Family Genogram
A live family genogram, prefilled with a fictional blended family — divorce, a remarriage, twins, and a half-sibling. Edit it into your own, or Open in full editor to start from scratch.
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.
Reading the example above
Marcus and Denise's union carries a double slash — divorced. Denise later married Alan, which is a second union line rather than a change to the first, and their daughter Nora hangs from that second union. Tyler and Beth join the first union at a single point, marking them as twins. Because children attach to unions rather than to individuals, the diagram shows without any extra notation that Nora is a half-sibling to the twins and that Alan is a stepfather to them. The emotional layer adds what the structure cannot: conflict between Tyler and his stepfather, closeness between Beth and Nora, distance between the divorced parents.
Building your own, generation by generation
Place yourself first with the doubled outline and work upward. Your parents come next, joined by the union line that describes their actual status — plain for marriage, dashed for cohabitation, slashed for separation, double-slashed for divorce, dated on the line where you know the year. Then both sets of grandparents. Only once that skeleton is right should you add siblings, half-siblings and step relations, because each one attaches to a specific union and moving unions later means moving everything below them.
Three generations is the standard target. It is not an arbitrary number: it is the shortest span in which you can distinguish a repeating pattern from a one-off event, which is the main reason to draw a family genogram at all.
What families commonly find
Patterns tend to announce themselves once three generations are on one page — divorce following divorce, a firstborn estranged in each generation, deaths or illnesses clustering at similar ages, or a family role such as caretaker or scapegoat passing down. Treat these as hypotheses rather than conclusions. A repeat is a reason to ask a better question, not evidence of causation.
Where to go next
New to the notation? Start with what a genogram is and the symbols reference, or keep the condensed key open while you draw. For a walkthrough, see how to make a genogram; for a blank starting point, the templates. If your assignment used "family tree" and "genogram" interchangeably, read genogram vs. family tree first — they are graded differently.
Family genogram FAQ
›What is a family genogram?
A family genogram is a diagram of a family across at least three generations that records both structure — births, deaths, marriages, divorces, who lived with whom — and the quality of relationships between members, using standard symbols. It is the general-purpose form of the genogram, as distinct from focused variants such as the medical or cultural genogram.
›How do I make a family genogram for an assignment?
Work upward from yourself: place yourself with the doubled outline, add your parents and their union type, then your grandparents, then siblings and any half or step relations. Add birth and death years, then the emotional layer, and finish with a legend and a short written interpretation of the patterns you see. Most rubrics award marks for consistency and the legend as much as for the content.
›How do I show a blended or step-family on a genogram?
Draw each union separately, marking the ended ones with a slash for separation or a double slash for divorce, then hang each child from the union they belong to. Because children attach to unions rather than to individuals, half-siblings read correctly without extra notation, and a stepparent shows as a partner in a later union with no child line to the earlier children.
›How far back should a family genogram go?
Three generations is the standard and is usually enough — it is the minimum span in which a pattern can be seen to repeat. Going further back adds width fast and rarely adds insight unless a specific inherited condition or a documented family event is the reason for drawing it.
›Is my family genogram private?
Yes. Everything in this editor stays in your browser and nothing is uploaded to a server. Exports are generated locally on your own machine.