Cultural Genogram

Complete a cultural genogram in order to identify and explore how your own cultural identity can potentially impact your professional practice. This will assist the student to gain insight into how culture affects the lives of their future clients.
Create a genogram of your family, at least three generations in a Microsoft Word document. (Attached is a Genogram/Genogram paper for your reference but this is not the finished project and only attached for reference)
Indicate gender by using a circle (female) and square (male). Write in ages (if alive) and date (if deceased). Use your own relationship symbols as they relate to perceived relationships (relationships can either be distant or close. Provide me with a key to the symbols: Close, Distant, Conflicted, Enmeshed and Estranged. (doesn’t need to be factual, just make it up)
Using symbols fill in ethnic/racial/religion/language/affiliation/disability of the relationships in your family tree. Also include interethnic/racial, marriages and relationships. (doesn’t need to be factual; just make it up)
Identify for each generation any interpersonal relationships that are diverse from the family and the level of interaction with these relationships. Example: close friends, as family members, distant friends, only at work relationships, etc. (doesn’t need to be factual; just make it up)
Write a 6-page APA format paper, using Times New Roman 12 point font answering the following questions:
Write about your family of origin values. For some of you, this will include more than one diverse group and for others it may only include the group you most identify in relation to your family. To identify values you may have to use personal knowledge and experience and interviews with members of your family. Family of origin values are the ideas, beliefs, and customs that you learned growing up from parents and other caregivers. These values often originate from religious beliefs.
Section 1:
What were you taught growing up about the following?
• Money: How did your family respond to money problems? Did they struggle for survival or did things come easily to them? What did they spend their money for? Who controlled the purse strings? How did their expenditures reflect their values? How did they talk about money?
• Possessions: Did your parents have favorite possessions (house, car, pictures). If so, was the care of possessions more important to them than the care of people, or vice versa? Did your family try to keep up the Joneses?
• Crisis: What happened in family crisis such as death, illness, accident, divorce, and loss of a job or natural disaster? Did your parents respond differently to different types of crises? Who could be relied upon? Who fell apart?
• Fun: What did your family do for fun? Where? Did your parents have fun together? How did they entertain at home? Whom did they invite to the house?
• Sex Roles: What were your parent’s attitudes about maleness and femaleness? Did your father respect your mother? Did he downgrade her? Did your mother respect your father, or did she downgrade him? What roles did they play that they assumed were masculine or feminine? Did they expect you to play these roles?
• Education: What did your family say about education? Was education in itself valuable, or was it a means to an end? How much education did your parents have? Were they satisfied with it? Did they encourage you to have more? The same? Less? Were they interested, indifferent, or hostile toward your education? School? Teachers?
• Work: What kind of jobs did your parents have? Were they satisfied with them? What did they say about the jobs? Did they want you to do the same kind of work? Something better? Did they have specific attitudes about what was woman’s work and what was man’s work in the world?
Section 2: Examining your Background and Cultural Competence
Write about the opinions and attitudes related to diversity that were passed along in your family. Include any ethnic/racial perceptions/stereotypes your family may have had about other groups.
Diversity: How did your family express ideas toward people of different religious beliefs? How did they express their attitudes? Did your parents act friendly, hostile, cool or fearful toward people of different color? Different ethnic backgrounds? Different sexual orientations? What did they say? What did they do?
How have the structures of culture in your family oppressed, marginalized, alienated, or created or enhanced privilege and power?
Identify your personal beliefs in comparison to the opinions and attitudes related to diversity of past generations in your family.
Conclusion: Include a conclusion section of your paper that discusses what this assignment has made you identify or recognize in your family and in you. What personal biases have you identified that may be a potential challenge for you in working with diverse groups in the future?
How do you think this may be helpful for your future as a professional social worker? In what ways do you feel that you will be able to engage your future clients as informants of their own culture and identity?