Nora, if you have other families to play with, you might want to continue with your widow & see what happens. In one of my first families, I experimented to see how a childless couple would get along, so I chose 2 peeps who didn't want kids. Each time her spouse died, she emmediately got a marriage proposal! Like they were just waiting in the wings, lol. She married 3 times, and the last outlived her by about 1/2 an hour. After her 2nd hub died, it was sad to watch her mope around. She just stood in the kitchen door gazing out, at one point. I gave her lots of fruit & candies til she got that email.

I also had two different families who adopted children in their 60's! Being childless doesn't mean one should give up. You don't know really until the peeps die.

One of my adopting parents was a single man, and he ended up getting the option to adopt two children (each one an hour apart, though the same age), and he did so.

His 2nd adopted son is who inherited the house when he passed away at age 63. Both adopted boys were only 3 when he passed, so of course I chose "new generation" and the boy came back to be age 26!

The 2nd adopting family also left a little girl home alone at the age of 5, but I was able to use new generation to bring her home at age 26 and start a 2nd generation in the house. And thankfully she's had 4 children. The house is secure to be passed down!

Hmm, my first family had three children - all of them off to college - when a little girl stood at the door. Though both parents were already over sixty I couldn't leave her.
They died very soon thereafter, but I tried to keep her alone in the house from age six. It worked without a problem. She had enough food in the fridge, grew up and went to college eventually. It was sad sometimes, when she went looking for Mommy or Daddy though. At least she had her dog with her.
Happy ending is that she inherited the house and has a nice husband and two daughters by now.

it's strange, but my bigger families in my first generation were almost all adoptees. they'd have one or two, then adopt 3. in the second generation, i had some, but less. in the third generation, i have yet to have an adoptee, although i did manage to have 6 kids in one family.

I just had my mid-fifties mom & dad adopt a 3 yr old. I don't make them work because they have enough money and keep the fridge stocked and well fed. I hope they hang on until she is old enough to take care of herself and/or go to college before they pass.

Oh good! I came to check out the site specifically for this topic! I also have an older couple who've never managed to have babies. They have a LOT of money so it would be very poopie to have to end it at their generation. I've only had the adoption option once for one of my other families so I'm not holding my breath but I'm certainly not going to give up until there really aren't anymore options.
I highly suggest that anyone who has a similar problem not to give up hope and to let it play out because you never know what can happen...

Wow amazing, I came here depressed because I can't get my 3rd generation adoptee is now 41 and still hasn't made a baby! I'm so frustrated at her lol hopefully she'll get an adoption option because I'd hate tosee my family end here at the 3rd generation.

So thanks for this thread, it really kept me from starting a new one lol.

How do you have generations and adopt? My girl has had 4 kids now, with a set of twins, parents are 31 & 32? I just got this game yesterday...does it take a while to make a second generation? And can I speed up the game? Thanks

You have generations by having the kids grow up, leave home and then after at least one of the parent's die. At that time, you can either continue playing the house with just the one parent left or you can choose to go on to the next generation. If you choose to continue with the one parent, then when that parent dies you must move on to the next generation. At that time, the game will show you the oldest child and you can either pick that child or click to see the next one. If you want, you can actually go through all of them and then it will go back to the oldest child -- so it's not like when you pick a person to play or marry.

Anyway, the game will just randomly have an event where a child shows up on the doorstep and then you choose either to adopt or to call the adoption agency. If you choose to call the adoption agency, it says that the child was adopted by another loving home. Once in a while the game actually sends a child twice. Not the same child and not two at once, but will offer a child for adoption two different times to the same household. I've seen that happen once in my game -- where the family was offered kids for adoption two different times. But if there are already 5 or 6 kids, then it either won't offer it at all (if the family already has 6) or only once. 6 kids is the limit, even after some have grown and gone.

thanks for the info... just after I posted this a little boy showed up on my door step, so I adopted him