Is there any similarity between the different child types? In other words, would any of the different child recrods use the same fields?

I think I would lean more toward one child table, and add a new table named ChildTypes. Each child record would have a foreign key from the ChildTypes table. If a new child type is needed, you can simply add a record to the ChildTypes table. This will also makes your views of the data easier. No need to worry about joining sibling tables.

This would leave you with blank fields in the child table for different ChildTypes, but who cares, disk space is cheap *g*? And besides, Fox already does this with their *.frx tables.

>I'm not sure how to explain this. I have a parent-child relation, but there can be different types of children. I'm wondering if I should make a different child table for each type of child, or or try to homogonize them into one child with a field telling what type they are.
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>Having different tables would be good because I need to store different data about different children. The problem is that if I need a new child type, I need a new table.
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>Does this make any sense?
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>Thanks,
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>Michelle