Genograms

I'm still pretty new to family history and genealogy (though I can now spell it correctly at will). I really enjoy tracking down relatives and collecting information about my family. It can still be challenging to explain to people why I like to spend time doing this. I look at it as providing context to future generations of the family. Being able to articular where you really hail from is a good feeling. There is satisfaction in solving puzzles and the list goes on...still working on the silver bullet to not only explain why, but to enlist helpers in the search for history.

As I build out the family tree there are interesting charts that you create to really see the tree. For showing the tree and layout, they are functional and look ok. However, I stumbled across another way to document a family - genograms.

A genogram is a visual, multi-generational representation of familial relationships and patterns of behavior. *

Genograms can be used to show more detailed family relationships, medical history, emotional ties and much more. This is well and good, but requires some diligence to maintain. These are very dynamic attributes; some can change on a daily basis.

The two images show the same family - the top is a standard genealogy view of the family. The bottom image is a genogram. They both show the family hierarchy, but you can get additional detail from the genogram.

 

The genogram (above) shows divorces more clearly (twp slashed in the relationship line) as well as complex relationships (conflict, hate, love). There is also provisions for showing pets. In addition to that type of information, you can show medical history - like cancer, heart disease etc. If you accurately research and document this - it can be a big help to you and your physician.

As I said, there seems to be value in both views - what I need now is one application that can track and display both!