Of Cereal Boxes and Kinship

Keeping It Queer
By Erica Chu

Of Cereal Boxes and Kinship

My last article spoke about dealing with families during the holiday season, and now might be a good opportunity to raise the issue of kinship—especially the queer variety. 

We’re used to the idea of family—our parents, siblings, grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts, and all the rest—but family can certainly extend beyond the biological or legal.  These traditional structures are the families that get pasted onto billboards and into television shows, movies, and commercials.  Even cereal comes in “family sized” boxes.  As ridiculous as such a marketing tool is (buying in bulk doesn’t have to say anything about your kinship structures!), I think a cereal box is a good image for understanding what family and kinship are and can be.

I recently bought a “family size” box of Cheerios.  I normally eat a bowl every morning, but my partner T helps herself to a handful or two every now and then.  The box is still sitting in my cupboard half-full, and I wonder who will consume the rest of it.  Maybe MJ will come over, maybe Jack, and if they’re hungry, I’ll offer them whatever I have.  When Isis stays over, she’ll certainly have some.  These folks are part of my life, and it’s easy to share my life with them—cereal included.  Even though I would share cereal with my parents, sisters, or cousins, I probably won’t since they aren’t often nearby. 

A “family-sized” box of cereal is just as likely to be eaten by a husband, a wife, and their kids as it is to be eaten by T, me, and our friends.  I’m also more likely to share my cereal with friends than with biological family.  In the same way, kinship is a complex structure that is more than just the images of family that society encourages us to accept. 

We in the LGBTQAI community have become accustomed to stories of family estrangement and the need for chosen family.  We plug ourselves into social networks, political and service organizations, and community groups, but do we ever really consider these friends our family?  If we really stop to consider who is important and why, we may discover that our kinship structures are a lot more complex than we thought.

Romantic relationships are similarly complex.  Socially, we’ve been taught to accept a husband and a wife as normal.  We fight to have same-sex relationships recognized, but are we guilty of being less accepting of other kinship structures?  A mom, dad, and some kids are a family.  So two dads or two moms and some kids are a family too.  But what about two moms and a dad, or two dads and a mom?  What about single parents, variantly gendered parents, couples who don’t have or want children?  What about individuals who are permanently single?  What about polyamorous configurations in all their diversity? 

The lesson we should learn from the difficulty in gaining recognition for same-sex couples is that kinship is as diverse as the people who comprise them, and the structures that work for some do not necessarily work for others. 

Perhaps “family” will never lose its biological and legal context, but there is a certain warmth in the word.  I hope you cherish your kinship relationships in whatever form they come.  I hope too we do more than tolerate alternative structures and affirm them just as we wish ours to be affirmed.


Erica Chu is a student at Loyola University Chicago and is seeking a PhD in English with a concentration in Women Studies and Gender Studies.  She manages the blog keepingitqueer.blogspot.com and can be reached at ericachu@msn.com.