Genogram Maker for Family Relationship Diagrams

Genogram vs family tree: what is the difference?

A family tree (or pedigree chart) answers one question: who is descended from whom. It records names, dates, and the structure of a lineage. A genogram includes all of that, then adds the layers a family tree leaves out. It captures emotional relationships — who is close, who is in conflict, who has cut someone off — and it records medical and behavioral patterns such as hereditary illness, addiction, or mental-health history. In short, a family tree maps biology and a genogram maps the family system. That extra information is why genograms are a working tool in therapy and medicine rather than just a record of ancestry.

Standard genogram symbols

• People: a square represents a male and a circle represents a female; a person whose gender is unknown is drawn as a triangle or diamond.
• Marriage and partnerships: a horizontal line connects a couple, with the male conventionally on the left and the female on the right.
• Children: vertical lines drop from the marriage line to each child, ordered oldest to youngest from left to right; twins branch from a single point.
• Status: a double slash through a marriage line marks divorce, a single slash marks separation, and an X through a symbol marks a person who is deceased.
• The identified client — the person at the center of an assessment — is often drawn with a double border so the diagram is easy to read.

Relationship lines and medical shading

The features that set a genogram apart are its relationship lines and its medical markings. Relationship lines run between two people to describe their emotional connection: a doubled line for a close bond, three parallel lines for an enmeshed (over-involved) relationship, a jagged or zigzag line for conflict, a dotted line for distance, and a line broken by a slash for an estrangement or cutoff. Medical and behavioral information is shown by shading the person symbol — for example a fully filled symbol or a colored fill tied to a legend for a specific illness, a half-filled symbol for substance use, or a small marker for a mental-health condition. A legend keeps every color and pattern unambiguous, so the same diagram reads the same way for everyone on a care team.

Who uses genograms — and why

• Family therapy and counseling: therapists use genograms to surface multigenerational patterns — repeated conflicts, triangles, and emotional cutoffs — that shape how a family functions.
• Medicine and genetic counseling: clinicians build a genogram as a structured family medical history, making hereditary risks for conditions like heart disease, cancer, or diabetes easy to spot.
• Social work: caseworkers map households, supports, and stressors to assess a family situation and plan interventions, often adding cultural and migration detail.
• Nursing: nurses use genograms in family and community health assessments to document health history and identify risk factors across a household.
• Students: nursing, psychology, social work, and medical students create genograms for coursework and clinical training to learn how to read a family system.

How to make a genogram from a description

Describe your family in plain language — who is in each generation, who is married, separated, or divorced, who their children are, and any emotional patterns or medical history you want to record. The more specific you are (for example, "a conflictual relationship between the parents and a history of diabetes on the maternal side"), the more accurate the diagram. It helps to work generation by generation — name the grandparents and their marriage first, then their children and partners, then the youngest generation — so the layout stays clear. The generator draws the people with standard genogram symbols, connects them with the correct marriage, child, and relationship lines, and includes a legend for any shading or special markers. Generate a few versions, pick the clearest, and download it for your assignment, case file, or clinical record.