# A family tree that isn't shaped like a tree

> A tree diagram forces a family into one bloodline. A net of solid and dashed lines can hold the step-parents, remarriages and people who married in twice that a tree has no room for.

August 19, 2026 · https://justog.club/stories/family-tree-that-isnt-a-tree

Fourteen filled circles on a bone tee, joined by lines. Some lines are solid, some are dashed. Two
of them cross. One circle has four lines meeting at it; two more hang off the far edge on a single
long line each. There's no top and no root.

It isn't a tree. It's a net, and that's the whole argument.

## What does a family diagram look like when it isn't a tree?

A structural diagram of a family, drawn as a mesh of connections rather than a branching hierarchy.

Every circle is a person. Every line is a relationship — solid for blood, dashed for a connection a
family tree has no symbol for at all: a stepfather, an adoption, a second marriage that produced a
stepsibling. The two crossed lines near the middle are where two people who married into the family
went on to know each other independently of whoever connected them in the first place — an ordinary
thing that happens in real families, and something a tree diagram leaves out rather than draws.

## Why doesn't a branching tree work for a real family?

Because the format only has room for one line of descent per person, and most families don't have
just one.

A tree diagram assumes two parents feeding a single line downward, generation after generation. The
moment somebody remarries, adopts, or a grandparent's second marriage produces a stepsibling who
turns out closer than a cousin, the shape runs out of branches. Whoever fills one in eventually has
to decide which relationship to draw and which to leave off — not because the second one is less
real, but because a tree has no slot for it.

### The net doesn't make that choice

A net just adds another line. Two solid lines into one circle instead of one; a dashed line running
sideways instead of down. Nothing about the format forces a decision the family itself never made.

## What do the solid and dashed lines mean?

Solid marks blood, dashed marks everything else the family has agreed to treat the same way.

That's the entire notation, and it does real work: a reader can tell at a glance which connections
in this particular net are biological and which are the result of a decision — a marriage, an
adoption, a family simply deciding somebody belonged. Neither line is drawn heavier than the other,
because the picture doesn't rank them. What the net doesn't show is who calls whom on a Tuesday —
[that closeness is almost never evenly spread](/stories/the-side-you-know-better), and it's a
separate question from who's on the diagram at all.

## Whose permission do you need to put a family's shape on a shirt?

Nobody's — there's no rights holder to ask, because the structure of your own family isn't the kind
of thing anybody owns.

The people whose opinion is worth having are whoever else appears in the net. A design like this
usually carries more names than [a shirt built around one sibling
relationship](/stories/sibling-shirts), which means more people who might see it and more
people worth asking first — a conversation, not paperwork.

## Does it still work for a family that really is a straight line?

Yes, and it just looks different, not wrong.

A family with no remarriages, no adoptions and no crossed lines produces a net that's mostly solid
lines running one direction, without the dashes or crossings that make the busier version
interesting. That isn't a failure of the format — it's an accurate net for a family whose actual
shape happens to be closer to a tree than most.

## What if there are far more than fourteen people?

The net gets denser, not less legible, as long as the lines stay thin and the circles stay small.

A print built for [everyone under one roof for a
weekend](/stories/family-reunion-shirts) can run to thirty or forty circles without
losing its point, because the eye reads clusters and crossings rather than counting nodes one by
one. What breaks it is trying to fit a label to every circle — the net works precisely because it
stays a diagram rather than a family tree with everybody's name squeezed in alongside it.

## Does it print well?

Yes — a net of filled circles and thin lines is close to the simplest thing a screen print does.

Keep it to one or two flat colours with the circles solid rather than outlined, since a dashed line
survives printing far better than a fine dotted one — the gaps stay a size the fabric can hold
rather than filling in solid, the same reason [a chest print generally prints most cleanly on a
short palette](/stories/line-art-single-color-prints). Where two lines cross, a small
deliberate gap drawn into the artwork reads clearly; left for the printer to guess at, it usually
doesn't.

## How do I get one made?

Describe your own family's connections at [JustOG](/) — who's blood, who married in, who counts as
closer than a tree would ever let you show. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it
composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the [shop](/shop).

Fourteen circles, two of them hanging off the edge on a single long line, none of it labelled.