Teaching Tools, Strategies, and Resources, continued

SELF-DISCOVERY EXERCISES
Creating Your Own Cultural Genogram, continued

Here is how it is done: Women are represented by circles; men are represented by squares. A marriage is represented by a line connecting a square and a circle. Children resulting from a marriage are shown as circles and squares on a line descending from the marriage line.

The wife in the diagram above came from Mexico (yellow) and married a Mexican American man (red), and they had three children born in the U.S. (orange). How would you draw it if the man had married two different women, the one shown from Mexico, the other an Anglo American married later? (He would have a white circle connected to him as well, and their blue children would be half siblings to the orange kids.)

We see only two generations in this diagram, and this is a nuclear family; if we could see three generations, it would be an extended family. You will be drawing a three-generation extended family, using only your grandparents, your parents’ generation, and your own generation (maybe you’d better put in your own kids before you take it home, though!).