clearest and most consistent framework for tracing responsibility, inheritance, and continuity across generations.
Where Continuity Is Most Visible
Genealogy is ultimately about transmission: of names, property, values, occupations, migrations, and obligations. These transmissions most often occur within the parent–child relationship.
By focusing first on nuclear families, patterns become easier to see and harder to distort.
Preventing Abstraction
When family history is traced without a clear household core, lineage can become abstract—reduced to branching charts without lived meaning.
Nuclear families anchor individuals in real relationships, shared environments, and overlapping timelines.
How Extended Families Fit In
Extended families, collateral lines, and community networks are essential to understanding how people lived. They are not excluded here.
They are introduced once the core relationships are established—so that context builds outward rather than collapsing inward.
Modern Families and Living Generations
In recent generations, family structures are more varied and private. This project reflects those realities while still using nuclear units as organizing anchors.
Details may be summarized or withheld for living people, but relational structure remains visible.
Why This Matters for Readers
Using a consistent structural lens allows readers to orient themselves quickly, compare generations meaningfully, and follow lineage without specialized training.
Clarity serves understanding. Understanding serves legacy.
A Closing Thought
The nuclear family is not treated here as an ideal, but as a lens. It helps reveal how families functioned over time—where continuity held, and where it fractured.