Is genealogy easy or hard or just complex?

 

Whether or not you think genealogy is easy or hard depends heavily on your background, experience, and interests. Genealogy involves using a tremendous amount of very detailed and specific information. In the online, commercial genealogy media, for some inexplicable reason, genealogical pursuits are often depicted as fun and easy. Many times the images that accompany genealogy websites show what appear to be families with very young children or younger, obviously well-to-do couples or individuals who would appear out of place in an archive or library surrounded by stacks of books. In addition, there is presently a proliferation of family activities that are intended to help children become "interested" in their family history and turn them into budding genealogists as they grow older. 

To provide my reference point, I am not a good example of growing up with any kind of genealogical support or connections. During my childhood, I was not particularly involved with anyone outside of my immediate, core family; my parents, brothers, and sisters. None of my close family members were involved in genealogical research. I did not become interested in genealogy until I was in my mid-30s and even today, I am unaware of any of my close family members that are at all interested in genealogy or family history excluding my own children. 

Genealogy can be viewed as a hobby or pastime. It can also be viewed as an academic professional pursuit. Can you imagine developing "fun and easy" legal activities to promote the idea that your children grow up to be lawyers? Unfortunately, the number of real, monetary rewarding jobs available to full-time genealogists is extremely restricted. Hypothetically, if we were to believe that genealogical research has some cultural or social benefit, it could be promoted along with entering the economy as social workers or counselors of all kinds. 

I am guessing that everyone who eventually begins doing genealogical research has their own personal reasons for developing enough of an interest to actually start learning how to do genealogical research. From my own experience, I know that only a vanishingly small percentage of the people in the world have a background that enables them to pursue a serious involvement in genealogical research. Further, as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I firmly believe that seeking out our kindred dead is an important part of our religious observance. See Vicarious Work. In essence, this is the only motivation that I personally need to be involved. 

The reality of genealogical research is that it is a difficult and complex pursuit that is most closely related to other serious historical research. Successful and validated genealogical research involves an extensive knowledge of history, geography, languages, and such specialized areas such as DNA and paleography. Yes, genealogical research involved complexity on many levels. I might also note again, that there are very few of us who are in any way monetarily supported by our involvement in genealogy. 

First, genealogical research is complex due to the sheer number of your ancestors. No matter how much work you do, every person you add to your own family tree increases the potential number of your relatives exponentially. The number of supporting documents needed also increases exponentially. Out of a sense of survival, many genealogists end up working on one or two family lines or even focusing on an individual family. However, genealogical research is also complex due to the concepts involved. As I have often noted, I would not be interested in doing genealogical research if it wasn't difficult and challenging. 

If you have been confronted by the difficulty of educating your children during a pandemic, can you reasonably believe that children want to look forward to a future that involves day after day sitting in a library or archive doing research in old records or spending endless hours online looking through the same types of records? How do you sugar-coat the reality of genealogical research? 

Now, what about people like me? I started doing research in libraries when I was about eight years old mostly by myself. How many people really envision their children sitting in a library all day or reading all day or staying up all night reading and learning? The key here is that there are people like me that are compulsive researchers. We do not need to be told what to do, we learn what we need to learn and we will do research about our families or anyone else's family as long as we can function. This is a passion, not a job. It is not taught, it is inherent. All I ask is that people don't try to prevent me from doing my research. If, as has happened, that some of my children also enjoy doing research, then that was not something that they decided to do because of a fun game we played or a particular family activity. 

Hopefully, the large genealogy organizations and companies will begin to recognize that it the core genealogists who are their most ardent supporters and that enabling us to do our work is the best way to ensure that people will in the future, become genealogists.