Male

How to read it

Genograms draw every person as a shape, and the square is the male; a circle is the female. SAMHSA’s guide to family therapy, social work training guides in the United States and the United Kingdom, and the medical pedigree all use the same pair. The University of North Dakota’s child welfare guide writes the age inside the square and the name next to it, and Washburn University’s guide adds the date of birth. A death is shown by an X through the square, and the index person, the one the genogram is drawn around, has a double outline.

Also searched as: genogram male, male symbol, square genogram.

Gender on newer genograms and pedigrees

The National Society of Genetic Counselors revised its pedigree symbols in 2022 so that the shape records a person’s gender, not the sex assigned at birth: a square for a man or boy, a circle for a woman or girl and a diamond for a nonbinary or gender-diverse person. A transgender man is a square with AFAB (assigned female at birth) written under it, and a square with no note is a cisgender man. The society advises against the circle inside a square that the National Comprehensive Cancer Network had recommended, saying transgender people did not favour it.

Genogram guides differ. The Multicultural Family Institute’s standard symbol sheet and the 2021 Research in Practice guide for social workers still draw a transgender person as one shape inside the other, which the Institute’s sheet labels man to woman or woman to man. The Research in Practice guide and a University of Texas at Austin social work guide add a separate symbol for a nonbinary person.

When the sex isn’t known

The University of North Dakota’s guide uses a triangle for a person whose sex is unknown, such as a great-grandparent’s sibling or a stillborn child. The 1980 genogram legend in The Journal of Family Practice and the genetic counselors’ pedigree use a diamond. In SAMHSA’s guide a triangle is a Pregnancy.