This is a scaffolding assignment to help students understand how a genogram is created and how to use the various symbols to denote family relationships, marital status, family issues, family patterns of mental illness, and substance abuse.
Develop a genogram illustration that addresses the following criteria:
- Choose a family (for this assignment this can be your own family)
- Draw three generations of genealogy, legal family, pets, and others who have played an integral role in the family, if applicable.
- Use only standardized genogram symbols.
- Show structure of family members: siblings, aunts/uncles, grandparents, remarriages, blended families (step-members and half siblings), divorces, pets, close family friends, and god families.
- List dates birth/death, dates of marriage, and divorce. Include the race, ethnicity, culture, place of birth, residency, cause of death, mental health, and substance abuse issues.
- Identify family characteristics, i.e., type of family structure, type of marriage/parental union, length of the relationship, type of family, and authority pattern (who has the power).
- Identify emotional patterns i.e., close, conflicted, cutoff, distant, unknown, passive aggressive (or fused & conflicted).
- Identify family or generational values and issues and patterns: occupation, education, hobbies, military duty, work ethic, family business, religion, addiction/recovery, incarceration, homicide, suicide, reunions, parenting style, mental illness, emigration from the country of birth, marriage within or outside the culture, sexuality, cancer, longevity, foster care, adoption, and child abuse. Every generation manifests their values and issues differently.
- Identify social patterns i.e., neighborhoods, communities, places of worship, places of work and education, social clubs
