Genogram Interview Questions: What to Ask Your Family

A genogram is only as useful as the information behind it. You can draw a structurally correct diagram with accurate symbols and still miss the most important parts of a family's story if you only asked safe questions.

This guide provides a structured set of interview questions for gathering genogram information across three to four generations. The questions move from demographic and structural data toward personal territory, building trust before asking for vulnerability.

Why the Interview Matters

Family members often hold information they have never been asked for. Parents who divorced in the 1970s may have never explained what led to the breakdown. Grandparents who survived war, migration, or loss may carry experiences they considered too painful or irrelevant to mention.

A well-conducted interview can surface patterns the family has never articulated: emotional responses that repeat across generations, illnesses that appear with regularity, relationships that keep taking the same shape. Drawing the diagram is one skill; gathering the material is another. See the how-to-draw guide for the structural piece.

Setting the Context

Before asking a single question, explain why you are doing this. People share more when they understand the purpose.

A simple framing: "I'm putting together a genogram — basically a structured map of our family history that includes health patterns, relationships, and significant events across a few generations. It's similar to a family tree but includes more context. I'll probably ask about some things you've never been asked before. You can skip anything you don't want to discuss."

This names what you are doing, distinguishes it from a simple ancestry exercise, and gives permission to decline. People who feel they can refuse are more likely to answer freely.

Basic Structure Questions

Start with the factual, low-stakes material. This establishes the frame of the conversation and usually generates answers without difficulty.

Grandparents and great-grandparents

• What are (or were) their full names and approximate birth years?
• Where were they born? Where did they grow up?
• Are they still alive? If not, when and how did they die?
• What did they do for work?
• How long were they together? Did they divorce or separate?

Parents

• What were the circumstances of your parents' relationship — how did they meet?
• Were they ever separated or divorced?
• Did either parent remarry? Were there stepchildren or half-siblings?
• What is or was your relationship with each of them like?

Your generation (siblings, cousins)

• How many siblings do you have? What are their ages?
• Are any of them married, divorced, or in partnerships?
• Do you have close relationships with any cousins?
• Were any children in the family adopted or raised by someone other than their biological parents?

Medical and Health Questions

This section moves into territory that carries more weight. Many people have never thought systematically about health patterns in their family. Give them time to think.

• What health conditions ran in your family?
• Did any grandparents or parents have heart disease, stroke, or hypertension? At what age?
• Has cancer appeared in the family — in which members, and what type?
• Is there a history of diabetes, either type?
• Were there any mental health diagnoses — depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia?
• Any neurological conditions: Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, epilepsy?
• Did anyone struggle with their weight significantly, or have eating disorders?
• Were there pregnancies that did not go to term — miscarriages, stillbirths, infant deaths?
• Are there any hereditary conditions you know of that were passed through the family?

When noting medical history, record the condition, the family member, and the approximate age of onset. See the medical history genogram example for how this information is typically annotated on the diagram.

Relationship and Emotional Questions

These questions require more care. You are asking someone to characterize relationships that often carried complexity, pain, or love that was never straightforwardly expressed.

• Who were you closest to growing up?
• Who did your parents feel close to in their own families?
• Were there family members who were estranged, or who stopped talking to each other?
• Were there significant conflicts — long-running feuds, falling-outs over money or inheritance?
• How did the family handle difficult emotions — were things talked about directly, or not?
• Was anyone considered the "black sheep" — the person who didn't fit the family's expectations?
• Who carried the most authority in the family? Was it stated or unstated?

Pay attention to what is said with lightness and what is said with weight. A family member who describes their father as "fine, really, just not very present" is communicating something. So is the person who gets quiet when you ask about their grandparents.

Questions About Significant Events

Major life events that disrupted the family's equilibrium are often defining material for a genogram.

