How do you set up children/parent relationships for an alumni CRM?

How do you set up children/parent relationships for an alumni CRM?

We are trialling Zoho and wondering if other organisations have used any particular way to track relationships between contacts.

E.g., Zoe and John are children of Frank and Suneeta.  Sometimes you want to search by the student facts (class of XX, left in year 20XX, was in Classroom A, etc) sometimes you want to search/send campaigns by the parent/guardian facts (e.g. parent from 1986 - 2002, children attended these classes etc). How do you link this kind of information together in Zoho CRM?

Thanks