Adoption
A dashed line down from the parents to a child means the child is adopted. The year of adoption is written beside it, as in A ’97.
Easily confused with
How to read it
Washburn University’s guide uses a dotted vertical line for adoption or foster care. The Multicultural Family Institute’s sheet tells the two apart: a dashed line for an adopted child, with the year after an A, and a dotted line for a foster child, while a biological child’s line is solid. When a child moves from one family to another, the Institute’s sheet and the 2021 Research in Practice guide draw an arrow to the family into which the child moved, with a note such as adopted at 5.
Also searched as: adopted child genogram, adoption symbol, genogram adoption.
This explains what a symbol records on a genogram. Clinicians vary the notation, and a genogram’s own key takes precedence.
Adoption in the medical pedigree
The National Society of Genetic Counselors’ pedigree draws brackets round every adopted person. A dashed line of descent joins the child to the adoptive parents and a solid one to the biological parents, the same dashed-for-adoption rule as on a genogram.
Look-alikes
A dashed line across beneath two partners is not an adoption but Cohabitation, a couple living together.
Read next
- Next in Genogram symbolsClose relationshipTwo parallel lines drawn straight between two people mean a close relationship.
- The same shape in African flagsFlag of EthiopiaEthiopia’s flag is green, yellow and red in equal horizontal stripes with a blue disc in the centre holding a yellow star of equal lines with yellow rays. Ethiopia’s Flag Proclamation makes the green labour, fertility and development, the yellow hope, justice and equality, and the red sacrifice and heroism for freedom and equality; the blue disc is peace and the star the unity of Ethiopia’s nations, nationalities and peoples.
More genogram symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with circles, lines or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- GenoGrams, Jay Memmott, Department of Social Work, Washburn University, Basic Symbols, slide 9
- Standard Symbols for Genograms, The Multicultural Family Institute (copy on a PBworks course wiki), Pages 1 and 3
- Using genograms in practice, Practice Tool, Hannah Scott, February 2021, Research in Practice (The Dartington Hall Trust), Figure 3, page 13
- Practice resource-focused revision: Standardized pedigree nomenclature update centered on sex and gender inclusivity: A practice resource of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, Robin L. Bennett, Kathryn Steinhaus French, Robert G. Resta and Jehannine Austin, Journal of Genetic Counseling 31 (2022): 1238–1248, National Society of Genetic Counselors (Wiley), Figure 3, Pedigree line definitions; section 4.2
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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