Different type of links between two tables

[Alex_Wallish]

Is there a way to achieve the following?

I have a table called people and a table called families. In the families table, I want three columns: mother, father, and children which are all linked to objects in the people table. In the people table i want just a single column which represents which family that person is in.

It seems like this should be pretty simple to do, but i can’t figure out how to get it to work without having multiple columns in the people table or splitting the people table into three separate tables. Any help would be appreciated.

[kuovonne]

Welcome to the Airtable community!

There are two ways of approaching this situation.

• You can keep having only two tables. This will require multiple columns in each table. You can consolidate the three “family” linked fields in the [People] table using a formula field so that you don’t have to look at as many fields.

• You can use a junction table that shows the role of each person in the family. This support article has more information on creating a junction table. You can then use conditional rollups/lookups to sort out the mother/father/children in the family.