This subject comes up all the time in genealogy circles, ususally for flat out stranger adoption, sometimes when an honest and true man marries a woman whose low-life husband has run out on her when the kid(s) were small.

The strict among us would say to enter their biological parents, if if the mother died in childbirth and the father had been eaten by a bear eight and a half months earlier. Genealogy is the study of genes, and the kids have their biological parents' genes. You put a note on the people who raised them and on the children themselves. Most programs have space for a brief biography. (In Roots Magic it is 32,000 characters, or about 5,000 words.)

There are so many people who think otherwise that the big, full-featured genealogy programs, like Roots Magic ($29) and Family Tree Maker ($39) let you enter as many parents as you wish.

The strict among us ask what to do if someone was lost in the wilderness and raised by wolves - enter "Grey Fang" as the mother? How about that high school math teacher, priest, coach, scout leader, neighbor who had a hand in the youngster's life? Shouldn't they get credit?

The lenient among us sit back, enter the adoptive parents as mother and father, then say "You're right, dear; I'm not doing genealogy; I'm doing family history. Would you like some more tea?"