Genogram Maker
Guide

How to Make a Genogram

To make a genogram, pick the person it is about, collect three generations of names, years, couples and health facts, draw the oldest generation at the top with children below in birth order, mark deaths and conditions, add emotional lines, and finish with a key.

Grandfather78Grandmother76Father52Mother49Aunt47Me22Brother19
Fig. 1 — The result: a basic three-generation genogramOpen in Genogram Maker

Step by step

  1. Decide who the genogram is about. Mark one person as the identified patient: you, for a family-of-origin paper, or the client in a case. Everything else is drawn in relation to them.
  2. Collect three generations of facts. For each person: name or initials, gender, birth year, death year, and any health conditions. Then the couples (married, living together, separated, divorced) and which children belong to which couple.
  3. Draw the oldest generation at the top. Grandparents go on the top row, connected by a partner line. Their children hang from that line on the row below, oldest on the left.
  4. Add partners and the next generation. Add each child’s partner beside them and draw their children one row lower. Adopted children get a dashed line, foster children a dotted one.
  5. Mark deaths, illnesses and losses. Put an X through deceased people, half-fill the symbol for a health condition, and add pregnancies or miscarriages on the couple’s line.
  6. Draw the emotional relationships. Close, distant, conflict, cutoff. These lines are usually what the assignment is really about, so add the ones your notes actually support.
  7. Add a key and check it. List every symbol and line you used. Then read the genogram back against your notes: every person, year and relationship should match.

The faster way: describe it

In Genogram Maker you can skip the drawing. Type the family in plain words, for example “My parents divorced in 2012. My grandfather died in 2015 and had diabetes. I am close to my mother,” and it drafts the genogram with the right symbols and layout. You then correct anything it got wrong and export it with the key.

Questions to ask the family

  • Who are your parents and grandparents, and are they living? What years were they born?
  • Who has been married, lived together, separated or divorced, and when?
  • Which children belong to which couple? Any adoptions, foster children or pregnancy losses?
  • What health problems run in the family: heart disease, diabetes, depression, alcohol or drug use?
  • Who is close to whom? Who doesn’t speak to whom?

Common mistakes

  • Putting siblings in the wrong order. Oldest goes on the left.
  • Drawing a child from one parent instead of from the couple’s line.
  • Leaving out people who died. They often matter most to the story.
  • No key, or a key that lists symbols the genogram never uses.