3-Generation Genogram
A live three-generation example — four grandparents, two parents plus an aunt, and two children — laid out on clean generation bands. All names are fictional. Edit it directly, or rename the people into your own family.
Drag people to arrange. Click a person to edit their details.
Editable preview — your changes aren't saved here.
Quick start
- Add people with the ▢ ◯ ◇ buttons, then click the canvas.
- Use Connect… for marriages, children, and emotional lines.
- Click a person to edit name, years, deceased, notes.
- Drag to arrange, or hit Auto-arrange.
- Export as PNG or PDF — the legend builds itself.
Export
includes watermarkIncludes a title block and an auto-generated legend of the symbols you used.
The three bands
The layout above follows the convention that vertical position means generation and nothing else. The top band holds all four grandparents — William and Margaret on the paternal side, Harold and Joan on the maternal, with Harold marked deceased. The middle band holds the parents' generation: Michael, his sister Patricia, and Michael's wife Sandra. The bottom band holds Alex, the index person with the doubled outline, and their sister Chloe.
Keeping the bands strict is what makes a three-generation diagram readable at a glance. If a person drifts between bands, a reader can no longer trust vertical position, and the diagram has to be decoded person by person instead.
Building it in order
- Index person first. Place them at the bottom centre with the doubled outline, leaving room above for two more bands.
- Parents, with their union type. Father to the left. Mark the union — marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce — and date it on the line if you know the year.
- Both sets of grandparents. Work up each side in turn rather than alternating, which makes it easier to notice a missing person.
- Siblings, aunts and uncles. Attach each to the correct union, ordered oldest to youngest.
- Years and notes, then the emotional layer. Structure before interpretation, always — it keeps fact and inference visually separable.
What three generations lets you see
The example above is deliberately structural, with no emotional lines, so the skeleton is visible. Once you add that layer, look for repetition across the bands: the same union type recurring, an estrangement in each generation, ages at death clustering, a role such as caretaker reappearing. Anniversary effects also become visible — a crisis landing on the anniversary of a family loss is only noticeable when death years are on the page.
A repeat across three generations is a hypothesis worth exploring, not a verdict. Its value is in sharpening the next question.
Related
For the clinical reading of a three-generation diagram with the emotional layer switched on, see genograms in family therapy. For a health-history version of the same three bands, see genograms in nursing. The full walkthrough is at how to make a genogram, ready-made starting points at genogram templates, and every symbol at the symbols reference.
3-generation genogram FAQ
›What is a 3-generation genogram?
It is a genogram spanning the index person, their parents, and their grandparents. Three generations is the standard scope in clinical and academic use because it is the shortest span in which a pattern can be seen repeating rather than occurring once.
›Why three generations specifically?
With two generations you can only observe that something happened. With three you can observe that it happened again — divorce following divorce, an estrangement in each generation, illness clustering at similar ages. Bowen family systems theory treats that multigenerational transmission as the unit of interest, so three generations is the minimum useful window.
›How many people are in a typical 3-generation genogram?
Usually nine to fifteen. Four grandparents, two parents plus any aunts and uncles you include, and the index person with their siblings. Including every sibling in every branch expands the diagram quickly, so many clinicians include full detail on the index person's line and only the relevant relatives above it.
›Do I need to include aunts, uncles and cousins?
Include them where they carry information — a shared diagnosis, a caretaking role, an estrangement that echoes one below. A complete census of the extended family usually makes the diagram harder to read without adding insight. Check your rubric, though; some assignments require the full sibling set in each generation.
›How do I lay out three generations neatly?
Keep each generation on its own horizontal band so that vertical position always means generation, and never let a person drift between bands. Place fathers on the left of unions and order children oldest to youngest, left to right. Auto-arrange in the editor above aligns the bands for you once the people and lines are in.