About missing births in families...there could be several reasons. I have to presume you are working on births pre-1855? Dates weren't given, so I'll go on that assumption, or there would be a Registration for the birth of the tyke in question. Surname spelling sometimes poses a barrier for researching. The IGI relied on church members for the work, if they couldn't read the handwriting on the films provided, then your family member was suddenly removed from the rest of their siblings. Sometimes there was a FEE involved for registering the kiddies. Occasionally families simply refused to pay it, but it was lifted later and it was forgotten that little Amadeus wasn't registered back when. Try the Batch method of searching, it will show you ALL the names they found in a particular batch, still the IGI, but a totally different search method which sometimes works wonders. Hugh Wallis did the work on this - here is the searchpage for Scottish shires, you have to search each parish for your family, but it seems to be known which parish it was : http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountryScotland.htm#PageTitle/ Highly unlikely someone fudged the parish records for a birth thought not to be the husband's - especially if the family had births before and after that date. Regardless of who the genetic father was.....the child was the legal responsibility of the lass's husband. When doing my own research, I have to keep in mind the phrase " Mama's baby....Papa's maybe". Meaning if I have gotten my line back to the 16th century, chances are very high for some of the kiddies found along the way to not have been "Papa's". The mother carried the stigma of a rape if she spoke up after an assault [if her husband allowed her to]. Women learned to keep their mouths shut and the family intact. Am reminded of a recent family group in the US who did extensive/expensive DNA studies. It was found that one member of the group who'd spent many years of his life working on the family tree had DNA that didn't match his siblings at all, now he wonders about an adoption and evidently is working through depression. We all should know his tale isn't an extremely rare exception and more of us would find similar results with all sorts of legal pitfalls if our extended families were similarly investigated. Scary but intrigueing nonetheless. I'm sure there were horsethieves in my line and probably worse. Nothing I can do about it now. Censuses aren't mentioned in the query.....they should show snapshots of the family along the way. Good luck in all your researching ! May you find those you seek...and a few more for the rest of us. Meg Greenwood / Oklahoma USA