• Were there major moves, immigrations, or displacements in the family's history?
• Did the family experience significant financial loss or change in status?
• Were there periods of war, persecution, or political upheaval that affected the family?
• Was anyone in the family incarcerated?
• Were there accidents, sudden deaths, or tragedies that shaped the family?
• Were there pregnancies outside marriage, children given up for adoption, or family secrets that later came to light?

Some families carry long-held secrets: a pregnancy that preceded a marriage, a child placed for adoption, a death that was never fully explained. You may not learn these things in a first interview. Sometimes they emerge later, when trust has built.

Sensitive Topics: Addiction, Abuse, and Mental Health

These questions require the most careful handling. They touch on topics that carry shame, stigma, and in some cases, active trauma. Approach them slowly and after establishing rapport.

A useful framing for this section: "I want to ask about some topics that can be harder to talk about. These are things that show up in a lot of families — they don't mean anything is wrong or broken, they're just patterns worth understanding. Feel free to give me as much or as little as you're comfortable with."

Addiction and substance use

• Did anyone in the family struggle with alcohol — not social drinking, but a pattern that affected their functioning or relationships?
• Was there use of other substances — medications, drugs — that created problems?
• Were there periods of recovery? Did those hold?

Mental health and crisis

• Was anyone hospitalized for a mental health crisis?
• Did anyone take their own life, or struggle with suicidal ideation?
• Were there patterns of significant depression or anxiety that the family might have described differently — as "nerves," "being difficult," "not coping"?

Abuse and violence

• Were there relationships in the family that turned violent?
• Was there physical, sexual, or emotional abuse — in any generation?

These last questions can be especially difficult. Some people will answer directly. Some will give you partial information. Some will not answer at all. Note what was shared and what was declined, and hold the space with respect. The addiction patterns example shows how this kind of information is integrated into a clinical genogram.

Questions About Family Roles and Patterns

These questions often produce the most clinically useful answers. They are rarely asked directly.

• Who was the family's spokesperson — the person who spoke for everyone else?
• Was anyone the identified "problem" person in the family? What was their role?
• Who was expected to be the most successful? Who was expected to struggle?
• Were there clear rules, spoken or unspoken, about what could not be discussed?
• Was humor used to deflect serious topics?
• Were there significant differences in how sons and daughters were treated?
• Did the family have a clear mythology — a story it told about itself?

These questions are generative rather than factual. A person may not know the answer, or may need time before one surfaces. That is fine. Note what comes up and return to it in a second conversation.

Working with Older Relatives

Older family members hold the most important information and are the most likely to be unavailable in the future. A grandparent in their 80s may be your only living connection to the third generation.

A few practical notes on these conversations:

Choose the right setting. People share more comfortably in familiar surroundings, with adequate time and no distractions. A kitchen table with the afternoon free is better than a rushed visit.

Start with the family they came from, not their own life. Questions about grandparents and parents tend to open older relatives up. It positions them as the authority on history, which is accurate, and shifts the conversation away from the potentially sensitive present.

Listen for the edges. The things said with a change of tone — the sudden brevity, the subject-change, the "well, that's enough about that" — are often the edges of something significant. You do not need to push into those spaces, but note where they are.

Follow up. A single conversation is rarely sufficient. People remember more after they have had time to think. A second conversation, a week or two later, often surfaces things that the first one did not.

How to Record Answers

During the interview itself, take brief notes rather than trying to capture everything verbatim. Focus on facts: names, dates, conditions, relationships. Immediately afterward — ideally within an hour — expand your notes with what you remember from tone, hesitation, and what the person said around the facts.

Beyond the facts, pay attention to the order in which someone tells a story, what they begin with, who appears first. The person who starts by mentioning a dead sibling is telling you what organized their experience of the family.

If you are working with a therapist or clinician, share your notes before the next session. The genogram becomes most useful when someone trained in reading it can help you interpret what you have gathered.

A printable interview question guide is available as a free download if you want a structured form to work through with family members. Once you have gathered the information, use FamRoots to organize it into a clean, shareable diagram.