Relatively new to rails and trying to model a very simple family "tree" with a single Person model that has a name, gender, father_id and mother_id (2 parents). Below is basically what I want to do, but obviously I can't repeat the :children in a has_many (the first gets overwritten). class Person < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :father, :class_name => 'Person' belongs_to :mother, :class_name => 'Person' has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'mother_id' has_many :children, :class_name => 'Person', :foreign_key => 'father_id' end Is there a simple way to use has_many with 2 foreign keys, or maybe change the foreign key based on the object's gender? Or is there another/better way altogether? Thanks!