How to Do a Kinship Chart

A kinship chart offers a simple and straightforward alternative to traditional family trees.

Kinship charts use standardized symbols and diagrams to show the rough shape of an individual's family. Cultural anthropologists use kinship charts to analyze societies, and medical professionals study hereditary illnesses and medical trends in groups using kinship charts. They differ from family trees as they focus more on the groupings that make up extended families, rather than detailed information about individual family members. Kinship charts can be drawn up quickly and easily by hand, and offer a simple graphical way to plot your ancestry.

Things You'll Need

• A2 sheet of paper (4 times the size of a standard sheet of printer paper)
• Marker
• Information on parents and other relatives

Instructions

1. Draw a triangle if you are male or a circle if you are female in the center of the page. The symbol should be around 1 inch tall. Fill in the symbol, and mark it as "ego." This symbol represents you on the chart.

2. Add a symbol of the same size for your spouse. That symbol should be in line horizontally with your symbol and approximately 3 inches away. Mark your spouse's symbol with a "W" for wife or "H" for husband. Connect the two symbols with an equal sign. Keep male symbols to the left of female symbols in any groupings or couplings on the chart.

3. Draw a 1-inch triangle or circle for each brother or sister you have, in line horizontally with your symbol. Brothers should be added to the left of the ego, sisters to the right. Mark siblings' symbols with a "B" or "S" respectively. Leave 3 inches between each sibling to allow space for their spouses and to make the chart easy to read. Add siblings' spouses if needed in the same way and join the couples with an equal sign, again keeping male symbols to the left in any couple.

4. Connect your ego symbol with those of your siblings with a horizontal line. From the center of this connecting line, draw a 4-inch line vertically up the page. At the end of this line, add symbols to denote your parents using the sizes and gaps from the previous steps, with your father on the left. Join your parents' symbols with an equal sign, and mark them "F" and "M" respectively.

5. Draw a 4-inch line vertically down the page from the equal sign joining you and your spouse. At the end of this line, add symbols to denote your children using the same sizes and distances between symbols as in the rest of the chart. Mark sons "S" and daughters "D."

6. Add your parents' siblings on the respective sides of their symbols, leaving a 3-inch gap between each sibling and placing brothers to the left of sisters. Populate the chart further with the parents and siblings of these relatives, as well as repeating the previous steps for your spouse's family.

Tips & Warnings

• Use annotations for family members that will be easy to remember, or use full names or nicknames if you prefer.

• Use square symbols for any ancestors whose gender is unclear.

References

• University of Hawaii; Kinship Exercise: How to Trace Your Family Tree; Rob Edmondson
• University of Manitoba; Kinship Diagrams, Basic Elements; Brian Schwimmer; 1995