We are family...

I've been playing with a family tree application on Facebook called 'We're Related'. It's pretty basic and has a few glitches so I'm not thrilled with it. It has made me want to work on a proper genealogy though. I think I'll need to find a private program (like not accessible through a public site like FB) that is working correctly and allows for complex family relationships. Online so far I've found a bunch of American based family tree sites, but I'm reluctant to use those and pay for it as well. An American database won't help me too much as far as I can tell.

On a related note (ha ha), I'm fairly appalled that I don't know the maiden names of all my grandmothers and great-grandparents. What a shocking display of ignorance about my own family. There's a social commentary to be had about why women's names are forgotten/supplanted by the husband's family name, and the ridiculousness of that fact when you consider there's no way to accurately track true genealogies through a father's line. Think about it -- unless you track via DNA, children can only be proven to be a mother's and the father could potentially be anyone. Not that I suspect every woman of sleeping around. Scandal!