How to draw kinship diagrams

The lost art of creating kinship charts

I once had a professor who asked for a show of hands of those in her class who knew what a penny looked like. Every single one of us raised our hands. Then she asked us all to do her the favor of sketching a penny from memory. Doh.

In my experience, anthropologists are much the same when it comes to kinship diagrams. Of course they know what kinship charts look like! But can they draw one? Stuffy Victorians in their armchairs were doing it 150 years ago, how hard can it be? Well…

Drawing a kinship diagram is definitely not rocket science, but there is a little bit of craft involved. And kinship charts, like maps, are the opposite of helpful when you don’t understand the hows and the whys. So, I thought, what better first post for a blog about social organization than a quick-and-dirty guide to the drawing of kinship diagrams?

Step 1: Ego + parents + siblings

Fig. 1. Ego + parents + siblings.

Start in the center of your page by drawing Ego as either a triangle (for a male) or as a circle (for a female). This individual is the point of reference for all kinship systems.* Draw Ego’s mother above and to the right and Ego’s father above and to the left. Indicate their relationship to one another with an equals sign, and draw a line straight down to indicate their relationship to Ego.

Now draw a male and a female sibling for Ego. Once again, the female goes to the right and the male goes to the left. Branch the line connecting Ego’s parents and Ego to indicate the relationship of all involved.

Step 2: Add Ego’s parents’ same-sex siblings and their children

Fig. 2. Ego’s parents same-sex siblings and their children.

At this point, continue to adhere to the principle of placing females to the right and males to the left.

Draw a sister for Ego’s mother to her right; indicate their relationship via the same kind of line showing the relationship of Ego to his siblings. Draw mother’s sister’s children below her and in line with Ego, again keeping the female to the right. Indicate the relationship of the three via a branching line.

Draw a brother for Ego’s father to his left; indicate their relationship via the same kind of line showing the relationship of Ego to his siblings. Draw father’s brother’s children below him and in line with Ego, again keeping the female to the right. Indicate the relationship of the three via a branching line.

Step 3: Add Ego’s parents’ opposite-sex siblings and their children

Fig. 3. A chart showing parents’ same-sex and opposite-sex siblings.

At this point, you are going to break with the principle of placing females to the right and males to the left, if only within Ego’s parents’ generation.

Draw a brother for Ego’s mother to the right of her sister; indicate their relationship via the same kind of line showing the relationship of Ego to his siblings. Draw mother’s brother’s children below him and in line with Ego, returning to the principle of keeping the female to the right. Indicate the relationship of the three via a branching line.

Draw a sister for Ego’s father to the left of his brother; indicate their relationship via the same kind of line showing the relationship of Ego to his siblings. Draw father’s sister’s children below her and in line with Ego, returning to the principle of keeping the female to the right. Indicate the relationship of the three via a branching line.

Voilà! You have constructed a basic kinship diagram!

The results – parallel and cross cousins are distinguished

So, what did you gain by all of that? You gained a diagram which allows you to easily distinguish between parallel cousins (which you drew in during Step 2) and cross cousins (which you drew in during Step 3).

Fig. 4. Parallel and cross cousins.

And parallel and cross cousins and what they are called are important not only for understanding individual kinship systems but also for understanding the history of kinship theory and how it came about. So, I’m thinking, what better second post for a blog about kinship than a quick-and-dirty guide to classificatory and descriptive systems of kinship?

Edited, primarily for HTML markup but also some relatively minor text changes, on 13 November 2013.

Minor formatting edits on 14 September 2014.

————

*Actually, in some kinship systems Ego is a set of individuals. But let’s aim at the ten meter target for now.